Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE -- A voter purge by Secretary of State Ken Detzner in 2012 violated the law, a federal appeals court ruled today in the most recent episode of a heated legal battle over the program and its possible successor. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments from Detzner that the effort to remove suspected non-citizens from the voting rolls did not violate a federal law barring wide-ranging efforts to cleanse those rolls within 90 days of an election. In the 2-1 ruling, justices also said they took a case that would otherwise be moot because of the possibility...

Chaka Fattah Jr., son of Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), is suing the Internal Revenue Service, seeking nearly $1 million in damages for what he says were violations of IRS rules that harmed his reputation and crippled his earning power during an investigation into allegedly unpaid taxes. ---SNIP--- He said that since the raid, his income plummeted, he had to leave his home at the Ritz-Carlton, and he faced additional lawsuits and liens over other debts and unpaid taxes. Fattah Jr., who once drove a Range Rover Sport and cultivated a reputation as a high-end mover in city affairs, had...

Florida is ground zero for the weird and unusual, but there are many people, places and events that Florida can point to with pride: Gov. Reubin Askew, our world-class beaches, beautiful wetlands, Disney World, Gasparilla and our universities’ title-winning athletic teams. But George Zimmerman is not something we’re proud of. For those people who have not listened to any form of media for the last few years, George Zimmerman is best known as the neighborhood watchman-turned-vigilante who shot and killed an unarmed 16-year old by the name of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman played police, judge and jury, assuming Trayvon was “up...

Below is a link to a youtube video of some of the Testimony before the Florida House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, March 17, 2014. It shows the Florida Sheriffs Association OPEN OPPOSITION to your right to carry your firearms with you during a mandatory evacuation under a declared state of emergency. Further, despite words of the Founding Fathers in the Second Amendment, it is their opinion that you only have a "right" to own firearms and not a "right" to bear firearms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qogTYo4mPuo Under the video screen you will see heading that says, "Published on Mar 28, 2014" and a...

Calvin Turnquest was born in Nassau, Bahamas, into a family with a long tradition of public service and deep involvement with the church. Calvin was raised with the values of hard work, service to others, and faith in God. Calvin applied for an F-1 visa in 1989 to attend the University of Miami, where he earned a Bachelors degree in Chemistry and a minor in Biology. He then worked to earn his Green Card. Calvin took the oath of U.S. Citizenship in September, 1999 and calls it his proudest day. While attending the University of Miami, he met Sheryl Thompson,...

Fossil Frank has a hypothesis - inspired by certain shells taken from deep in a limestone quarry abutting the Everglades - that a great tsunami hit Florida about two million years ago. It happened in the evening - and he can prove it. More of this later. Before Frank Perillo became Fossil Frank he was an unhappy mechanic. He hated every day he lay on his back in Ketcham's garage. Winter days were worst, because his hands turned to meat from the cold and the lacquer thinners he used to wash himself. When he jacked up cars, the ice on...

Can you imagine the devastation that would be caused if a massive wall of water several hundred feet high slammed into Florida at more than 100 miles an hour? To many people such a scenario is impossible, but that is what people living along the Indian Ocean thought before the 2004 tsunami and that is what people living in Japan thought before the 2011 tsunami. Throughout history, giant tsunamis have been relatively rare events, but they do happen. Scientists tell us that a mega-tsunami can race across the open ocean at up to 500 miles an hour, and when they...

(MFNS) - North Korea announced today that its leader Kim Jung-Un has a perfect NCAA tournament bracket on the road to the final four of the prestigious collegiate basketball competition. “Our dear leader has once again vanquished the capitalist slime with his superior brainpower. While the imperialist scum sided with the largest, most powerful programs, Kim Jung-Un foresaw the power of underdog squadrons."A contest sponsored by Warren Buffet promised to give $1 billion to anyone with a perfect bracket at the end of the tournament. Every contestant has already been eliminated.Although Kim did not officially enter the contest, officials...

Surpassing California for the first time, Texas is leading the nation in technology-related exports, according to a new report. State companies that make computers, semiconductors and communications equipment, among other products, exported more than $45 billion in products in 2012, according to the TechAmerica Foundation, a tech industry lobbying firm. That was driven by Texas’ 7 percent growth — about $3 billion — in tech exports from 2011. Tech exports supported nearly 1.5 million jobs nationwide and about 331,000 jobs in Texas, according to the report. California, meanwhile, declined 2.8 percent, to $44.8 billion in technology exports. Technology exports accounted...

Trayvon Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, speaks about her support to eradicate "stand your ground" laws. Enough is enough, says Rev. Dr. R.B. Holmes, noting the list of young Black people dead or in jail in states where “stand your ground” laws are in place. “Our young Black boys are being senselessly killed just for being Black teenagers,” said Holmes, who on March 25 announced the formation of the National Pastor’s Task Force, a nation wide coalition of 40 Black ministers who want to repeal or revise “stand your ground” laws. “We have begun the fight in Florida and pledge to...

