Free Republic

On November 15, 2022, the United States Attorney in the Western District of Texas, Ashley C. Hoff, filed a Notice of Appeal to the United States District Court fro the Western District of Texas, Pecos Division in the case of USA v. Perez-Gallan. Previously, on November 10, 2022, Judge David Counts had issued a Memorandum Opinion dismissing the indictment to Litsson Antonio Perez-Gallan as invalid because it was unconstitutional under the United States Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSR&PA) v. Bruen decision, which restored the Second Amendment as a full-fledged member of the Bill...

Image courtesy Dean Weingarten On Thursday, 16 July, 2020, the Wisconsin Sawyer County Board adopted a resolution supporting the United States Second Amendment and the Wisconsin Constitution's Section 25, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. The resolution stops short of the Sanctuary County movement, but it gives affirmative notice of the County's support for Constitutional rights. Full disclosure: I grew up in Sawyer County, Wisconsin, and have numerous close family members who still live there. Rural Wisconsin has a strong gun culture. I was not surprised to learn the resolution had passed.A tip of the hat is...

A letter on God and the Constitution written by George Washington is up for sale after spending decades in a private collection. The letter to Richard Peters, speaker of the Pennsylvania Constitution, is signed Sept. 7, 1788, and praises God for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Written a week after Washington told Alexander Hamilton that he would likely accept calls to assume the presidency, the letter came at a time when the Constitution was under attack. Some states wanted to hold a second Convention that may have undermined the Constitution. “It would seem from the public Gazettes that the...

A letter on God and the Constitution written by George Washington is up for sale after spending decades in a private collection. The letter to Richard Peters, speaker of the Pennsylvania Constitution, is signed Sept. 7, 1788, and praises God for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Written a week after Washington told Alexander Hamilton that he would likely accept calls to assume the presidency, the letter came at a time when the Constitution was under attack. Some states wanted to hold a second Convention that may have undermined the Constitution. “It would seem from the public Gazettes that the...

Four decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court implemented a major, nationwide policy that consolidated prosecutorial authority: it granted prosecutors absolute immunity for acts committed in their prosecutorial role. This decision sheathed prosecutors in protective armor while they pursued criminal convictions through an era of crime-related hysteria, and it eroded one of the few mechanisms available to hold prosecutors accountable. Considering the growing call to acknowledge and address an epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct, now is a critical time to reflect on Imbler v. Pachtman and evaluate whether it holds up to modern-day scrutiny.      In Imbler, the Supreme Court held...

First, an admission: I have seriously underestimated Donald Trump. After spending more than three years tracking the construct of the GOPe strategy to elect Jeb Bush, and having lost the most single important battle in May 2014 to stop it, I was deflated and disenfranchised. Few were willing to accept the road-map and sheer level of Machiavellian strategy deployed by the professional political class. Every single prediction (tripwire) which stems from understanding the construct was triggered in the exact sequence. We resigned ourselves to the outlook that Tom Donohue, Mitch McConnell and their team were going to pull it off....

ON THE HIGH NEGATIVES OF BOTH TRUMP AND HILLARY If worse comes to worse...whether Hillary or Trump is elected....The House of Representatives and the senate can examine both people at the time of the Electoral counts...decide neither one of them is fit for office and simply appoint a different president and vice president....it can happen theoretically as the means to do so is laid out in the constitution...You'd see a fusion choice from both parties as a compromise! I think that's what needs to happen here. The congress and the country needs to say " a pox on both Trump...

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley on Friday blasted Texas for denying birth certificates to some U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants without valid identification documents, declaring that “citizenship is a human right.” “Denying birth certificates to U.S, citizens is not only outrageous, it’s unconstitutional,” the former Maryland governor said in a statement released in English and Spanish. “The 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution could not be clearer. It states that ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,’ ” he...

The Taliban’s release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl dominated the Sunday talk shows, pushing Friday’s resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki from the headlines. The Sunday shows were packed with administration officials defending the decision and Republicans launching into political attacks against President Obama and the administration for transferring five Taliban members from Guantánamo Bay to Qatar in exchange for the release of Bergdahl, the 28-year-old whom the Taliban released on Saturday. "Disturbing" was how Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) put it on ABC's "This Week." "Dangerous," echoed House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) on CNN's "State of The Union."...

