Free Republic

In responding to a question from the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said he and his department follow the law “wherever we can.” (Video) House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) asked Koskinen “Will you be following the law,” in collecting money for a certain type of healthcare subsidy. After Koskinen ducked the question, Brady asked again. Koskinen then admitted: “Yes, wherever we can, we follow the law.” A discouraged Brady chuckled while admonishing the commissioner saying, “I encourage you to follow the law in all instances.” I’m sure

"My policy on cake," the ebullient Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson, once remarked, "is pro having it and pro eating it." Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator and potential GOP presidential aspirant, has hopes of embracing a similar policy on running for office. Kentuckians, to their credit, aren't buying it. Paul was elected to the US Senate in 2010, and he has said clearly that he intends to run for reelection in 2016. But almost from the moment he took office, he has also shown every sign of wanting to run for president in 2016. And that poses a problem:...

Here are six excerpts from Judge Martin L. C. Feldman's landmark ruling against same-sex civil marriage in Robicheaux, et al. v. Caldwell. "The Court first takes up the most hefty constitutional issue: Equal Protection. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution commands that no state shall 'deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' ... 'The Equal Protection Clause...essentially directs that all persons similarly situated be treated alike.' [Stoneburner v. Sec'y of the Army] However, 'if a law neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class,' the Supreme Court has held, 'the legislative classification...

Federal Judge Steven Rhodes will begin hearings Tuesday to determine whether Detroit's readjustment plan fulfills the legal and fiscal requirements to exit Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The trial may provide investors a lesson, instructive but painful, in how politics can override law in municipal bankruptcies. Since declaring bankruptcy in July 2013, Detroit has cut deals with nearly all of its major creditors. Workers, retirees and most bondholders this summer voted to accept the plan. Yet Judge Rhodes must still validate that the plan is "fair and equitable" and was proposed in good faith, among other standards of Chapter 9.

They got the FBI and other federal agencies in 2011 to remove all mention of Islam and jihad in connection with terrorism from counter-terror training materials, and to fire counter-terror trainers (including me) who spoke the truth about how Islamic jihadists used the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and make recruits. Now, flush with that victory, they’re moving in for the kill: any law enforcement official who may have heard the truth must be reeducated. Chairman Mao would be dead chuffed, but the fact is that even if Obama accepts and implements this demand, and he probably...

We’ll see how bad things have to get before the reality of events in the Middle East overtake President Obama’s fantasy world While President Obama has begun to talk tough about ISIS, and on Wednesday said “we will continue to confront this hateful terrorism and replace it with a sense of hope and civility,’ he gave no indication there was any kind of clear strategy that was being developed by his administration. Taking a few minutes to express his outrage at Foley’s beheading he headed off to another day of playing golf. Yet as greater military involvement by America looks...

Police in Texas have admitted they were wrong to draw their guns on a mother of four when they pulled over the family car early this month, but they won't apologize. Kametra Barbour was told to exit her vehicle and she was handcuffed at gunpoint as her children watched from the backseat, dashcam footage shows. The police only lowered their weapons after her six-year-old son got out of the car with his hands up, asking the officers, "Are we going to jail?" A child is heard crying and screaming on the footage, as an officer tells her, "Stop crying. It's...

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”-The Princess BrideWe are now reaping a bitter generational harvest in America, sown into the ground because we have permitted: Marxists almost unchecked dominance of the influential platforms of pop culture and the classroom. Too many of our churches to retreat into some “comfortably numb” seeker-friendly Xanadu, where they building suburban palaces instead of culture. The Republican Party to be taken over by a feckless political class either unwilling or incapable of defending and advancing our principles. One of the most rotten fruits of this...

<p>According to the suit, Nizewitz signed on to the show before it had a name. She claims she was advised of the nudity, but was assured that all frontal and genital nudity would be blurred. During one brief moment, though, during a "wrestling takedown" of her date, her crotch was allegedly flashed on the screen without blurring.</p>

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog, By the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin became the unchallenged leader of the Soviet Union after having eliminated his opposition. He topped it off in 1929 by serving a decisive blow to anyone that would dare to oppose him by outlawing private gun ownership in the country. From that year on until 1953 when Stalin died, it’s estimated that more than 20 million Soviet citizens that were seen as a threat to the country’s leadership. People were rounded up and either murdered outright, or sent to infamous gulag labor camps. Stalin is an...

