Free Republic

More African-Americans appear to be taking an active interest in their right to bear arms since the election of President Donald Trump, gun club leaders and firearm sellers say. A national African-American gun club has doubled its membership since Election Day, and gun sellers say they've noticed more black customers buying firearms. At Stoddard's Range and Guns in Atlanta, one thunderous clap after another reverberates through the room, mixing with laughter and the smell of gunpowder. A group of men are bonding over a hobby they love. Moments later, with their clips empty and a stream of hot shell casings...

One year in Atlanta, GA, in excess of $46 million in ITIN refunds were sent to a single address by the IRS for 24,000 illegal aliens who reportedly listed that same address on their tax returns In 1996, the IRS began issuing a new type of tax identification number, the Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN). ITINs are assigned to U.S. taxpayers, predominately illegal aliens and their dependents, who are not eligible to obtain a Social Security number. The primary purpose of ITIN’s was to capture the previously untapped source of new federal tax revenue from undocumented workers.

Basic reporting errors by Reuters and NPR resulted in journalists falsely reporting that President Trump attended a foreign diplomat’s party at Trump’s D.C. hotel in what was portrayed as a possible pay-to-play scenario. NPR and Reuters both reported that Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S., Salem al-Sabah, was throwing a gala in honor of his country’s independence day at the Trump International Hotel. Reuters definitively placed the event as happening on Saturday, while NPR’s coverage implied the same. According to Reuters, the event was expected to cost between $40,000 and $60,000. When Trump was spotted at the hotel on Saturday, a...

We in these pages on several occasions, the last time in the preceding blog, described former president Barak Hussein Obama as a strategic revolutionary. To see him as such is almost obvious if one follows his upbringing, as previously in a series of blogs in detail described in these pages. The formative years of his youth he spent under the influence of radical Socialists (often even Communists). In and after college, his associates were practically exclusively leftist radical revolutionaries, including Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn of Weather Underground fame, once he came to Chicago to work as a community organizer....

Ignoring “militia,” “arms” and “shall not infringe” the court sounded more like Chief Justice Oprah Winfrey The most confusing dependent clause in the history of the nation, at least as far as personal liberty goes, is the one that begins the 2nd Amendment to the Bill of Rights. The full text of the amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. To understand what the Founders meant it helps to understand how much the former colonists disliked a standing...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall said, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that of order and chaos.” -From The Life of George Washington, Revised Edition 1832. The chaos gripping our present society is certainly not the ‘balanced’ republic Marshall was referring to. Our system is functioning more like a plane crashing - like a democracy. Let’s explore ‘balanced republic,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘order and chaos’ by using an analogy. The U.S. government is comparable to a commercial aircraft. The pilot and co-pilot are the elected representatives. They are selected by qualified passengers (or U.S. voters)....

Obama’s Democratic Party gears up to wage war on the president Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez’s weekend victory over Keith Ellison in the race to become DNC chairman shows Democrats learned nothing from their historic shellacking in November and that Barack Obama remains firmly in control of the party.

"Resistance plus persistence." Your party just got bazooked in elections from coast to coast. Your philosophy has been rebuked and your highest-profile people are in disrepute. You need a new direction, a fresh start and a different way of appealing to the nation if you ever hope to return to power. So! Every week you put out a video offering your party’s message of the moment. Who do you choose to be the face of your party at this time when a need for everything to be new is so urgent? Who, oh who, shall it be? VIDEOWhat are the...

OK, I admit it. I didn't watch it. Intentionally. It is an insufferable spectacle of ego, self-righteousness, narcissism and one more outlet for brain dead liberal pontification. Nor was I planning to write anything about it until I hit one article. Still, the post mortems are hilarious. They do this (thankfully) once a year. Once. There was the predictable and expected Trump bashing. We learned that there is a new Axis of Weevils- between Tehran and Hollywood. The Iranian government praised the makers of Oscar-winning movie "The Salesman" on Monday for boycotting the Hollywood awards ceremony in protest against U.S....

Feel free to steal Ramos's identity No doubt you remember Jorge Ramos - the perpetually outraged, virtue-signaling, illegal immigration activist who pretends to be a journalist - from that time President Trump had him thrown out of a press conference. After it happened, Ramos enjoyed a few extra minutes of fame, made the anti-Trump media rounds, then faded back to his previous level of mid-range notoriety. Unfortunately, with the illegal immigration issue still front-and-center, Ramos rears his head every so often.

