Free Republic

No one is more boring and predictable than Senator Dianne Feinstein immediately calling for the banning of assault weapons after the carnage at the Washington Navy Yard. That an AR-15 wasn’t even involved in the mass killing is also predictable. Liberalism, as exemplified by Ms. Feinstein, is just a fuddy-duddy ideology in general, so old-fashioned you want to bang your forehead on the table. But… …no one should want paranoid schizophrenics to have arms… not even a number two pencil because, if their voices tell them to do it, they will put out your eye with it.

When I teach journalism classes, I like to shock the students by telling them that journalists aren’t professionals in the sense that doctors, lawyers, accountants or even beauticians are. You don’t need a license or a degree to work as a reporter or editor in this country; in fact, if Congress or a state decided to license journalists the Supreme Court surely would blow its 1st Amendment whistle. And yet ... though government doesn’t license journalists, for decades it has defined journalists for certain purposes. Exhibit A: Although the Supreme Court has rejected the idea that reporters have a 1st...

WASHINGTON, September 17, 2013 — Americans are becoming more accustomed to hearing, “breaking news, there has been a shooting…” as we listen to the radio or watch television. Monday morning, we began our week hearing the same. This time, civilians at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. were terrorized by a gunman. ~snip~ If politicians and policy-makers would simply study the data, it would be clear that gun ownership should be encouraged in order to reduce the number of murders. There most certainly should be a gun control debate, and about that Sen. Feinstein is correct, but not in the...

*sigh*  Another day, another workplace man-caused disaster. Quick, cue the anti-gun brigade before this crisis goes to waste. We’re burning daylight here, people! Shoot, ready, aim! (Love that Al Capone look on Dianne) This is what happens when words no longer mean anything: partisans rush in to claim that “A” actually means “B” even though common sense, in conjunction with your lyin’ eyes, tells you that “A” is actually, well, “A.” Butt “when words no longer have any meaning, they can mean anything.”  Prog math problems: the answer is always “equality” Accordingly, in the post-9/11, post-American world the original meanings of...

ust hours after the deadly shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, gun control advocates tried to reignite the national debate over gun laws that had only just subsided. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and a longtime gun control advocate, denounced “the litany of massacres” over the past few years and asked rhetorically, “When will enough be enough?” [snip] The National Rifle Association had no comment on Monday, and pro-gun groups generally take the stance that days of particularly shocking crimes are not the time to discuss policy. Popular conservative blogger and former CNN commentator Erick Erickson admonished the rush...

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is renewing her call for new gun-control laws because of Monday’s deadly Navy Yard shooting. “When will enough be enough?” Feinstein said in a statement Monday evening.

McCain hints at retirement in 2016 By Mario Trujillo - 09/13/13 12:38 PM ET Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hinted that he may be serving his last term in office, admitting that he does not want to become “one of these old guys that should’ve shoved off.” McCain, a 27-year veteran of the senate and former presidential candidate, made the admission while speaking about his relationship with President Obama. “The president and I, he's in his last term, I'm probably in mine, the relationship we have had over the past three years is quite good,” McCain told The Wrap in an...

Matt Drudge called Sen. Dianne Feinstein a fascist after the California Democrat suggested that only "professional" journalists deserved protection under a new media shield law."I can't support it if everyone who has a blog has a special privilege … or if Edward Snowden were to sit down and write this stuff, he would have a privilege. I'm not going to go there," Feinstein said during Thursday's hearing.Drudge reacted to Feinstein's comments on Twitter after stories of the media shield law were highlighted on his Drudge Report website."Comments from Sen. Feinstein yesterday on who's a reporter were disgusting," he wrote, adding...

Demonstrators gathered at the property of Sen. Dianne Feinstein this weekend to protest possible U.S. military action in Syria. Protesters with the group Code Pink set up camp outside Feinstein's San Francisco home with tents, sleeping bags and banners. Demonstrations also included a light show, a candlelight vigil and a march to the Golden Gate Bridge. "We who came here today to camp out are saying to the people of the Muslim world we care about your lives," Code Pink activist Toby Blome said. "Your lives are as important as ours. Children shouldn't be killed. There's no excuse to put...

