Free Republic

If there is one thing we have learned over the past 6 years in the United States, it is the mutually reinforcing nature of different expressions of freedom. No form of freedom--religious, civil, political, or economic--is of course absolute. But unjust infringements (intentional or otherwise) on one freedom can easily result in damage being inflicted upon other spheres of freedom.This is indisputably true, for instance, of religious and political freedom. All totalitarian and most authoritarian regimes usually end up seeking to severely restrict religious liberty. Sometimes this is for ideological or religious reasons. Some religions, for instance, embody very weak...

The nation's largest group of African-American attorneys and judges is calling for federal charges to the filed against the police officer cleared in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager. The National Bar Association released a statement questioning the lack of an indictment against Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson. A 12-member grand jury declined to indict Wilson, and some groups are pressing the White House to move forward with a Civil Rights investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder told NPR there is not a timeline for the federal investigation but said they "will be conducted rigorously and in a timely...

RbG Black Rebels, the terror group that put a bounty on Officer Darren Wilson’s head, is hoping the #FTP ([expletive] the police?) will turn into a large political movement like the Obama-hating Tea Party.Of course, we all know who they will caucus with. RbG Black Rebels which calls itself a “Political Action Group and Urban Militia” posted photos of the 7.62 and 9mm ammo they stockpiled in anticipation of the St. Louis County Michael Brown decision.The radical group also threatened Ferguson business owners. RbG Black Rebels @BlackRebels_Stl If any store owner in Ferg/Stl shoots or harms any protesters i promise...

Nearly one in five U.S. households will celebrate Thanksgiving on food stamps this year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on participation in the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program. Back in fiscal 2000, there were 106,061,000 households in the United States and, according to a USDA report published in November 2012, there was a monthly average of 7,335,000 households—or 6.9 percent—getting food stamps that year. As of this August, according to the most recent data released by USDA, there were 22,729,389 households on food stamps. That equaled 19.75 percent of 115,048,000 households in the country...

Thanks to the FDA’s calorie labeling regulations announced Tuesday, major changes will soon be coming to the food and restaurant industries. The regulation itself is nothing new; it became law in 2010 as a provision attached to the Affordable Care Act, but final rules were delayed for the past few years, thanks in large part to heavy opposition from grocery stores, pizza chains, vending machines, convenience stores, and movie theaters. Although some concessions were made, none of these industries were fully spared. By November 2015, these establishments will be forced to post calorie information on menus and menu boards, which...

A Norristown, Pa., resident has continued a campaign to remember a little boy who was violently killed and raise awareness of child abuse. Jeff Messantonio is encouraging Facebook users to participate across the country in another Light Up the Night for Scotty remembrance Thursday. Jillian Tait, the mother of Scotty McMillan, and her boyfriend Gary Fellenbaum were charged earlier in the month with the torture murder of the 3-year-old. "Its time to wake up and do something about child abuse, and the time is now. So in honor of little scotty, please join us on November 27th and light a...

Two days before Black Friday—a day that has come to be identified with record-breaking gun sales—the Associated Press is claiming that surging sales on November 28 will put guns in the hands of the wrong people. Even though the people who buy guns at retail stores go through a background check before doing so, the AP suggests the background check system we've had in place since the 1990s is too porous, allowing too many prohibited persons to buy a gun. According to the AP, "512 gun sales a day" take place to people who shouldn't be able to buy a...

Vermont Right to Life Committee Treasurer Sharon Toborg emailed a warning to pro-life Vermonters this week asking them to be careful of who they trust on the telephone. It seems that someone has been calling pro-lifers in the state claiming to be from “the Pro-Life Committee” or the “National Pro-Life Committee”. The caller is asking for donations by telephone to help the pro-life movement, however, it is definitely not a call from the Vermont Right to Life Committee (VRLC) or the National Right to Life Committee, which the VRLC is affiliated with. Toborg says VRLC has not solicited funds by...

Pharrell Williams, one of the biggest black figures in the music industry, has spoken out about the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, saying he is 'troubled' a grand jury decided not to indict the white police officer responsible. But the 'Happy' singer also sparked outrage from his fans by calling Brown's behavior leading up to his August 9 death 'bully-ish'. Before he was shot dead, Brown was caught on surveillance camera stealing a handful of cigarillos from a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri, and intimidating the shop owner. While Pharrell says that was no excuse for Officer Darren Wilson to...

