Free Republic

Nearly a month after a tragic mass shooting shook Umpqua Community College, a rural Oregon county roughly two hours west of the school passed a measure directing the sheriff to bypass state and federal gun laws if he judges them unconstitutional. Coos County residents smoothly approved the Second Amendment Preservation Ordinance on Tuesday with more than 60 percent voting for its passage. The ordinance bars public employees from using county funds to enforce any laws the sheriff deems unconstitutional. It also prohibits enforcement of Oregon’s recent law requiring background checks on private gun transfers, including transactions between friends. County employees...

Police officer who sued to keep vanity license plate that read 'OINK' loses his case in Indiana Supreme Court as it rules the placards are 'government speech' Indiana's highest court ruled Friday that state officials had the right to deny a police officer an 'offensive' vanity license plate that said 'OINK.' The unanimous Indiana Supreme Court decision found that messages on state-issued license plates amount to government speech, not constitutionally protected personal speech. It cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court case that found Texas hadn't violated free speech rights by refusing to issue specialty license plates featuring the Confederate battle...

Abraham Lincoln was right when he evoked “the proposition that all men are created equal” as a necessary prerequisite for what he described as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Regrettably, though “equality” has become a byword in the discussion of political justice in the United States, the very idea of creation has been systematically hunted down and driven from the political arena. It has been stigmatized as a religious imposition that violates what is alleged to be the U.S. Constitution’s demand for “the separation of Church and State”. Of course, no such requirement is imposed...

Pursuant discussion on the Anti-Muslim militia warns against refugee invasion at Idaho statehouse thread, and primarily from the comments of combat_boots and others, I thought it would be an idea to have a "grand central station" area to discuss ideas of ways and means to combat the Muslim invasion. I'm going to encapsulate the main ideas from the other thread, lay them out here and hope everyone "thinks on it", contacts attorneys you know, get their ideas and see if we can have a central area for reference. Hopefully, attorney FReepers will chime in and maybe the talk show hosts...

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, would not go into any detail about what is being cooked up for the Hollywood director, but he did tell THR: "We'll be opportunistic."...The FOP, based in Washington, D.C., consists of more than 330,000 full-time, sworn officers. According to Pasco, the surprise in question is already "in the works," and will be in addition to the standing boycott of Tarantino's films, including his upcoming movie The Hateful Eight. "Something is in the works, but the element of surprise is the most important element," says Pasco. "Something could happen anytime between...

Engineering and Technology Magazine reported this week that BP — the company that once wanted to be known as "Beyond Petroleum" rather than "British Petroleum" — is saying "the world is no longer at risk of running out of resources." "[A]ccessible oil and gas reserves will almost double by 2050," Engineering and Technology said. A BP official told the magazine that "energy resources are plentiful. Concerns over running out of oil and gas have disappeared." Things are so good, in fact, that Engineering and Technology says "with the use of the innovative technologies, available fossil fuel resources could increase from...

An Idaho militia group protested the arrival of Syrian refugees by issuing dark warnings based on anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. The III% Idaho group rallied Monday outside the statehouse in Boise, where about 100 anti-government activists, many wearing flak jackets and other armor, waved American flags and banners promoting their pro-gun militia group, reported Hatewatch. "This isn't some made-up crap we're spewing out here, like they're leading you to believe across the way," shouted Brandon Curtiss, president of the right-wing group. Actually, "made-up crap" describes a lot of what the III% Idaho group is spewing. The group has been protesting the...

The fight is not over, and we are winning battles here and there. The problem was that more of us needed to start fighting in the first place I am not happy about what I am seeing in Washington. Frankly, I believe everyone feels this way. It’s about time that more people felt angry with Washington DC backroom deals, big business bailouts, and big labor cronyism. Then again, I am not happy about being unhappy. Too many people in this country were NOT angry. They were not even paying attention to what was going on, or they turned a blind...

PORTLAND, OR -- The TSA says it's investigating an incident where a 90-year-old woman was forced to strip after setting off body scanners. Alan Charney told ABC affiliate KATU-TV that his mother Harriette went through the full body scanner at Portland International Airport when the alarm went off. TSA agents quickly pulled her aside. "It was obvious they were going into a search," Charney said. "But I presumed they were just going to sort of pat her down."

When Congress passed the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act in 2000, it introduced a new concept called “voluntary suspension” of benefits, allowing those who had already started Social Security benefits to stop their payments and earn delayed retirement credits. In the process, however, the new voluntary suspension rules unleashed several additional Social Security claiming strategies, including various “claim now, claim more later” tactics involving File-and-Suspend and Restricted Applications for spousal benefits. Those may be going away. Under this week’s two-year budget agreement between Congressional leaders and the White House, Congress will close these loopholes in the Social Security rules....

