Free Republic

Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet. Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center , was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that...

NSA leaker Edward Snowden is currently living under asylum in Russia, so it makes sense that he would want to know about the country's own surveillance practices. He managed to take his inquiry straight to the top and pose the question to none other than President Vladimir Putin during a live, state-run television broadcast. "I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance," he said. "So I'd like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?" The show's host claimed that Snowden "revolutionized the...

An Air Force captain discovered he was banned from Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California, due to pending charges against him from a previous encounter with a cop who had tried to arrest him for entering his own home. The charges — resisting arrest and obstructing an officer — have infuriated Captain Nicolas Aquino, a first-generation immigrant whose parents came to the United States from Paraguay as political exiles. Last December, an officer paid a visit to Aquino’s Monterey residence. Apparently, a neighbor had seen a man entering Aquino’s home, and reported a possible burglary to the authorities. The...

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Federal Land Retention and the Constitution’s Property Clause: The Original Understanding (Conclusion) Robert G. Natelson* Conclusion Considered from the vantage point of original meaning, both the conservative and liberal interpretations of the “other Property” portion of the Property Clause are partly correct. The liberals are correct in that the Constitution – not just arguably, but clearly – authorizes permanent property ownership outside the Enclave Clause. The clarity of this result flows both from the text of the document and from comments made during ratification. Moreover, the liberals are correct in suggesting that those lands are subject to a public trust...

It's been 50 years since Ford built the world-renowned 1965 Mustang and placed it high above Manhattan on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. Last night, Ford came back with a bigger, yellower, all around more complicated car from 2015 and decided to recreate the famous stunt as a 50-year homage—only this time, they did it in the snow and over the course of just 5 hours.

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ EQUIPMENT CHECK Army Sgt. Nicholas Parrott prepares a Bambi bucket for a CH-47 Chinook helicopter to help fight the East Peak fire near La Veta, CO, June 21, 2013. Parrott is assigned to the Colorado Army National Guard's 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment, stationed on Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, CO. U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. Darin Overstreet 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. SUNSET MONITOR Navy...

Just when you think Vladimir Putin’s propaganda cannot sink any lower, it invariably does. Andranik Migranyan is a seasoned Kremlin hand. A former member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, a cavalier of the presidentially bestowed Order of Honor, he currently heads the New York office of the so-called Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, a Russian GONGO created on the initiative of Vladimir Putin in 2007 (it also has an office in Paris). This week, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper published Migranyan’s article attacking Professor Andrei Zubov, a prominent and well-respected Russian historian, who, in his recent op-ed in...

ROME, April 16, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A court in the Tuscan city of Grosseto has ordered the city council to accept the “marriage” of two men, the first time such a union has been given juridical recognition in Italy. Giancarlo Cerrelli, vice president of the Catholic Lawyer’s Guild, says the ruling is a “creative judgment that takes no account of the Civil Code and the jurisprudence of the European Union.” Two homosexual men, Giuseppe Chigiotti and Stefano Bucci, contracted a legal “marriage” ceremony in New York in December last year, then returned to Italy and filed a suit against the...

Editor's note: Christopher S. Chivvis is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and expert in European and Eurasian security issues. You can follow him @cchivvis. Bonny Lin is an associate political scientist at RAND and an expert on Asia-Pacific security issues. The views expressed are their own. At Sunday night's emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, Western countries denounced Russian efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine. Depending on your reading of its statement, China either refused to do the same, or refused to back Russia. Either way, the meeting was just the latest example of how the Ukraine...

China's GDP grew 7.4% in the first quarter amid growing evidence that the powerhouse economy is easing offThe new railway station being built in Shenyang, Liaoning province. Investment in fixed assets dipped in the first quarter. China's annual economic growth slowed to its lowest for nearly a quarter of a century between January and March to 7.4% from 7.7% in the previous three months.

