Free Republic

Outright tyranny, the loss of our freedoms, and a totalitarian regime the likes of which the world has never seen before. “Let your motto be resistance! resistance! Resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance.”—Abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet The perils of resisting the police state grow more costly with each passing day, especially if you hope to escape with your life and property intact. The thing you must remember is that we’ve entered an age of militarized police in which we’re no longer viewed as civilians but as enemy combatants. Take, for example, Mary Elizabeth VandenBerg who...

Fugitive gunman Eric Frein has again evaded the massive police dragnet that has now been hunting him for 16 days as he ran into woods after being spotted in the Pocono Mountains. Frein, 31, wanted for murdering one state trooper and critically injuring another, managed to flee, although MailOnline understands they have a jacket that he left behind. Frein, who is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, was seen just outside the perimeter of the five-square-mile search area that up to 1,000 cops are manning at any one time. The sighting led to a huge shift southwards as heavily...

A proposed ordinance in Montville, New Jersey could give police officers broad powers – including entering private property – if underage drinking is even suspected.

It looks like the days of trading half of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich for half of your best friend’s ham sandwich may soon be over if the federal government has anything to do with it. A Richmond, Virginia mother received the following note, telling her not to pack a lunch for her pre-school age child. Dear Parents, I have received word from Federal Programs Preschool pertaining to lunches from home. Parents are to be informed that students can only bring lunches from home if there is a medical condition requiring a specific diet, along with a physicians note...

I would like to remind readers that we live in a country that is barely free. If we lived in ideal political conditions in which the only flaw might be a border closed to some or all immigration, the “open borders” argument might hold water. But we live in a growing authoritarian or police state. This is an issue which many intellectuals – including some I should logically regard as moral and intellectual allies – shy away from like frightened turtles. This country for too long has been the plaything of statists and “social engineers” of every stripe – Republicans,...

Parents' House Seized Over Son's $40 In Drugs The rare moments Christos Sourovelis can take a break from running his own painting business, he can be found toiling away on his family's dream house in the suburbs of Philadelphia. "I'm a working guy. I work every day, six days a week, even seven if I have to," Sourovelis says. One day this past March, without warning, the government took his house away, even though he and his wife, Markella, have never been charged with a crime or accused of any wrongdoing...

SD Unified gets armored vehicle City schools police have obtained their own military-grade Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle through a federal grant. Known as an MRAP, the armored mobile will be converted into a victim rescue vehicle that will be stocked with thousands of dollars in advanced medical supplies and be able to take heavy fire in case of an attack on campus, the San Diego Unified School District Police Department said Tuesday. The MRAP, valued at more than $700,000, was acquired at no cost to the district. The vehicle is expected to be operational in October. “We recognize the public...

This is a battlefield, a war zone—if you will—governed by martial law and disguised as a democracy “Police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.”—Kristian Williams, activist and author If you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, tasered, tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or killed, don’t say, do or even suggest anything that even hints of...

A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Maryland, middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report—"taken in for an emergency medical evaluation" for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace's Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, according to news reports from Maryland's Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future. Sheriff Phillips told the newspaper that,...

A Littleton, Colorado, man named Jordan Mathewson was raided by a heavily armed SWAT team thanks to a false shooting and hostage report, and all the chaos was captured on a Twitch game stream (see below). During a Counter-Strike session, Jordan "Kootra" Mathewson -- a founder of The Creatures -- suddenly noticed things around him were amiss. "Uh oh. This isn't good. They're clearing rooms. What in the world, I think we're getting swatted," he says in the video. Luckily, Mathewson stayed calm throughout the ordeal and was released a short time later. On top of invading his offices, police...

Chris Sourovelis has never had any trouble with the law or been accused of any crime. But that hasn’t stopped the City of Philadelphia from trying to take his home. The Sourouvelis family, along with thousands of others in Philadelphia, is living a Kafkaesque nightmare: Their property is considered guilty; they must prove their innocence and the very prosecutors they’re fighting can profit from their misery. Now the Institute for Justice has filed a major class-action lawsuit to end these abuses of power. Back in March, Chris’s son was caught selling $40 worth of drugs outside of the home. With...

