Free Republic

Author’s Note, April 23, 2012: I have removed the word “gated” from my description of the Twin Lakes community per the following link: “According to Ryan Julison, assistant to Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump, Twin Lakes is actually not entirely gated. There is also no guard at the gate, there are no high fences. The community is just modest condos, Julison says, not protected with the electronic equivalent of a castle moat. So the Gate Access Form provided by The Retreat at Twin Lakes Homeowners Association could be considered somewhat misleading.” – J. Neil Schulman On February 26, 2012 George...

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from a Manhattan couple seeking to end rent-stabilization laws in New York City. James and Jeanne Harmon had lost earlier court attempts to get the laws thrown out, the most recent of which was a decision last year by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. The high court refused to review that decision. The couple inherited a building that James Harmon's parents bought in the 1940s near Central Park on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Three of the rent-stabilized apartments have had tenants or their family...

“With Barack Obama in the White house, there is simply no one in the administration to make fun of. It’s been a very frustrating few years. On the other hand, if Romney is elected, there will be limitless material. Romney is funny, you see. The Obamas? I mean, there is just nothing that lends itself to parody.” - Anonymous NBC producer

See Judge Napolitano point out that Romney is another Obama. Comparing side by side the words and political stances of Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama "Includes topics like universal health care, gun rights, energy, NDAA, the Patriot Act, Iran, sanctions, economic stimulus. bank and auto bailouts, civil rights, TARP, the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, campaign donations, and more. Thanks for watching & please share! Compiled with videos from news, interviews, rally footage, and more, IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE FAIR USE ACT."

BELLEVUE, WA - A Federal District Court Judge in Massachusetts has granted summary judgment in a Second Amendment Foundation case challenging that state's denial of firearms licenses to permanent resident aliens. U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodcock concluded that "the Massachusetts firearms regulatory regime as applied to the individual plaintiffs, contravenes the Second Amendment." The case involves two Massachusetts residents, Christopher Fletcher and Eoin Pryal, whose applications for licenses to possess firearms in their homes for immediate self-defense purposes were denied under a state law that does not allow non-citizens to own handguns. SAF was joined in the case...

MUNCIE, Ind. -- An Indianapolis woman faces a battery charge after she attacked another woman she spotted littering on Earth Day, police said. Andrea Jane Ginther, 44, told police she was driving on Muncie's south side Sunday when she saw a woman throw a piece of paper on the ground, the Muncie Star Press reported. Ginther, who told police she "does not take littering lightly," stopped to confront the woman near Memorial Drive and Mulberry Street. When officers arrived, they found Ginther holding the other woman by the hair and punching her in the face, police said.

Governor Pat Quinn rammed through the largest tax hikes in Illinois history last year. On January 13, 2011, Governor Pat Quinn signed off on a 67% hike in personal income taxes and a 46% hike in corporate taxes. The result is not what the governor thought. Businesses have fled, more have threatened to leave and Quinn responded with sweeteners. Moreover, Illinois pension plans are still the worst funded in the nation, and the state is still struggling to pay bills. Bloomberg reports Illinois ‘Treads Water’ as Unpaid Bills Top $9 Billion

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

Provided courtesy of DefendtheNaturalFamily.com americanvisionnews.comJoel McDurmonMetroWeekly.com is exposing the whole truth that Washington Post would not reveal: Mitt Romney’s campaign tonight announced that it has hired Richard Grenell, an out gay former George W. Bush administration official, to serve as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s “national security and foreign policy spokesman,” according to a report from The Washington Post that did not mention Grenell’s sexual orientation. Grenell served through September 2008 in the Bush administration as a spokesman to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — and told The Advocate‘s Kerry Eleveld as he left the administration that it was his hope that New York...

In Chariots of Fire, two of the elders of Cambridge University invite the young Jewish runner Harold Abrahams to a formal, black-tie luncheon, during which they try to dissuade the upstart undergraduate from using a professional trainer to prepare for the forthcoming Paris Olympics. Abrahams declines to follow Oxbridge athletic orthodoxy and leaves in something of a huff. The Master of Trinity (brilliantly played by John Gielgud) sighs and says to the Master of Caius, “Another God, another mountaintop.” It’s a scene worth keeping in mind when parsing the recent Vatican decision to take into a form of ecclesiastical receivership...