The zombie narrative, popularized by the hit television series The Walking Dead, in which a small group of Americans attempt to survive in a zombie-ridden, post-apocalyptic world where they’re not only fighting off flesh-eating ghouls but cannibalistic humans, plays to our fears and paranoia. Yet as journalist Syreeta McFadden points out, while dystopian stories used to reflect our anxieties, now they reflect our reality, mirroring how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us. Fear the Walking Dead—AMC’s new spinoff of its popular...

Telegraph.co.uk Google wants to monitor your mental health. You should welcome it into your mind Yes, you should tell the computer what you're thinking By James Kirkup 6:24PM GMT 28 Oct 2015 The use of technology to track and treat mental illness is deeply worrying but sadly necessary Next week, Dr Tom Insel leaves his post as head of the US National Institute of Mental Health, a job that made him America’s top mental health doctor. Dr Insel is a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist and a leading authority on both the medicine and public policies needed to deal with problems...

A huge chunk of the U.S. economy is tied up in health care ($3.8 trillion annually). Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson doesn’t stray far from big government’s role, and suggests taking the money that’s already there and redistributing it into new programs. What is Carson’s health reform plan? The presidential candidate’s position pivots on four main points: health savings accounts, catastrophic insurance, keeping Medicare and removing the middleman, aka bureaucrats and/or insurance companies. If you listen to Carson, you soon find his overall ideas haven’t changed much from many years ago, but he has fine-tuned details over time. For example,...

You’ve heard this one before and you’re about to hear it again. Congressional Republicans make a deal with President Obama that ostensibly cuts federal spending. That’s what the headlines will proclaim. But in reality, the budget deal - which in this case looks to be in effect for two years - will raise spending in the short term and save all the supposed cuts for the “out years.” Ever wonder when those “out years” are going to arrive? Ha! We’ll have hoverboards first. Real ones. But for now we’ve got something that will allow John Boehner to get out of...

The real news in this story probably isn’t the subject of the Ex-Im Bank (which has some Republicans sneaking around with Democrats in an effort to reopen it) or even General Electric. This is a case study in how the media reports on relatively wonky subjects in an effort to bend public opinion in a progressive direction. In a very lengthy article at the New York Times we learn about the sad closing of yet another GE plant, this one located in Waukesha, Wisconsin. They manufacture huge industrial engines there which can sell for more than a million dollars.The...

A major battle in a war over the future of Western civilization has been lost as millions of migrants from the Middle East who largely oppose Judeo-Christian values and have no intention of assimilating flood the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other nations, talk-radio host Michael Savage told his listeners Tuesday. Savage said he received an email from someone he described as "far smarter than I am" and "farseeing." "He said to me, 'It's over.'" Paraphrasing the email, Savage said that what German Chancellor Angela Merkel is "doing to Germany, what the weakling is doing to England, what the...

The U.S. Department of Justice issued a memo on Thursday containing new guidelines stating that it will pursue the prosecution of individual employees, and not just their companies, for their role in precipitating the financial crisis in 2008. Many have wondered why the DOJ has not previously made the prosecution of these individuals a priority while the Department has entered into multi-billion dollar settlements with the nation's largest banks in the last two years.

A video of Sunday's explosions that preceded a fire in a state-owned radioactive waste trench at the US Ecology site 10 miles south of Beatty shows white smoke emanating from the soil before the ground erupts, shooting debris and more white smoke into the air. The 40-second cellphone video, released Thursday by the Nevada Department of Public Safety two days after the Las Vegas Review-Journal had requested it, was taken from a berm atop Trench No. 11 overlooking the soil cap of Trench No. 14. Trench No. 14 is where containers of low-level radioactive waste were buried in part of...

Yet another study showing why the “renewables,” in this case wind are not a viable source of electricity. Here it is in raw numbers, the variability, low reliability and nondispactibility that are the hallmarks of renewable energy. what doesn’t appear on this report are the consequences, in lost business and higher electric rates.

Josie Wales: “Governments don’t live together. People live together. Governments don’t give you a fair word or a fair fight. I’ve come here to give you either one. Or get either one from you… I’m saying that men can live together without butchering one another…” A great classic movie scene all Freepers can appreciate. Josey Wales is a former Confederate States of America fighter moving out West after the war between the States and wanted by the Union. The Calvary is in pursuit of him. Anyway here is his conversation with the Comanches. Find it interesting at the end of...