The Constitution lives. Even as the news is brutal — it instructs for those willing to pay attention. American journalist James Foley has been beheaded by ISIS. And an American teenager named Michael Brown was shot dead by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer named Darren Wilson. In the case of Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri remains in an uproar. The town is awash in protesters, both from Ferguson and outsiders. There has been a steady diet of rioting and looting. The President of the United States is involved. The Attorney General of the United States is involved, going to Ferguson personally...

Video: Beck invited historians David Barton and Larry Schweikart on the program to analyze what America can learn from tumultuous periods of history, and the two repeatedly warned that America is starting to view people as groups, rather than individuals, and doing so has been extremely destructive throughout history. “That’s where France was [in the 18th century] … and that’s why they went through so many revolutions so quickly,” Barton explained. “Whoever won the first revolution, that was the enemy for the second revolution. The second group came in and said, ‘They’re not of our group, we’ve got to get...

Wednesday, August 6, 2014 Streetlight McCarthy: Concealed Carry Same As Drunken Driving The expert in carrying a firearm while intoxicated speaks: “This is what I said from Day One: More guns is not the solution to gun violence. That’s akin to saying everybody should drive drunk to stop drunken driving. It doesn’t work that way.” So what's giving Chicago Police Supt. McCarthy flashbacks? Something he thinks will be an excuse to restrict Concealed Carry in Illinois. After Wednesday’s meeting at Kennedy-King, McCarthy also disclosed that one of the men shot this week at a North Side nightclub had one of...

Texas abortion businesses that are in court this week challenging the constitutionality of a regulation that requires abortion facilities to meet Ambulatory Surgical Center standards, are complaining loudly about the hurdles they face in acquiring new offices that comply with the higher medical safety standards. “Abortion mills are so used to setting up in whatever run-down building that will lease to them that now that they have to act like a legitimate medical facility, they simply cannot do it,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “It’s almost scandalous that they have been allowed to operate so far below safety...

Immigrants Erika Andiola & Cesar Vargas recently approached Representative Steve King at a fundraiser in Iowa and criticized him for pushing a law that would take away their “Dream Act” status. Instead of shrinking away, Rep. King patiently explained his point of view on why people shouldn’t advocate for lawlessness when our laws are a feature of American prosperity that they enjoy, but don’t respect. His key comment: “Do you want to live in a country that respects the rule of law, or don’t you?” The confrontation could have gotten ugly very quickly, but Rep. King stuck to his guns...

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the 17-foot cross beam salvaged from the wreckage of Twin Towers will remain in the National 9/11 Museum, despite the very best efforts of American Atheists Inc. In “American Atheists v. Port Authority of New Jersey and New York” the group asserted that the artifact's positioning in the museum towered "over any other symbols in the vicinity, expressing Christian primacy." It charged that the Latin cross's dominance violated the First Amendment Establishment Clause and the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The judges found, however, that the...

During a town hall meeting at a summit with the Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, President Obama explained to a young African student that to succeed, a burgeoning country required a system of laws. He explained: Regardless of the resources a country possesses, regardless of how talented the people are, if you do not have a basic system of rule of law, of respect for civil rights and human rights, if you do not give people a credible, legitimate way to work through the political process to express their aspirations, if you don't respect basic freedom of speech and...

Most Americans admit to being fry-dipping, cell-phone-gossiping, mascara-applying distracted drivers. A 2011 poll, reported in USA Today, showed 86 percent of us eat or drink in the car, more than half talk on the phone, and about 40 percent admit to the offenses of setting the GPS or texting. Many Americans, even in a state as conservative as Texas, want to be saved from their bad behavior by a ban on cell phone use in the car. But are they really saving themselves? Though the laws are largely noncontroversial, they’re also hard to enforce, and increasingly look ineffective, according...

Officials have said that more than half of all children initially placed in shelters have gone on to be reunited with at least one parent already living in the United States, and 85 percent of all children have been placed with a close family member.

I haven't seen this connection yet, but it seems to me that the current border invasion is Fast and Furious in reverse. At least in political terms. Has there ever been an administration that foments international tensions in pursuit of its domestic agenda? In Fast and Furious guns were run to Mexico with the assumption that these guns would come back to kill Americans. Then the Left would call for more legislation to control weapons in the USA and restrict 2nd Amendment rights. Children were killed in Mexico with these guns as was one of our border agents, Brian Terry....