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. … (Please respond with thoughtful comments). When we spend the better part of five months working so that the US government can take our hard earned money and re-distribute it to others in the form of: - Welfare - Unemployment - Social Security (to those who never contributed or are withdrawing more than...

mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was won in the minds of Colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all people in the Colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps. These two pieces...

Louisiana - -(Ammoland.com)- This November, I am proud to join the National Rifle Association in support of Amendment 2 to the Louisiana Constitution to protect the gun rights of law abiding citizens, let me tell you why. Here in Louisiana, we love our sportsmen’s paradise, we love our culture, and we love our freedom. But, years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could restrict the gun rights of law abiding citizens. We saw it after Katrina. Folks were in their homes with no electricity, no power, no 911 service, and reports of looters going door to door. That’s...

It is often said that guns, particularly assault rifles, are designed for one thing, and one thing only: to kill lots of people. Assault rifles in the United States are failing miserably in this purpose. There are tens of millions of assault rifles in America. Because the definition of an assault rifle has been rather fuzzy, the number can be said to be anywhere from 10 million to 30 million. Of those, the AR-15 type is fairly common with numbers between 5 and 10 million. The FBI murder statistics do not differentiate between types of rifles. There are about 100...

Amity Shlaes should be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for her epic history of the Great Depression: The Forgotten Man. But, she won't. She won't because she portrays an historical and economically sound assessment of the facts of the Great Depression rather than the whitewashed history taught in our schools. Much like the Obama Administration's profligate spending and castigation of the court, FDR greatly expanded government spending during his first term and used the Commerce Clause to attempt to regulate private businesses. The Schechter brothers were butchers, the middle-men between the farmer who raised chickens and the retail stores...

DENVER (AP) -- House lawmakers approved a bill to forbid the state from seizing Colorado residents' firearms during a declared state of emergency. Republican House Leader Amy Stephens says the bill is about emergency preparedness. The proposal passed the Republican-led House Monday with bipartisan support but it's likely to be defeated in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Jamaica Plain, MA --(Ammoland.com)- Today an appeal was filed in Hightower v. Boston in the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal seeks to overturn the lower court decision dismissing Stacey Hightower’s lawsuit against the City of Boston challenging the constitutionality of discretionary licensing in Massachusetts. Stacey Hightower is an Air Force veteran and former Boston Police Officer. She resigned from the Boston Police Department in 2008 after 10 years of service to pursue a career in education. The city responded by revoking her licensing to carry (LTC) firearms and seizing her personally owned firearm and ammunition. During the district...

heard Glenn Beck's radio interview of Newt Gingrich. I knew that Glenn Beck was not a fan of the Republican primary Presidential candidate, so I listened closely. What I heard in the exchange revived a long held concern I have with some aspects of what is being called "conservative" politics these days. What is needed in campaign 2012 is a discussion of whether there can be such a thing as "good" government. Clearly, from the tenor of the interview, Glenn Beck seems to think not - while Newt Gingrich disagrees. ...We need to ask whether the exercise of governance respects...

INDIANAPOLIS | Republican and Democratic leaders of the Indiana House and Senate on Monday endorsed legislation to clarify Hoosier self-defense rights after a controversial Indiana Supreme Court ruling. The General Assembly's Legislative Council unanimously approved a proposal allowing a person to use force under some circumstances to stop the illegal entry of a police officer into a home as long as the person does not know it is a police officer, the officer does not identify himself or herself as police and the officer is not wearing a badge or uniform. The right to use force would not apply in...

"Quit your anti-gun tantrum, Chicago," a May 27 Chicago Sun-Times editorial headline by Second Amendment Foundation Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb and Gun Week Senior Editor Dave Workman commands. "The Second Amendment Foundation recently filed two important suits that...challenge government hostility toward two U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment." they write, citing their "case...against the State of Illinois, which sidestepped an opportunity to adopt legislation that would allow Prairie State citizens to legally carry loaded handguns for their personal protection." "The Foundation is challenging the City of Chicago’s ridiculously cumbersome handgun permit ordinance, which was written in an...

From Joel Bovaird Creston As a citizen of the city of Creston and a valid non-professional permit to carry weapons holder, I was appalled to see that the people that we have elected to lead this fair city have decided to wage a war against my second amendment rights. The mayor and the city council have decided they want to ban law-abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves and our loved ones inside city-owned dwellings. Some may say, well, just in city-owned buildings. I say okay, but according to the ordinance, this includes city park shelters. I say where...