Toddlers show racial bias when picking playmates, a study reveals. They also take account of how fairly others behave. Researchers tested the reaction of white 15-month-olds as toys were distributed.Two white adults divided the toys, one equally and the other unequally. Seventy per cent of the toddlers chose to play with the researcher who distributed the toys fairly. But in a second test, when one researcher favoured a white recipient over an Asian one, they picked the ‘fair’ researcher less often, the journal Frontiers in Psychology reports. And the babies are more likely to help those who share the same...

Feature: Nevada standoff signifies movement against federal control of public landsBUNKERVILLE, NEV.—For some, the story of Cliven Bundy and his 20-year fight against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is about one man’s refusal to pay grazing fees on public land he doesn’t own. For the family, and scores of supporters that have come to his aid in the face of aggressive force used by the federal government, what happened in Bunkerville, Nev. is about the “rise of the West.” “As important as it is for a man to fight for his ranch and his livelihood, this is much bigger...

Wednesday on the "Tom Joyner Morning Show," Al Sharpton offered a curious explanation involving President Barack Obama for the meaning of Easter: "I think that the message is, no matter what the world may do to unfairly, no matter how your crucified, nailed to the cross at home, or in your personal relationships, or on the job that you can rise if you don't lose yourself during the hard times and the challenges. The story of Jesus on the cross. no matter what they humiliated him with. no matter how they mocked him he took it, because he knew he...

Last Friday, in a speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference, President Obama proudly announced that the Justice Department had taken on more than 100 voting rights cases since 2009. The problem with that claim is that, since 2009, the Justice Department has taken on only 39 voting rights cases—and as former Voting Section lawyer Christian Adams points out, only 13 were related to protecting minority voting rights. And, with respect to some of the cases in which the department has been involved, it lost spectacularly—such as its false claim that South Carolina’s voter ID law was discriminatory. Perhaps...

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will spend $50 million this year to build a nationwide grassroots network on gun control in a direct challenge to the National Rifle Association, The New York Times reported. The new lobbying group, called Everytown for Gun Safety, will encompass other gun control groups funded by Bloomberg, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the report said. Bloomberg told the Times the strategy will focus on expanding the background check system for gun buyers at the state and national levels. He made nearly $14 million in federal campaign...

Sorry for the vanity post but I had a question and thought regarding the Bundy Ranch issues and really the core of the corruption... It boils down to the concept of land offset as part of ..The Rules you and I must follow and who gets exception to the rules because their powerful or friends of the powerful. . We have all seen this..take Obamacare. .push through a draconian law then give exceptions and waver to your friends and strict, to the letter, enforcement to your enemys..same with emigration. .selective enforcement to the letter vs selective non enforcement and out...

Mayor Bill de Blasio is the first New York City mayor to release his tax returns in 12 years, according to the WSJ. de Blasio earned $165,000 as public advocate last year and brought in an additional $52,000 in rent on a second home he owns in Park Slope, according to his 2013 tax returns. Mr. de Blasio’s effective tax rate was 8.3%. As WSJ reports, Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who served as mayor from 2002 through 2013, released highly redacted copies of his return that gave scant information about his net worth. In 2001, during...

(Reuters) - Armored personal carriers driven into the eastern Ukrainian city of Slaviansk had been under the control of Ukrainian armed forces earlier on Wednesday, pictures taken by Reuters photographers showed. A soldier guarding one of six troop carriers now under the control of pro-Russian separatists told Reuters he was a member of Ukraine's 25th paratrooper division from Dnipropetrovsk. "All the soldiers and the officers are here. We are all boys who won't shoot our own people," said the soldier, whose uniform did not have any identifying markings on it. "They haven't fed us for three days on our base....

WASHINGTON — Ukraine’s military has an urgent need for nonlethal military assistance like body armor, night-vision goggles, communications gear and aviation fuel to defend against a potential Russian attack, according to a new analysis by a former NATO commander and a former Pentagon official. But wary of provoking Russia, the Obama administration has been reluctant to provide it, they say. (snip) The new interim government in Ukraine submitted a request to NATO nations last month for military assistance, including vehicles, mine-clearing equipment, communications gear, medical supplies, fuel and the sharing of intelligence. The United States has sent 300,000 M.R.E. —...