Free Republic

During a campaign stop in Memphis this week, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry adeptly played to the rhetoric of unrest reverberating around Tennessee and beyond as a result of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s raid on Gibson Guitars. Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, himself a critic of the Gibson raid and one of Tennessee’s highest profile Perry supporters, introduced the Texas governor during a lunchtime fundraiser at the Memphis Botanical Gardens. Before striding to the mic, Perry took a quick detour over to the guitar player in the corner of the room. “Let me come over here and make sure...

Federal authorities are pressuring Nashville-based Gibson Guitar to hand over an additional 25 bundles of Indian wood that the company allegedly planned to use in its famous guitars. The complaint was filed today in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and mirrors a 2010 action that sought official forfeiture of wood obtained in a 2009 raid of Gibson facilities. The latter of those cases has been stayed, pending the outcome of the most recent suit. As has been the case in previous allegations, at issue is the classification of certain wood imported to the United States from...

What: A Rally and Free Concert to show our support for Gibson Guitar When: Saturday Oct 8 2-4PM Where: Parking Lot of the Scoreboard Restaurant, Nashville (See website for MAP) Website: http://GibsonRally.com Why: Federal agents raided two Gibson factories in August and confiscated part of the production inventory of this 100 year old American Manufacturer and Employer. This abuse of federal power must not go unanswered. We, the citizenswho grant government its power and authority, MUST act to hold government accountable when that power is abused. Please join us on Oct 8 in Nashville and Stand with Gibson.

Saturday October 8,2011 2 - 4 p.m. (CDT) Scoreboard Resturant 2804 Music Valley Dr. Nashville TN (across from Opryland Hotel) We need your help: - PLEASE make plans to attend and help us support Gibson Guitar - If you have contacts with musical talent who would like to lend their support, please let us know - If you can help with security and staffing and promotion please let us know - Please spread the word by emailing the link to the website

Federal officials have shed a little light on last month’s raid of Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Memphis and Nashville – without really revealing much at all. In a letter dated Monday, Sept. 19, Christopher Mansour, the director of congressional and legislative affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, wrote to congressional leaders in broad terms about the federal Lacey Act. That’s the legislation that provided the backdrop of the Gibson raids. Their letter was in response to a letter sent by congressional leaders, including U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.,...

Gibson, the maker of the iconic Les Paul electric guitar, has become an unlikely political symbol in the fight over regulations and the reach of government since the company protested federal raids on its factories last month. And its CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, has become a reluctant warrior against excessive government regulations. Juszkiewicz has become a hero to Tea Party groups for fighting back against the investigation. He has become a public face of the debate, and sat in House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) box during President Obama’s address to Congress earlier this month. In his jobs speech last week, Boehner...

Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam (R-IL) delivers this week's address, highlighting some of our federal government's many burdensome regulations that hurt small businesses. The private sector will grow if government just gets out of the way. Job creation can only come from businesses with confidence and reducing regulations will give them the confidence to grow jobs in America. Visit http://jobs.gop.gov to see what we're doing to help.

On August 24, 2011, federal agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service raided offices and production facilities of the Gibson Guitar company. They sent workers home and confiscated several pallets of wood along with computer files and numerous guitars (amounting to about $2 million in lost production and property). This was the second raid on Gibson in as many years over questions about some of the wood the legendary guitar makers use in their products. The timing of the latest raid is convenient for the government as they are currently trying to convince a federal judge to indefinitely delay a...

So where was Obama during the Black Panther incident? Where was Obama when ACORN was registering dead people,Where was Obama when Americans were getting killed by Ilegals in Arizona? and he calls out the Fed to investigate Gibson Guitars? This is evidence that Obama hates white conservatives,especially businesses owned by them. Then again,us Freepers already knew that in 2008.

On the mantle above my fireplace there sits an old picture of my grandfather, Joe Dee Adams, Sr. The picture was taken some time during the Great Depression when he was a professional musician. It was actually his promo picture for the radio show he hosted on WSGN in Birmingham, Alabama. In it, he is holding an old Gibson acoustic guitar. No one in our family has any idea what happened to that old guitar. It was lost along with his purple heart from World War I some time before he passed away in the fall of 1978. His death...

