Free Republic

The Bureau of Land Management doesn’t need its own heavily armed police force, Rep. Chris Stewart said Tuesday, referencing the recent standoff between federal agents and a civilian militia siding with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Stewart, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, says he’s going to try and cut funding for any "paramilitary units" and require the BLM, Internal Revenue Service and other regulatory agencies to rely on local law enforcement rather than their own armed crews. "There are lots of people who are really concerned when the BLM shows up with its own SWAT team," the Utah Republican...

Federal law enforcement officials are investigating threats made against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the aftermath of his sharp-edged attacks against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, sources said Monday. Reid has not minced words about Bundy’s battle with the Bureau of Land Management, referring to Bundy’s supporters as “domestic terrorists” and the rancher himself as a “hateful racist.” As he’s stepped up his criticism, Reid has been the subject of threats himself, prompting an increase in his own security detail in recent days, people familiar with the matter said Monday. Shennell Antrobus, a spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police, declined...

Until We Learn to Be Sovereign, the Illegitimate State Will Continue.A recent editorial column here at the PanAm Post spoke of the failures of the opposition parties in Venezuela and their culpability in the collapse of their country. The article raises some very important questions about democracy itself. Democracy, after all, is a very good system, and can produce some very positive results. However, it is also a system fraught with incredible danger. Democracy represents the will of the people, but it also represents their whims, their fears, and their prejudices. The Historical Legacy: False Promises, Division, Failure It was...

While it's always best to have a piece of paper to back you up in court, sometimes shortcuts are OK. You have to reign in your natural hunter's instinct and take the time to get a search warrant. There's the affidavit of probable cause to compose, the warrant form to fill out, maybe a review by the local prosecutor, and then finding a magistrate to submit the package to for approval. It's a hassle. But it's a hassle the Constitution imposes, if your investigation has led you to a residence, garage, barn, outbuilding, warehouse, office, storage locker, package, vehicle, boat,...

Although I have developed a strong tolerance for reading the worlds of the left-wing press through many years of exposure, Christopher Hayes article, “The New Abolitionism”, in The Nation made me almost sick with anger. Hayes’ article is notably noxious, attempting as it does to draw a parallel between the fossil fuel industry and slavery and arguing that efforts to destroy the fossil fuel industry amount to a “New Abolitionism” in that as the Abolitionists of old argued for the destruction of the wealth represented by the slaves held in the Antebellum South, today’s “New Abolitionists” now must argue for...

When the government owns the land and natural resources and controls production from same, it's called communism. The Founders intended Americans to enjoy their God-given liberty. The constitution was written to severely restrict government power and ensure freedom. The founders never intended for an all powerful central government to own the land or to control the means of production. They limited the central government to about 18 enumerated powers and left all others to the people and the states to decide locally. The United States was intended to be a free Republic governed at various levels by elected representatives, working...

A collection of photographs that Ukraine says shows the presence of Russian forces in the eastern part of the country, and which the United States cited as evidence of Russian involvement, has come under scrutiny. The photographs were submitted by Ukraine last week to the Organization for Security and Cooperation, an organization in Vienna that has been monitoring the situation in Ukraine. Some of the photographs were also provided by American officials to Secretary of State John Kerry so he could show them when he met in Geneva last Thursday with his counterparts from the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine....

In recent weeks, we examined the Obama administration’s willingness to reverse positions that it had once proudly proclaimed — on whether an individual mandate is necessary, whether the individual mandate is a tax, whether it is important that you can keep your plan or doctor, whether lobbyists should work in a president’s administration, whether a donor should be appointed U.S. ambassador, and so on. Then we noted environmentalists who said they would not criticize or attack lawmakers who supported the Keystone Pipeline, as long as they were Democrats. Last week, we expanded the discussion to progressives’ wide-ranging willingness to contradict...

It is the New American Fascism. And make no mistake — the perpetrators are proud of it. Let’s begin with dates and names. August 7, 2008: The New York Times reports that Nearly 10,000 of the biggest donors to Republican candidates and causes across the country will probably receive a foreboding “warning” letter in the mail next week. The letter is an opening shot across the bow from an unusual new outside political group on the left that is poised to engage in hardball tactics to prevent similar groups on the right from getting off the ground this fall. Led...

Several weeks ago the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia sponsored a debate–more a discussion–between me and Thaddeus Mason Pope about end of life care under the Affordable Care Act. He supports medical futility. I oppose it. We went from there. I began my presentation with the quote in the headline above–asserting that Palin’s term “death panels” may have put a spear through the heart of Obamacare. I then said: People are afraid of centralized bureaucrats dictating whether Craig’s [the moderator’s terminally ill babies) children can have medical care, whether my 96-year-old mother can have medical care, whether people with disabilities...

