Free Republic

Who isn't sickened by the moral decay and heinous acts of violence across our country? My heart and prayers continue to go out to victims everywhere. But do gun bans -- such as the one proposed this past week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., which would outlaw 120 specific firearms -- curb violent crime? Not according to a recent Fox News investigation titled "Assault-weapons ban no guarantee mass shootings would decrease, data shows." The report concluded, "Data published earlier this year showed that while the (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which was signed by President Bill Clinton)...

"Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality," ran the eight-column banner in which The Washington Post captured the essence of Obama's second inaugural. There he declared: "What binds this nation together ... what makes us exceptional -- what makes us American -- is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago." Obama then quoted our Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit...

For those of you who didn't catch the tail end of Mark Levin's show Tuesday night, here's what he discussed in the last 5 minutes.(mp3) At the Constitutional Convention, July 17th, 1787, delegate Gunning Bedford of Delaware made the following proposal: Mr. BEDFORD moved that the 2d. member of Resolution 6. be so altered as to read "and moreover to legislate in all cases for the general interests of the Union, and also in those to which the States are separately incompetent," or in which the harmony of the U. States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual Legislation."...

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, said: "The British are not coming. ... We don't need all these guns to kill people." Lewis' vision, shared by many, represents a gross ignorance of why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment. How about a few quotes from the period and you decide whether our Founding Fathers harbored a fear of foreign tyrants. Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed," adding later, "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents,...

James Madison Drinks, and Writes an ArticlePhilip Freneau had set the deadline for the December 22nd edition of the National Gazette, and James Madison found himself racing the hourglass. Freneau published the newspaper, dedicated to the positions of Thomas Jefferson’s faction within the Congress and the council around His Excellency, while working for the red-haired Secretary of State as a translator. Mr. Jefferson saw neither difficulty nor conflict with this arrangement. Freneau had labeled the men of Alexander Hamilton’s faction as Monarchists, Tories, and Anti-Republicans, claiming their role was to reverse the results of 1776. The Secretary of the Treasury...

Following the tragic shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. by Adam Lanza , many Americans are wondering what exactly our Founding Fathers intended when they set the Second Amendment to paper more than 200 years ago. Surely not the killing of 20 young children and six women.

>Yes, we lost. But I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to say that ACORN stole the election, do you? PPP's first post election national poll finds that Republicans are taking the results pretty hard...and also declining in numbers. 49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore. Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they...

There’s an old story from the Jewish shetls of Eastern Europe. There was a singing contest among the animals. The Nightingale loses, despite her lovely singing voice. Looking down on the jury, she sees the grunting wild pigs. She weeps, not because she lost, she says. “But see who my judges are!” America must feel like the Nightingale whenever she has to go before a UN panel. I had the honor of serving our country as U.S. Ambassador to the UN’s Human Rights Commission. In those days, the UN body had such worthy respecters of human rights as Algeria, Libya,...

"There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit" - Ronald Reagan I have not had a lot to say in quite a while, and I have explained much of why that is here. Transcribing takes up a lot of time. In addition to the transcription, the other major project that I have been putting time into is getting a speech from one of the Founding Fathers translated into Spanish. I have a full transcript of one of George Washington's speeches up on my Original Sources...

America’s first mega-church, defined as a congregation of 2,000 attendees or more, held services in the capitol building inside the House of Representatives. It remained there until 1868 as the congregation raised money for building a new sanctuary they could call their own. According to the diary of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, church services were also held in the Treasury building and the Supreme Court Building. He describes the Reverend James Laurie, pastor of a Presbyterian Church, that had settled into the Treasury Building, preaching to an overflow audience in the Supreme Court Chamber,...

We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln Are we in the United States sovereign individuals? I believe we are according to the U.S. Constitution. The purpose of this treatise is to investigate and expose the principals of not only what it means to be sovereign, but of sovereignty in general and whether the U.S. Constitution actually guarantees the individual sovereign status. This discourse will touch on the differences between republicanism, democracy and the actual make-up of the United...

The Constitution of the United States is much more than just a piece of paper; it is a document written by God fearing men who believed in Liberty and Justice for all who are citizens of this great nation and their Posterity. While the U.S. Constitution is a guide for ourselves and for those who represent us, the U.S. Constitution is much more; it is the “law of the land” and should be viewed as such, as well as considered whenever any of the three branches of government, i.e., Legislative, Executive, or Judicial, enact new laws or perform the duties...

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Our founders wrote more on the issues of modern times than people perhaps realize. The words used are simply different, sometimes being more complex or sometimes outdated. In a letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote some things about John Jacques Rousseau and the distortions of reality that took place in the French Revolution: (in section III) (Alt. link) That all men are born to equal rights is true. Every being has a right to his own, as clear, as moral, as sacred, as any other being has. This is as indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But...

Michael Moore said on Piers Morgan Tuesday night that the founding Fathers would have omitted the right to bear arms from the Bill of Rights if they would have known how much guns would modernize in the coming centuries.

Who wasn't shocked and disheartened by yet another tragic mass shooting, this time in Aurora, Colo.? Like millions of Americans, my wife, Gena, and I send our heartfelt condolences and prayers to the victims of this murderous spree and their families. We, too, commend the heroes who gave their lives to save others. Truly, every victim of this reprehensible executioner is in some way heroic, for the victims were injured or died in the midst of a culture war in which even our theaters and schools have become battlegrounds. Moreover, we salute and support the Colorado peace officers, emergency...

This afternoon, President Barack Obama gave a speech affirming his support for extending some of the 2001 and 2003 temporary federal tax cuts, which are often grouped together and referred to as the “Bush tax cuts.” It was a bluntly political speech made for the sole purpose of making headlines tomorrow along the lines of “President Obama Supports Tax Cuts.” I’ve written before about the so-called “Bush tax cuts,” so if you want to know my opinion about whether or not they should be extended, look here. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to ignore the political and...

America's Roman Catholic bishops just completed the "Fortnight for Freedom," a two-week period intended to "support a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty." As evangelical and Catholic leaders have spent the past year opposing the Obama administration's so-called contraceptive mandate, the timing, motives, and agenda driving the "Fortnight for Freedom" have prompted widespread commentary. Rather than scrutinizing the Fortnight's agenda, Protestants could examine deeper questions than what took place on the surface. It's important to consider the Fortnight's placement on the calendar—the significance of the Fortnight's dates, June 21 to July 4—to understand the nature of...

by Chuck Have you ever wondered what the men who gave us our freedom from England went through to ensure we were free? Consider the way we have systematically destroyed everything they accomplished. After they had concluded their work on the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin walked outside and seated himself on a public bench. A woman approached him and inquired, "Well, Dr. Franklin, what have you done for us?" Franklin quickly responded, "My dear lady, we have given to you a Republic--if you can keep it." I offer the following to give you an idea of how hard these men...

As the nation celebrates American liberty on the Fourth of July each year, it would be appropriate for all Americans (including those who have come here from other nations in search of that same freedom), first of all, to reflect on the Christian foundations—including genuine creationism—on which our nation was built. In a previous article on this theme (see the July 1996 Back to Genesis article, “Sweet Land of Liberty”), it was noted that many of the founding fathers of our country were strict creationists and that this fact was reflected in the Declaration of Independence itself. In this article,...