Free Republic

Michael Walsh’s new book The Devil’s Pleasure Palace is pivotal in its explication of how poor and purely evil ideas have subverted America, and eaten away at the pillars of Western civilization. While we often hear the refrain “ideas have consequences,” too frequently we attribute the decline of the American system to politics or particular political figures, while giving the power of ideas short thrift. But as Walsh’s important work illustrates, ideas are everything, and if you lose the war of them you lose all of the other battles too. One such idea that has trumped to date deals with...

Poor Kathleen Kane. The first woman – and first Democrat ever elected attorney general of Pennsylvania -- had a bright future ahead of her. The darling of liberals she was a powerhouse at the polls. She led the statewide ticket in 2013 and her election was seen by many as a stepping stone to the governor’s mansion, the U.S. Senate or something even more prestigious. Her career is now in ruins. How she fell so far and so fast is an object lesson for ambitious prosecutors in both parties who feel tempted to use the power of their office to...

Post-Dispatch reporter Paul Hampel was beaten, bloodied and robbed by a group of attackers as he covered the Ferguson protests Sunday night. Hampel said he was taking photos and videos of break-ins along West Florissant Avenue shortly before he was attacked. Suddenly, he said, he was rushed from behind. “I got swarmed, beaten down really bad,” he said. The attackers punched him in the face, hit him in the head at least three times and kicked him in the back of the head when he was on the ground, Hampel said. The attackers took his phone and wallet and left....

The Journal Sentinel’s Daniel Bice has seized on the tape to assert that it “contradicts” Archer’s claims, telling a “different story” from the one she told National Review and the one she told in her lawsuit. In reality, however, the tape omits all of the most critical moments of the raid, and corroborates Archer’s account in many key respects. To the extent it exposes differences between what was recorded and Archer’s recollection, those differences actually offer slight encouragement to those who wish to see law-enforcement officials obey constitutional mandates. Crucially, the tape omits the beginning of the raid, in which...

Extraordinary events have taken place inside a Kabul courtroom this week. Back in May, a 10-year-old girl was raped inside a mosque in a remote Afghan village. The mullah responsible – Mohammad Amin – had asked three young girls to clean for him when he started behaving inappropriately. The girls made a run for it, only one of them tripped and fell in a stream. Amin dragged her back inside the mosque, where she was raped and left with serious injuries. According to Sharia Law, which the Mullah tried to rely on in court, rape is considered a form of...

 Tips Are Owed, They're Not a Favor.  Not Tipping is "a Crime, the Blood of which Calls out of the Ground for Vengeance".  "Why Restaurants Are Eliminating Tipping", proclaims a news article headline. The claims include the ideas, that it promotes bad service, it's an obsolete concept, and is unnecessary because of the living wage movement.Restaurant owners are certainly entitled to their point of view, but they are probably poorly served by latching onto "living wage". But workers have a right to their own direct relationship with customers. Their independent legitimacy as professionals doesn't have to be dependent upon permission...

Former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said that if he was still a U.S. Attorney, he’d have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under investigation for five different crimes. “I believe she should be under investigation by the United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York for obstruction of justice, for destroying government property,” he said on CNN’s New Day. “I think its clear that she had a conflict of interest, her husband getting hundreds of millions of dollars, she’s making decisions about companies and about corporations that he’s getting money from. I think they filed a joint...

It’s a rare day when we have a story about the Veterans Administration which winds up focusing on some good news. No… before you get your hopes up, the agency has not been fixed. But there is at least one small sliver of justice coming down the pike which might begin to make the entire ordeal seem worth the battles involved. It seems that the people who blew the whistle on the agency’s corrupt, failed practices and were later punished for doing so are getting some measure of restitution for their trials. (From the WaPo) These whistleblowers have now been...

Nothing would build conservative respect for the new AG, especially as compared to her predecessor, like a serious investigation of the left’s most sacred sacred cow. But that won’t happen since her boss obviously won’t let this cow be slaughtered. So what’s the catch here? Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday her department is going to review all information surrounding the controversial videos of Planned Parenthood officials taken by an anti-abortion group. “I’m aware of those matters generally from the media, and from some inquiries that have been made to the Department of Justice, and again at this point we’re...

"The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything. There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light...." --Sophocles Call it a footnote to history. It's 46 pages long, but till now it's been kept under wraps: the testimony of David Greenglass before a grand jury some six decades ago on August 7, 1950. It doesn't contain any surprises. It's been known for some time that his testimony against his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, was false. A frame-up. He admitted it in a newspaper interview before he died, and explained why he'd ratted on her: to save his own skin. She...