"Casting him as a director or perhaps as the star of 'Judah Maccabee' is like casting Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission," says Rabbi Marvin Heir. Prominent Jewish leaders are beginning to speak out against Mel Gibson and Warner Bros. over their planned movie based on the life of religious icon Judah Maccabee. SNIP

It’s a project that will have everybody in Hollywood and beyond talking. I’ve learned that Warner Bros has set up an untitled drama that teams Gibson and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas on the telling of the heroic story of Jewish warrior Judah Maccabee. Eszterhas will write the script, and I understand that Gibson will collaborate with him. Joe Eszterhas Judah Maccabee MovieMaccabee teamed with his father and four brothers to lead the Jewish revolt against the Greek-Syrian armies that had conquered Judea in the second century B.C. Gibson has the first option to direct but will definitely produce the film through...

-snip Juszkiewicz was House Speaker John Boehner’s guest at Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, in which he unveiled a $447 billion plan to jumpstart the weak economy. -snip The chief executive of Gibson Guitar Corp., which has been the target of two federal raids in the past two years over the exotic wood it uses to make the instruments, said Thursday he wants Obama to show some concern for the nation’s job creators.

In addition to those Republican lawmakers who have announced – motivated, it seems, by disrespect — that they will decline to attend President Obama’s Thursday night jobs address to a joint session of Congress, Republicans are also taking the additional step of inviting a man whose company the Obama administration is investigating for possibly breaking the law. Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., will either sit in the House Gallery as the guest of his member of Congress, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. (members of Congress each get to invite one guest to sit in that balcony), or he...

Sources tell National Review Online that Gibson’s chairman and chief executive, Henry Juszkiewicz, will attend President Obama’s joint address to Congress on Thursday. Federal agents recently raided Gibson’s manufacturing facilities, suspecting that the company was using illegally-imported wood. Juszkiewicz has vocally defended Gibson’s practices and denied the allegations. “There’s no doubt we’re being persecuted,” he said in an interview with the Tennessean. “But while I was sitting in my conference room, while agents blocked the door to my office, I decided two things. One, we were going to try and fight this in court. Secondly, we were going to give...

Friday morning, many on Wall Street were stunned by the big fat zero put up by the August jobs report, the worst showing in 11 months. The data convinced many previously optimistic economists that the United States will slip back into recession. As President Obama prepares to unveil a new plan for the Federal Government to create jobs, evidence is rapidly piling up on how his administration is actively destroying jobs with stunning efficiency. Recent examples of this trend are enough to make anyone with even a casual respect for America's former economic prowess hang their head in disgust. So...

I was going to write about the Obama/Boehner speech timing dust-up this week, but that’s already over. And I was going to write about Obama’s upcoming “jobs speech” that will undoubtedly be all the rage this week, but what’s the point in writing a long piece about something that can be summed up thusly: blah, blah, I’m doing all I can. Blah, spend billions. Blah, infrastructure. Blah, inherited. Blah, let me be clear. Blah. Won’t people please stop not letting the man be clear? Just once? Read anything anyone has written about Obama’s other “major” speeches on jobs and you’ll...

Gibson Guitar Corp. is claiming the Obama administration wants more of its woodwork done overseas, as a bizarre battle heats up between the government and one of the country's most renowned guitar makers. The dispute started in 2009, when federal agents raided the company over suspect wood shipments from Madagascar. Gibson took that case to court but has denounced the administration with a vengeance after agents returned late last month to raid several Gibson factories -- this time out of concern that Indian export laws had been violated. Though some reports on the dispute have cited environmental concerns, court documents...

Gibson Guitar Corp. is claiming the Obama administration wants more of its woodwork done overseas, as a bizarre battle heats up between the government and one of the country's most renowned guitar makers. The dispute started in 2009, when federal agents raided the company over suspect wood shipments from Madagascar. Gibson took that case to court but has denounced the administration with a vengeance after agents returned late last month to raid several Gibson factories -- this time out of concern that Indian export laws had been violated. In an interview earlier this week, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz claimed that the...

Gibson CEO: Obama Administration Told Us Our Problems Would Go Away If We Used Madagascar Labor (Audio).......KMJ Radio host Chris Daniel interviewed Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz on Wednesday. Juszkiewicz told Chris that the Obama Administration told them, “Your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of our labor.”