Free Republic

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – KMOX News has learned Ferguson protestors are seeking St. Louis Rams tickets in the hopes of getting into the Edward Jones Dome and disrupting this Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys. We first heard about the threat Tuesday at the St. Louis County Council meeting. “It’s not going to a fun day Sunday at your beautiful Rams game,” one protestor said. Speaking with KMOX hosts Debbie Monterrey and Michael Kelley on Thursday morning, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said he’s well aware of those threats and is working on plans to counteract them. “We are...

... As 'Domestic Extremists' In FOIA'ed Emails An activist is a terrorist, at least according to Senior Police Officer Justin Berry of the Austin Police Dept. While the terms aren't mutually exclusive, a person can be one without being the other. In Berry's mind, they're both, and he feeds off the FBI's paranoia to reach his conclusion.

Anti-war protesters have been demonstrating in Newport, as South Wales prepares to host the Nato summit. Around 1,000 people gathered outside the crown court before they made their way through the city. As well as a strong Welsh contingent, demonstrators came from as far as the US, Belgium, France and Ireland. Police are expecting more demonstrations this week including one on Thursday that may be "something a little more challenging" as protesters try to get to Celtic Manor Resort, which is the focus of the summit. Among those taking part in Saturday's march was veteran CND campaigner Bruce Kent. He...

Think of every area where the GOP has strayed from its conservative roots. The bailouts. TARP. Out-of-control government spying. Job-killing corporate cronyism. There is one man in Congress consistently saying “no” to making government bigger and less accountable. His name is Justin Amash, and the establishment has taken notice. Big business wants to ensure voters elect Republicans who will keep the perks flowing -- from taxpayers’ bank accounts and right to their pockets. They’ve even created a feel-good way to describe such a Republican: Pro-business. And that’s exactly the kind of guy they’ve found in Amash’s primary challenger. Amash goes...

Every. Damn. Time. Tucked away in their backstory of anti-social behavior, an inconvenient nugget of truth about the couple responsible for killing three people, including two police officers, in Las Vegas:

Suburban Albany is not known for its rip-roaring weekend scene, but this most recent Saturday night, it was the momentary center of the political universe, as an underfunded political party was using its quadrennial convention to try to force America’s most powerful and best-financed governor to submit to its demands. Though the Working Families Party’s conventions are typically low-key affairs, this one had drawn 800 activists and operatives and most of the New York press corps—all to see if the party would endorse conservative Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo or run a third-party candidate against him. In the end, when the...

There has been a lot of talk in the blogs and in local and national news about the heckling and boos that Eric Cantor received when he gave his speech at the 7th District GOP convention this past Saturday. Many felt it was unseemly and disrespectful. I personally don’t like booing even when a referee makes a bad call, but I think you can better understand the response from this past Saturday if you have context: Eric Cantor has made it abundantly clear to all his constituents that town hall meetings are beneath him. His consultant, Ray Allen, once told...

Big Journalism has learned that the Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement. Someone has made the emails from the Occupy D.C. email distro public and searchable. The names in the list are a veritable who’s who in media. Journolist 2.0 includes well known names such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear.

Some folks involved with the annual Burning Man festival plan on staging a counter-standoff to the one currently taken up by Bundy in his ongoing challenge to the feds over grazing rights. The video below posted by progressive activist Sean Shealy details the plan for a month-long shindig to be held after the official Burning Man proceedings that will take place directly across from Bundy Ranch. The "anything goes" action promises hundreds of bands, as many as 50,000 revelers, "total freedom," and of course full nudity. "You're free to let it all hang out right there, just like Bundy's cattle,"...

The rich are not the problem, the greedy are not the problem, the crooked are not the problem - the problem is the system that brings them about. If the system is ours, the system means by the people, of the people, for the people, then now it is time to take it back. Now it is time to demand that it would be changed.

We're better than those damned Russians and their Putin; we have democracy! Well, maybe not. Quote: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Lots of big words in that paragraph. Let's distill it down -- the argument presented is that America is really no different than...