"The biggest myth about judges is that they're somehow imbued with greater insight, wisdom, and vision than the rest of us; that for some reason God Almighty has endowed them with superior judgment about human fairness. But the truth is that judges are men and women with human imperfections and frailties. Some have been brilliant, principled and moral. Others have been mentally impaired, venal, and even racist." Mark Levin, Men in Black Judicial activism occurs when judges depart from their constitutional role of interpreting law and make law from the bench. It's a pernicious practice that undermines the democratic process,...

NEW YORK – At a hearing Monday in Manhattan in which he ruled filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza must continue community service for four more years, U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said he considers D’Souza’s violation of federal campaign-finance laws to be evidence of a psychological problem and ordered further counseling. D’Souza’s defense counsel Benjamin Brafman provided evidence to the court that the psychiatrist D’Souza was ordered to see found no indication of depression or reason for medication. In addition, the psychologist D’Souza subsequently consulted provided a written statement concluding there was no need to continue the consultation, because D’Souza was...

MADISON, Wis. – Cindy Archer was once made to beg sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents not to shoot her dogs during an early-morning raid on her Madison home. Now the former aide to Gov. Scott Walker who has never been charged with a crime in the Democrat-launched John Doe investigation is fighting back in court. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Tuesday evening, Archer writes that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and his agents ransacked her house and ruined her career. “After much soul-searching, I am filing a civil-rights lawsuit on Wednesday against Milwaukee County District Attorney...

The Missouri General Assembly ended its 2015 legislative session about a month ago. This is the state body designed to represent people in towns like Ferguson, which recently convulsed with conflict — protests, rioting — over the shooting of an unarmed (but, we found out, quite aggressive) young black man by a white policeman. So what did the state politicians do about the situation? Well, the assembly adjourned “having passed,” The Washington Post reported, “virtually none of the changes activists sought in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown.” “Nothing has changed,” acknowledged State Rep. Clem Smith. The Post...

Based on the recent firestorm surrounding the events in McKinney, Texas, it appears the ‘new normal’ threshold for demanding swift justice and national condemnation of police officers is a short video clip followed by social media outrage. There is more to the McKinney incident than 20 seconds of video, but it is that image of a white uniformed police officer using force on a black teenage girl which has again inflamed a nation too eager to cry racism when it comes to the work of our cops. The video clip is disturbing taken out of context of the remainder of...

A gruesome suicide, a likely murder, a tragic plane crash, wrongful imprisonment, and gripping courtroom scenes draw readers into this compelling story, giving them a frightening perspective on justice and who should be accountable when evidence is withheld. Licensed to Lie is the true story of the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power.

Department of Justice security official in Adult Friend hack release? Gotnews.com, along with the whistleblower Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, may have IDed a Department of Justice official with an Adult Friend Finder profile. Adult Friend Finder was hacked earlier and upwards of 4 million usernames and identities were released to the public. We are currently going through them now. Gotnews.com is working to find all of the government officials on the data. Here’s the first one we’ve IDed

She personally performed abortions on women, using a bicycle pump, and later boasted that she and her group had personally murdered exactly 10,141 children in the womb. She supports the legalization of euthanasia, the liberalization of drug use, and the legal prohibition of conscience exemptions for doctors who refuse to perform abortion. She even opposes the burial of aborted children in cemeteries. She is Emma Bonino, the radical leftist Italian politician, a member of the Italian Radical Party currently serving, incredibly enough, as Foreign Minister for the corrupt Italian government. And she was greeted warmly days ago by Pope Francis,...

After Marilyn Mosby‘s moment in the sun, where she delivered a 1960s-style speech to announce charges against six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore prosecutor is now asking the court to impose a gag order, according to CBS Baltimore. The order would prevent attorneys and witnesses for both sides from releasing information or commenting publicly about the case.

BREAKING:Charges will not be filed against MPD Officer Matt Kenny in the shooting death of Tony Robinson Updated: Tue 3:17 PM, May 12, 2015 MADISON, Wis.---BREAKING: DA Ozanne: Charges will not be filed against MPD Officer Matt Kenny in the shooting death of Tony Robinson. UPDATED: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 ---3:17 p.m. MADISON, Wis.---BREAKING: DA Ozanne: Charges will not be filed against MPD Officer Matt Kenny in the shooting death of Tony Robinson. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------