A St. Louis County grand jury on Monday decided not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the August killing of teenager Michael Brown. The decision wasn’t a surprise — leaks from the grand jury had led most observers to conclude an indictment was unlikely — but it was unusual. Grand juries nearly always decide to indict. Or at least, they nearly always do so in cases that don’t involve police officers. Former New York state Chief Judge Sol Wachtler famously remarked that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” The data suggests...

At least one black leader, a State Senator, has declared that we are now in a race war, blacks and their sympathizers vs. everyone else. She has no authority to declare any such thing, and she certainly does not speak for anything like a majority of African Americans, nor, I suspect, for anything like a majority of liberal intellectuals, but it is an astonishing thing to say. We are not in a race war, but there are similarities to a barbarian invasion. We have a barbarian culture within the United States. The most common cause of death of black males...

After Michael Brown was shot dead in August, his mother, Leslie McSpadden, said, "My son was sweet. He didn't mean any harm to anybody." He was, she said, "a gentle giant." But when police officer Darren Wilson fired the shot that ended Brown's life, he saw things differently. "I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan," he said in his testimony to the grand jury. "That's just how big he felt and how small I felt." Wilson said "the only way" he could describe Brown's "intense aggressive face" was that it looked like "a demon." He feared for his...

The county autopsy report on Michael Brown largely corroborates the account of the shooting given by Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson. Two independent doctors reviewed the report from St. Louis County for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, KTVI reported. According to the report, the first shot fired from Wilson’s gun was at close range and hit Brown’s right thumb, adding weight to Wilson’s testimony that the two struggled for the gun in Wilson’s police cruiser. Previous reports confirmed that Brown’s blood was found on Wilson’s gun and uniform, as well as inside the car.

The New York Times, whether consciously or not, has just endangered Darren Wilson’s life. With tensions running high in Ferguson over the lack of an indictment for Wilson’s killing of Michael Brown, the paper has published the officer’s approximate address -- the street and town where he lives with his new wife, who also is named. Given the racial animosity unleashed by Brown’s death, given the rioting and the looting and the stores that were set afire, how can a news organization make it easier for some crazy zealot to track down Wilson? But there it is in the paper:

Country star Garth Brooks was scheduled to appear on several shows this week, including Thanksgiving edition of “The Tonight Show.” But his conscience won’t let him do it anymore. Because of … Ferguson? More from The Hollywood Reporter: “We landed in NY last night to the news of the civil unrest that was going on in our nation. To spend the day promoting our stuff like nothing was wrong, seemed distasteful to me,” Brooks wrote in a statement posted on his Facebook page. “I will gladly reschedule any or all appearances the networks will allow. Love one another, g” Brooks...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Happy Thanksgiving 2014!! ~ GOD BLESS AND WATCH OVER THEM, WHEREVER THEY SERVE Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation Washington, D.C. October 3, 1863 By the President of the United States of America. The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source...

Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham A Mississippi woman wants the state Supreme Court to recognise gay marriage – so that she can divorce a partner she married in San Francisco. Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham, a 52-year-old credit analyst, who already had two children from a failed heterosexual marriage, moved to California in 2008 so that she could marry Dana Ann Melancon. But the relationship soured and they separated in 2010. When Ms Czekala-Chatham, who now has a new girlfriend, applied for a divorce, citing adultery and habitual cruel and inhuman treatment, she failed. The state predictably argued that Mississippi could not grant...

A Bay Area federal judge has given the go-ahead to a nationwide suit by thousands of immigrants who seek asylum in the United States and accuse the government of illegally keeping them in jail for months. In rejecting the Obama administration’s attempt to dismiss the suit, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of Oakland ruled that federal law requires officials to decide within 10 days whether an undocumented immigrant has a “reasonable fear” of persecution or torture if deported. Immigrants are held without bail while awaiting those decisions.

Rep. Jim Costa was thought to be headed for a safe race. The California Democrat represents a district that supported President Obama by a 19-point margin in 2012—and while Costa had had scares in previous midterms, 2014 appeared to be in the bag. And indeed, Costa did keep his seat, but only after squeaking through one of the tightest races of the entire cycle, a vote count so close that it took 15 days for him to be officially declared the victor over Republican candidate and dairy farmer Johnny Tacherra. So what happened? Costa nearly fell victim to a radically...

There are certain laws of political physics that just cannot be ignored for long. All the bravado about minuscule midterm turnout or audacious executive actions out of the White House cannot forever mask the fact that two disastrous midterm election cycles have sapped the Democratic Party of authority. In 2015, the party will be in one of the weakest positions it has been in nearly a century. As Democrats begin to internalize that suboptimal reality, the effects are spectacular beyond RepublicansÂ’ wildest imaginings. On Tuesday, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), said aloud what many Democrats...