FROM THE 'DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND': A new low for the far left: a post titled, "Why I Hope the Bloodshed Continues in Iraq." I kid you not.  DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND DECIDES TO EDIT: Hmmm. After I linked to a truly hideous posting celebrating bloodshed in Iraq, they take the page down. I should have copied the page. First CBS. Now DU. Shine a light on them and they scram. - 11:42:12 AM  THE POST: Here's what Democratic Underground didn't want you to see: I Hope the Bloodshed Continues in IraqWell, that should bring the bats out of the attic with fangs dripping....

For Immediate Release: Contact: Rosanna Pulido April 14, 2014 Rick Biesada tel. 773-771-3927 Chicago, IL – The head of the Illinois Minuteman Project and former Republican candidate for Congress, Rosanna Pulido, announced that her group, along with The Chicago MInutemen Project group and grassroots organizations, is holding a “SAVE THE AMERICAN WORKER RALLY” at 1:00 pm Tuesday, April 22, at the corner of Michigan and Van Buren Streets in downtown Chicago. Pulido said the rally is being held to protest a gathering of well-heeled Republican politicians, lobbyists, and corporate CEOs pushing amnesty for illegal aliens at the nearby Chicago Club...

Guess who's all of a sudden standing up for law and order? Why, it's radical environmentalists, who despite their general disdain for lawful behavior have felt compelled to speak out in support of the Bureau of Land Management's attempts to round up Cliven Bundy's cattle and ultimately force the Nevada rancher to abandon his family's century-old business. Martin Griffith at the Associated Press relayed the comments of one such group in a Sunday report in the aftermath of the BLM's abandonment of its roundup efforts, in Griffith's words, "after hundreds of states' rights protesters, some of them armed militia members,...

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the current bull market on Wall Street, making it one of the longest and strongest in history. Yet U.S. stock ownership is at a record low and less than half of Americans trust banks and financial services. And in the last two weeks, the New York attorney general and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in Washington have both launched investigations into high-frequency computerized stock trading that now controls more than half the market. The probes were announced just ahead of a much anticipated book on the subject by best-selling author Michael Lewis called...

Two newcomers, Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, are the hottest figures in the dominant conservative wing of the Republican Party. In markedly different ways, they both claim to be the heirs to the party’s contemporary patron saint, Ronald Reagan. In a short time, these first-term lawmakers have electrified elements of the party’s base and rattled the Senate establishment. The top two Republican leaders in the chamber, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas, have had to defer to the political popularity of their junior colleagues. Both are outside the party mainstream, rock stars...

Five years ago almost no one knew the term – Fracking. Today it is one of the hottest topics in America and has become one of our hottest political footballs. The question is whether the fracking process harms underground water. It depends on who you ask. Josh Fox received money from HBO to make a movie called Gasland. The documentary reached great heights as it was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary based on a small theatrical release. Josh Fox, a little known theater director, became a darling of the anti-fracking movement. The highlight of his film was...

As more and more human rights of U.S. citizens are violated in the name of safety and security, the group Anonymous stands to fight at the side of Americans. Over the holiday weekend, they have even gone as far to announce a call to arms. The fact that many people are still unaware of the “hacker” group Anonymous is sign of censorship by today’s mainstream media. There is a clear need for groups such as Anonymous as the fact of this direct censorships shows just how clouded the media’s freedom of speech has become. anon5 (See also: Obama Secretly Signs...

Yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee published a video on their Youtube page highlighting a portion of the committee questioning Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cyber-security and Communications, who confirmed at least 16 attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s portal Healthcare.gov website in 2013. Roberta Stempfley highlighted one successful attack that is designed to deny access to the website called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack is designed to make a network unavailable to intended users, generally through a concerted effort to disrupt service such as repeatedly accessing...

"The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny — and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way," British graphic novel artist David Lloyd, the man who created the original image of the mask for a comic strip written by Alan Moore, told BBC. At the top of Reddit today is somewhat ironic image of this icon of rebellion being mass-produced in a factory in Sao Goncalo near Rio de Janeiro. Reuters notes that the masks are...