Federal government’s “corporate culture” is dominated by career bureaucrats with no passion for their product and no incentive to improve Many years and a few lifetimes ago, I received Presidential appointments to serve in the federal government. It was an experience I will never forget and I was honored to serve. It was an eye-opening experience in how our Washington government actually works, or doesn’t work as the case may be.

Full disclosure: I didn’t watch a second of Hollywood’s annual “We Are The World” show last night. But I did  hear that Russia hacked the election! That’s right, they tried to award the Best Picture Oscar to La La Land rather than the rightful candidate, Moonlight, in a dramatic climax to what was by all reports a very long evening. Boris and Nastasha, pulling the strings backstage for PricewaterhouseCoopersFortunately the treachery was discovered in time to snatch the statuette for Best Picture Oscar away from the announced winner (La La Land – about white people singing and dancing in LA)...

As President Trump works to undo the outrages of the Pen and Phone President, he will issue executive orders, consult congress, and instruct his cabinet secretaries to reverse the mess their social justice predecessors left behind. The President has enormous power, and while patriots know his power isn’t absolute, too many Americans believe it nearly is, or should be. A person or body is said to have legal sovereignty when he or it has unlimited, absolute law-making power, and when there is no person or body legally superior to him or it. Over a series of posts, I will take...

Many biologists avoid the term “race” and prefer a phrase such as “continental ancestry.” Thus, to prefer one “race” over another, or to declare one “race” superior to another, is biologically ignorant. Or, put another way, the “racists”—or “race-baiters”—of any era, of any color, on any continent, who battled against the cause of human rights of those of another skin color are guilty of contradicting the laws of basic human biology. Likewise, those who fight to further the cause of the gender-confused (“transgenders”) are also guilty of contradicting the laws of basic human biology. Only in a world corrupted by...

MEXICO CITY: The Catholic Church in Mexico on Sunday accused the government of adopting an attitude of fear and "submission" over US President Donald Trump's immigration measures, which it labeled "terrorism." Mexican authorities "only make declarations and promises, their reactions are lukewarm and they also show fear and even worse, submission," read an editorial in the Church's From the Faith weekly. The editorial, entitled "Migrant Terrorism," criticized Trump's immigration measures, which aim to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States. The Trump administration issued tough new orders Tuesday for a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigrants, putting nearly all...

It turns out that congressional staffers have been taking money from an Iraqi politician. These staffers just happen to be the ones who were fired for attempting to access sensitive information. Imran, Abid, and Jamal Awan took $100,000 Dr. Ali al-Attar, money that — according to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group — was “funneled through a company with ‘impossible’-to-decipher financial transactions that the congressional information technology (IT) staffers controlled.” All three of the brothers are now under a criminal investigation. Imran Awan provided IT services for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the disgraced Democrat who was forced to resign as...

Connecticut residents are fleeing in large numbers to escape their state government. It’s known to locals as the Connecticut Exodus. The once-beautiful state has been leveled by an abusive Democratic-majority government. Even the few Republicans actually holding office would be considered Democrats in other regions of the country. It’s called the bluest state in the nation, and I think it would be hard to argue it isn’t the California of the east — minus the jobs, companies, good weather and innovation, of course. Outsiders think of Connecticut as a rich state in the northeast; many don’t know that they have...

In just two days, President Donald J. Trump will deliver his highly anticipated first Address to a Joint Session of Congress. There is an incredible spirit of optimism sweeping across the Nation, and in preparation for this address, the President has hosted numerous listening sessions at the White House. During these meetings he has heard from men and women from all over the country about issues that are impacting American families, communities, and workers. Now is your chance to give your input. We want to know what issues you want President Trump to focus on and your ideas for the...

I've seen the accusation of "fake news" thrown out a lot here at Free Republic. I have some questions for you: What do you define as "fake news"?What spurred you to use the accusation of "fake news" in your posts?What news sources do you trust?

Mary Carson picks up her leopard-print tote bag and tugs on her leopard-print scarf. “I’m just going to do a little bit of business,” the 77-year-old says as she walks into Neiman Marcus at the Tysons Galleria in Northern Virginia and asks for the manager. He appears in a pinstripe suit and shakes her hand. “I’m very disappointed in what’s happened with the Trump line,” she tells him. “I hate to do this — I’m not a real activist — but I learned a long, long time ago that you cannot mix business and politics.” The manager listens patiently. Carson,...