The Mainstream (Establishment) Media is trying to once again do the Republican vs Democrat thingy: that Obama has proposed some serious (cough, laugh) changes to the NSA spying program, and those wascally wepubs (Rep. McCaul and Peter King (R-GOP-e) are trying to thwart him. I never thought that I would see a recent liberal rally where hundreds marched (not reported by the MSM-e) where a person would be carrying a sign that said Snowden, patriot and Pelosi, traitor. And even the New York Times (Editorial Board, June 6th: Obama administration has lost all credibility on the issue of the NSA...

Legislators are still trying to put together a national "shield" law for journalists (this is the third such effort at a national level) and, as usual, are bogged down in a semantic debate about who should qualify for these protections. Despite "freedom of the press" being hardwired into the system and the fact that a government effort to protect journalists from its own actions (seeking to identify whistleblowers and sources in order to punish them or shut them up) lies somewhere between "ironic" and "disingenuous," the pursuit of a credible "shield" law continues. The bill's definition of "journalist" seems straightforward...

<p>Members of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate.</p> <p>From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over them. "These programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate," President Obama said the day after the first story on NSA bulk collection of phone records was published in this space. "And if there are members of Congress who feel differently, then they should speak up."</p>

The Talk Shows June 23th, 2013 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Mike Lee, R-Utah; Gabriel Gomez, Republican nominee for Senate in Massachusetts.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Reps. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., and Mike Rogers, R-Mich.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.THIS WEEK (ABC): Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency; Reps. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas; Mike Kelly, R-Pa.; and Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky.,...

The NSA does not need a court order to search the database it maintains of the call data surrendered by the nation’s telecommunications firms, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told reporters on Thursday. Feinstein spoke to reporters after a briefing on NSA monitoring by top Obama administration national security officials. She echoed an explanation given by NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander when he appeared before a Senate panel on Wednesday, including the specific legal hurdle NSA says it must clear before it can look into the data it collects.

The US has entered into a contract with a real estate firm to sell 56 buildings that currently house U.S. Post Offices. The government has decided it no longer needs these buildings, many of which are located on prime land in towns and cities across the country. The sale of these properties will fetch billions of dollars and a handsome 6% commission to the company handling the sales. That company belongs to a man named Richard Blum. Who is Richard Blum you ask? Why the husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein, that's who. What a bunch of crooks we have running...

Forty-seven U.S. senators attended a closed-door briefing with top national security officials Thursday to learn more about how telephone and Internet-tracking programs used by the National Security Agency have thwarted multiple terrorist attacks — details that lawmakers said the general public will begin learning more about by Monday. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it is taking longer to release the information as top NSA officials work to ensure that any information released publicly is as accurate as possible.

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney explains how the secretive agency runs its pervasive domestic spying apparatus in a new piece by Laura Poitras in The New York Times. Binney—one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history—worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution." In a short video called "The Program," Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S....

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and two leading senators on national security are traveling to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Congressional aides to Sens. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee, and John McCain, a member of the Armed Services panel, said the lawmakers joined McDonough on the trip.

As details of President Obama’s massive domestic spying operation continue to dribble out into the public domain, the Left for the most part is quiet and content. Left-wingers are unable even to entertain the idea that Obama, who billed himself on the campaign trail as a champion of civil liberties, is a power-mad authoritarian who views the Constitution as worthless parchment. Obama promised: “no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No...

President Barack Obama has continued to pursue some of the same anti-terrorism policies as the Bush administration, and, in at least one instance, expanded upon them. In the clearest example, Obama has authorized more than 300 overseas drone strikes against suspected terrorists as president – that’s compared to an estimate of roughly 50 such strikes under President George W. Bush – even as Obama has proposed new restrictions governing the policy. And on Wednesday, it was revealed that the Obama administration has requested wholesale collection of data from Verizon related to routine phone calls many Americans make, a continuation of...