Free Republic

Rights: The Supreme Court will hear a challenge by a Christian-owned store chain against the HHS birth-control mandate that requires businesses to provide contraception coverage, a violation of religious conscience. Some 16 months after the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare as a constitutional form of taxation, some 40 for-profit companies are about to find out its constitutionality on another front — whether they must cover some or all forms of birth control if doing so would violate their religious beliefs. The nation's highest court has agreed to hear the federal government's appeal of a June decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit...

Confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly accessed by government officials, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute any of the officials involved, even in one “willful” violation of the law, an IRS watchdog reported. In a July 3 letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the Treasury inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) J. Russell George acknowledged that government officials had illegally accessed tax records of candidates and donors in four instances since 2006. TIGTA determined that in three of the cases the access was “inadvertent.”

A tourist from Tennessee waltzed into one of the most secure sites in the city — and politely asked a cop if she could check her weapon. Instead, she was dragged out in cuffs. Now, Meredith Graves, 39, is facing at least three years in prison for thinking New York’s gun laws are anything like those in the Bible Belt. Graves, a fourth-year medical student, showed up at the memorial on Dec. 22 to pay her respects during a trip north for a job interview. She didn’t realize that the loaded .32-caliber pistol in her purse would be a problem...