TAMPA | Fifth-grade Mango Elementary teacher Ethel Anderson has pleaded not guilty to six counts of sex acts with a 12-year-old boy. Anderson, 29, was named diversity educator of the year for 2011 at Mango and had a spotless disciplinary record. The boy was not in her class. Anderson had been tutoring him since December. She would go to his home, pick him up and take him back to her Riverview home, where deputies say they engaged in sex acts. story at link

WOODY MARSHALL/wmarshall@macon.comLulu Campbell stands beside her bullet-riddled Toyota Tundra truck Monday. She was driving this truck when two men attempted to rob her Saturday night in Macon. The two men shot at her and she returned fire, hitting one of the robbers. WOODY MARSHALL — wmarshall@macon.comBuy Photo Looking at Lulu Campbell’s bullet-riddled silver Toyota Tundra, common sense says the 57-year-old grandmother should be dead. It’s impossible to tell how many bullets were fired at 2 a.m. Saturday morning on English Avenue, but what started as an armed robbery attempt turned into a full-blown firefight.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the purported founders of communism, established in the 19th century a government paradigm that transformed Europe and other regions in the eastern hemisphere, adding to an already expansive repertoire of political ideologies. And the seemingly farfetched assertion that communism could someday take control of America seems, quite simply, unfathomable. But is it really that improbable, or furthermore, has it already ensnared certain sectors of society? Writing for The Blaze, Tiffany Gabbay recently produced a thoughtful exposé entitled "Are We Headed Toward the Constitution or the Communist Manifesto?" that breaks down the 10 tenets of Marx...

Barack Obama thinks that you’re stupid. And, if you’re one of the 45% of us who still support him after Solyndra, after Fast and Furious, after the GSA scandal, after the voter ID controversy, after the Buffett Rule, after the Secret Service Scandal, and so on, you might be. If you don’t believe me that he thinks you’re stupid, consider the following. I watched Meet the Press recently, and their roundtable on the War on Women—that is, the Democrats’ agitprop to frighten women to the safe, warm, familiar cocoon of the Democratic Party. They’ve been doing it for decades, and...

Gary Younge does not refer to it as our culture of course, he calls it our deadly devotion to guns. He opens his piece at the NRA convention Grassroots Activism Breakfast, mentioning that Samuel Richardson (who he never identifies further) gave him a note . . . here, I'll let him explain: ... Samuel Richardson, a man with whom I have not exchanged a word, passes me a note. “Please read the book Injustice by Adams,” it reads. “He was [sic] lawyer for US Justice Department who prosecuted Black Panther Case.” Quite why Richardson thinks this book is for me...

Looky here, no drone sites in Illinois! Actually, the direct Google map link has a curious list of mainly college campuses and police departments. Apparatchiks. Check it out. Keep in mind, these are the authorized sites. Kate, at Small Dead Animals, kills with the juxtaposition of it all.

President Obama has seen his standing among Catholic voters, a crucial segment of the electorate, slip in recent weeks, and a looming confrontation with Catholic activists could make it worse. Democrats want voters this year to focus on what they have branded a war on women, but the flip side of the debate — the so-called war on religion — is not going away anytime soon. Earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called for two weeks of public protest in June and July against what it sees as growing government encroachment on religious freedom. The protests are...

Muslims in Europe face discrimination in education, employment and religious freedom, an Amnesty International report said. "Muslim women are being denied jobs and girls prevented from attending regular classes just because they wear traditional forms of dress, such as the headscarf. Men can be dismissed for wearing beards associated with Islam," said Marco Perolini, Amnesty International's expert on discrimination. "Rather than countering these prejudices, political parties and public officials are all too often pandering to them in their quest for votes."The report, titled "Choice and Prejudice: Discrimination Against Muslims in Europe" and issued on Monday, details the problem, with a...

No invention: Gore's Internet honor By: Patrick Gavin April 24, 2012 08:46 AM EDT If you invent the Internet, you should probably get some sort of recognition, right? Former Veep Al Gore is now getting a bit of credit for his infamous 1999 claim that “I took the initiative in creating the Internet”: He’ll be one of the first inductees into the Internet Hall of Fame. The names were announced Monday at the Internet Society’s Global INET 2012 conference in Geneva, Switzerland, and Gore was placed in the “Global Connectors” category for having “made significant contributions to the global growth...

This morning brings news that Europe may finally be beginning to soften on the "austerity" philosophy that has brought it nothing but misery over the past several years. The "austerity" idea, you'll remember, was that the continent's huge debt and deficit problem had ushered in a "crisis of confidence" and that, once business-people saw that governments were serious about debt reduction, they'd get confident and start spending again. That hasn't worked. Story at link