Driving on our roads is a privilege regulated at the state level through licensing. Gun ownership is a civil right guaranteed in the Constitution. Those facts in mind, let’s have a look at another of Everytown’s propaganda graphics. That graphic implies quite a lot. If Bloomberg were to get his way, police or some other government agency would be mandated to step into gun owners’ homes at regular intervals to keep tabs on the firearms and the people in those homes. We are already seeing a disturbing, even frightening, militarization of local police. Federal agencies that have no real police...

Does the Environmental Protection Agency really need armed agents? Outside of law enforcement, federal agencies now employ over 25,000 people as armed agents. They are more than guards. They’ve become like private armies that can push around private citizens. Over 70 non-military federal agencies now have their own armed agents. You expect armed agents with the FBI, the U.S. Marshal Service and the Border Patrol. But the EPA? The Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, even the Social Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health? Even the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban...

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in his new book, recommends six rewrites to the U.S. Constitution. He would restrict gun ownership to militia members; ban the death penalty; and allow government to set "reasonable limits" on campaign financing, among other things. But Stevens says he's no radical: "I think every one of my proposals is a moderate proposal," Stevens told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week." One of Steven's proposals would add five words to the Second Amendment, which would then read: "...the right of the people to keep and bear...

Honest liberals are having their Andrew Breitbart moment. Andrew started out as a liberal, except he was the kind of liberal that’s exceedingly rare today. He was a liberal who actually believed in the things liberals say they believe in, like free expression and personal autonomy. But they don’t. Andrew’s change began when he watched the Clarence Thomas hearings. He saw a “high-tech lynching,” as racist Democrats intent on stamping out dissent among black Americans channeled their former Majority Leader/KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd in attacking the black jurist for refusing to toe the liberal line. Andrews’s views didn't change....

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Likely U.S. Voters now fear the federal government, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Forty-seven percent (47%) do not, but another 17% are not sure. Perhaps in part that’s because 54% consider the federal government today a threat to individual liberty rather than a protector. Just 22% see the government as a protector of individual rights, and that’s down from 30% last November. Slightly more (24%) are now undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) As recently as December 2012, voters were evenly divided on this question: 45% said the federal government...

In a speech delivered at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on Tuesday evening, White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser Lisa Monaco said it could help prevent terrorism if parents watched for “sudden personality changes in their children at home.” “President Obama has been laser-focused on making sure we use all the elements of our national power to protect Americans, including developing the first government-wide strategy to prevent violent extremism in the United States,” said Monaco, in a transcription posted by the White House. “At the same time, we recognize that there are limits to what the...

The family of Justina Pelletier will not be allowed to visit their daughter on Easter Sunday. The news comes after attorneys working with her family released a letter Justina reportedly wrote saying she is not being treated well. Jennifer Pelletier, Justina’s oldest sister, alerted supported of Justina on the family’s Facebook page: “There are 75 young people in the Wayside Youth Facility. 74 of them will be able to spend Easter Sunday with their families. The one who will not is Justina Pelletier!”

When I wrote about Adam Weinstein of Gawker and his proposal to literally imprison people for their political views, most of the pushback from the left and from David Frum, America’s Hall Monitor™, consisted of hand-waving, e.g. “You can’t generalize from the position of one crank with a blog, etc.” And while I am sympathetic to the emerging bipartisan consensus that no sentient being could possibly take Adam Weinstein seriously, the fact is that Gawker has a larger readership than The Nation and The New Republic combined. Sure, it’s 99.44 percent pure riff-raff, but the damnable thing about democracy is...

Look for a Climate Credit from the State of California on Your April Utility Bill This month your electricity bill will include a credit identified as the "California Climate Credit." Twice a year, in April and October, your household and millions of others throughout the state will receive this credit on your electricity bills. The Climate Credit is a payment to Californians from a program designed to fight climate change by limiting the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that our largest industries put into the atmosphere. This program is one of many developed as a result of landmark legislation called...

About 80 people showed up at a meeting in Aspen on Thursday on whether the BLM should void 65 oil and gas leases in the region, including 25 in the Thompson Divide area. Two-thirds of the way through the meeting in the basement of the Pitkin County Library, every person who had spoke urged the 13 BLM officials in attendance to cancel the leases, which were first authorized in a 1993 environmental impact statement. “We’re very much in favor of voiding the leases, specifically within the Thompson Divide area,” said Rob Ittner, the chair of the Pitkin County Board of...