On a Sunday afternoon in 2008, a tactical police team raided the Easton, Connecticut house of Ronald Terebesi searching for a small amount of personal drugs. While by day's end the police discovered drug paraphernalia and 0.02 ounces of a substance believed to be crack cocaine, an officer also killed Terebesi's unarmed guest, Gonzalo Guizan (pictured), by discharging his Glock sidearm six times until the weapon finally jammed. Guizan's estate and Terebesi filed civil suits against the officers in the raid, although the estate later settled out of court for $3.5 million. The tactical team—called SWERT for Southwest Regional Emergency...

The promiscuous use of SWAT teams is a bigger menace than armored vehicles on our streets. Contrary to what you may have heard, the armored vehicles that appeared on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, during the unrest that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown did not come from the Pentagon. "Most of the stuff you are seeing in video coming out of Ferguson is not military," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Defense Department's press secretary, told reporters last week. "The military is not the only source of tactical gear in this country." In other words: Don't blame the military...

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) has introduced legislation that would prohibit the sale, use, or possession of body armor by unauthorized persons. “Authorized persons” in Honda’s view include government law-enforcement personnel, troops, and others the government may deem worthy of such protection. “Those duly empowered to use deadly force should not have to fear that their efforts might be thwarted by the widespread availability of bullet-resistant vests or helmets,” Honda said. “The government’s capacity to suppress dangerous elements must not be diluted.” Honda dismissed the idea that law-abiding civilians could have a legitimate need for this type of personal protection—Bullet Blocker’s...

Michael Eric Dyson told Face the Nation Sunday morning that President Barack Obama needed to more forcefully address the underlying issues at play in the metastasizing situation in Ferguson, MO. Dyson criticized local law enforcement and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D) as well. “I yearn for more response from the White House,” Dyson said. “This president knows better than most what happens in poor communities that have been antagonized historically by the hostile relationship between black people and the police department. It is not enough for him to come on national television and pretend there is a false moral equivalency...

Just watch...

The "narrative" of Ferguson, Missouri changed somewhat today. But, amid the confusion, the blundering stupidity of the city's police department remains consistent. This morning the Police Chief, Thomas Jackson, released security-camera shots of the late Michael Brown apparently stealing a five-dollar box of cigarillos from a convenience store. So the 18-year old shot dead by Chief Jackson's officer was no longer a "gentle giant" en route to college but just another crappy third-rate violent teen n'er-do-well. {SNIP} It's important, when something goes wrong, to be clear about what it is that's at issue. Talking up Michael Brown as this season's...

Drones -- unmanned flying machines -- will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above. These fears aren't groundless. President Bush approved the use of armed drones against suspected terrorists overseas, and President Obama vastly increased their use. Drones have killed thousands of people in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, countries against which we have not declared war. Drones keep getting more sophisticated. The Air Force is now developing what it calls MAVs, Micro Air Vehicles, tiny drones that can quietly search for an individual terrorist...

ADVERTISE AT BOING BOING! SHARE TWEET STUMBLE COMMENTS A news crew, clearly no threat or impediment to the cops, films from a verge in Ferguson, Missouri. A pop and a cloud of white smoke marks the arrival of a tear gas canister at their feet, and the newscrew is forced to flee. Moments later, police pull up in an armored van and hurriedly try to break down the film equipment--until they notice that another crew is still filming them from across the street. Update: Kate O'Brian, president of Al Jazeera America, released a statement condemning the police. Last night at...

A news crew, clearly no threat or impediment to the cops, films from a verge in Ferguson, Missouri. A pop and a cloud of white smoke marks the arrival of a tear gas canister at their feet, and the newscrew is forced to flee. Moments later, police pull up in an armored van and hurriedly try to break down the film equipment--until they notice that another crew is still filming them from across the street.