Republican House Speaker John Boehner will spend next weekend at a Ritz Carlton event hosted by an anti-tea party group devoted to fighting conservatives within the GOP. Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor will be among 28 House members attending a $5,000-a-head event hosted by The Republican Main Street Partnership’s advocacy group, Red State reported. Donations will reportedly go to the anti-tea party super PAC Defending Main Street, which by February had received most of its funding from labor unions. The event will be hosted at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island in Nassau County, Florida. The Republican Main...

This happened to me on SR 41 in Tampa on Monday March 24th. This pathetic excuse for a human being tailgated me for about three minutes. After about a minute, and me shaking my head, I pulled out my phone and started recording. I couldn't move over because there were trucks in the right lane, and I sure as heck wasn't going to speed on a rainy day with the roads being as slick as they were. I was turning left in about a half-mile when this happened. Now bear in mind, that this guy had already passed a truck...

March 27, 2014 In shameless quarter-end fundraising email, Alan Grayson insists he is not ‘a piece of nose slime’ David Freddoso We’re getting close to March 31, and that means lots of desperate-sounding, trollish emails from politicians about how they need to raise that last whatever amount to put in their next quarterly FEC report. The emails get more obnoxious with each passing quarter leading up to the election. And when they come from someone who is pretty obnoxious to begin with, you can just imagine how entertaining it can be.Case in point: Rep. Alan Grayson, D. who earlier this...

A push by the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson to outlaw online gambling has ignited a bitter civil war in the gambling industry, dividing one of Washington’s most powerful interest groups and posing a major test of the Republican megadonor’s political clout. Mr. Adelson’s effort officially kicked off on Wednesday, when lawmakers, including a senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from the businessman and his family, introduced legislation originally drafted with Mr. Adelson’s lobbyist. The bill would close a three-year-old loophole in federal law, banning online gambling — a growing industry that Mr....

Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson said Tuesday that the United States “should be pleased” about Russia annexing the Crimea, calling it “a virtually bloodless transfer of power.” At a Foreign Affairs Committee mark-up Tuesday, Grayson said that the referendum in Crimea was the entirely legitimate vote by a group of people who were upset that their chosen leader, ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, had been removed from office. The role of Russian forces, in his telling, was simply that of peacekeeper. “You may say that [Yanukovych] was thrown out of office for good reason. There are allegations against him that...

This week, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin vowed to roll out her "Mama Grizzlies" endorsements, and she endorsed conservative Florida Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto on Wednesday for the FL-19 U.S. House seat. Palin called Benacquisto a "proven conservative" with an "unwavering commitment to the principles of our Founders and to the sanctity of life." The congressional primary will be held on April 22nd. The general election for the seat being vacated by Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL) will be on June 24th. Palin called Benacquisto the only conservative in the race and, as a bonus, touted her as a candidate...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder strongly hinted on Thursday that the government will soon determine if George Zimmerman will face federal civil rights charges in the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. A self-appointed neighborhood watch patrolman, Zimmerman was acquitted by a Florida jury of murder charges last year and soon thereafter the federal government announced that the Justice Department would be probing the case for any civil rights violations that might have occurred. The 17-year-old Martin was unarmed and just steps away from the doorsteps of his father's gated community home when Zimmerman ignored a police dispatcher's stern advice to...

Ever since George Zimmerman gunned down Trayvon Martin in his Sanford, Fla., gated community, it’s become an article of faith that the rash of lethal shootings in public places—from the Florida moviegoer who was killed after a texting and popcorn-throwing incident to Jordan Davis, shot in his car at a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station to last week’s lethal shooting in an Arizona Walmart—is attributable to the “stand your ground” laws enacted over the past decade in 26 states across the country. Aggressive human interaction, post-Trayvon, now follows a painfully familiar pattern: An altercation occurs. Someone says he feared for his...

SEAL Team Six, the U.S. military group credited with taking down Osama bin Laden in 2011, could have Fort Lauderdale next in its sights. A proposed operation in the city — involving hovering combat helicopters, exploding flash-bang devices and the sounds of gunfire — is in the works. (snip) What type of exercises can be expected? The agreement mentions the possibility of using low-flying helicopters and simulated ammunition to train personnel on a "rooftop fast-rope insertion" into a building.

A new Facebook meme paints two leading Republicans as anti-science because of their alleged views of the age of the Earth. The Facebook group Being Liberal posted a picture March 10, 2014, featuring side-by-side images of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., looking somewhat sheepish. Bolded text under the images describes the senators’ views on the age of the Earth and the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to the meme, Rubio "believes Earth (is) 9,000 years old," and "humans hunted dinosaurs to extinction." Paul, the image proclaims, says the Earth is 10,000 years old and believes "God...