Free Republic

It might seem like I'm picking on Australia but I'm not. Some of the new laws sound fine, like self defence or saving others. Laws I assumed every country already had. My problem is how some of the laws could be abused.

One of the Bard’s often-quoted lines is Dick the Butcher’s admonition in Henry VI, Part 2, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” That idea, argues lawyer David Epstein, is mistakenly thought to mean that Shakespeare was antagonistic toward the legal profession. Instead, as we read in this Wall Street Journal piece, Shakespeare actually meant “to portray lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law who stand in the way of a fanatical mob.” Whether you agree with Epstein’s interpretation or not, more than four centuries after Shakespeare’s time, we should do something about lawyers, something...

Pro-ISIS protesters in Germany. Photo: Veooz. COPENHAGEN, Denmark – A German national accused of fighting for the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) in Syria is on trial in Germany, in the first case of its kind. Kreshnik Berisha, a German-born 20-year-old whose parents are originally from Kosovo, faces a prison term of up to 10 years if found guilty. Prosecutor Horst Salzmann wrote in a press release that Berisha “wanted to create a theocracy under Shariah law. He took the oath. He was ready to die for his goals.”  Salzmann said that Berisha traveled to Syria via Turkey in July 2013...

Last week, The Washington Post published “Stop and Seize,” a three-part series chronicling the government’s seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from Americans not charged with a crime. Asset forfeiture laws are designed to protect the public and deter crime by taking property gained through criminal activity. However, criminals are not the only ones who have their property confiscated. According to The Washington Post, since 2001, police have seized $2.5 billion in cash from people who were never charged with a crime. Law enforcement must retain their ability to prevent criminals from bearing the fruits of criminal...

One of the biggest threats to a civilized, free society occurs when prosecutors abuse their power and allow politics to drive their administration of the criminal-justice system. Two recent examples show how liberal, partisan prosecutors misused their authority and politicized justice.

Cardinal George: US is adopting ‘official religion’ on homosexuality that is reminiscent of sharia Catholic World News - September 10, 2014 In an archdiocesan newspaper column, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said that American law has “taken upon itself the mantle of a religion and officially told its citizens what they must personally think or what ‘values’ they must personalize in order to deserve to be part of the country.” He writes: Since the biblical vision of what it means to be human tells us that not every friendship or love can be expressed in sexual relations, the Church’s teaching...

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...