Free Republic

The U.S. Department of Justice has revealed in a court filing it agrees with the philosophy of the German government that bureaucrats can punish homeschooling parents. The agency contended parental rights to keep children free from instruction that violates faith essentially are negligible when the government’s goal is an “open society.” The arguments were made in a pleading before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that urges the judges to send a German homeschooling family, the Romeikes, back to Germany where members likely would face persecution. “The goal in Germany is for an ‘open, pluralistic society,’” wrote the government’s...

The Justice Department has agreed to pay $4.1 million to a California college student left in a Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell last year, according to two people familiar with the case. Daniel Chong was detained in an April 2012 drug raid in San Diego and left in a windowless holding cell for four days without food or water. He says he drank his own urine to stay alive. The people familiar with the case spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the settlement before it is officially announced. His attorney filed a $20 million claim against the government...

It’s been a rough couple of days for any freedom loving American. Two big stories broke in relation to the NSA scandal and neither bodes well for the future of privacy in this country. Yesterday’s big story came from CNET. That is significant in and of itself because CNET is not exactly what you would call a site for political news junkies. CNET is more for the computer savvy techies. They are reporting that the feds are applying intense pressure to gather passwords. CNET reports: The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users’ stored passwords, according to...

A young man was exercising his Second Amendment and Wisconsin Constitutional rights in Wisconsin when he was stopped by police, questioned and arrested for Obstruction of Justice and Disorderly Conduct.  Police allege that initial reports of Mr. Hoffman placed him within 1,000 feet of a school.  It is not clear if Mr. Hoffman was within a 1,000 feet of a school when he was accosted. At opencarry.org, MKEgal has written some cogent comments: 3) Since the WI Supreme Court has ruled that it is NOT obstruction to refuse to give your name, or to remain silent, that charge is bogus...

A new Cook County Sheriff’s team is crisscrossing the suburbs to seize guns from thousands of people whose Firearm Owner’s Identification Cards have been revoked. More than 3,000 people in Cook County have failed to surrender their revoked FOID cards to the state. Sheriff Tom Dart said he thinks many of them continue to possess firearms.

Full title: "Bank Breaks Into Ohio Woman’s Home, Repossesses Her Belongings – But That’s Not the Most Shocking Part of the Story"Having your belongings repossessed by a bank is an awful experience, but it’s probably a lot worse when it’s done by accident. That’s what one central Ohio woman claims happened to her. “Katie Barnett says that the First National Bank in Wellston foreclosed on her house, even though it was not her bank,” 10TV.com reports. “They repossessed my house on accident, thinking it was the house across the street,” Barnett explained. Barnett added that she was away when the...

Confiscation? What are you talking about? We would never….. Posted on July 22, 2013 by Miguel Part of a letter from the friendly folks at NYPD, Licensing Division to NY City Gun Owners: See? If you surrender your weapon (under threat of coming down on your sorry ass with all the power that the City of NY and Mayor Bloomberg can exercise) , it cannot be confiscation! Now, who are you gonna believe? Us or them paranoid rednecks from the NRA? Related Article on Gun Watch: Gun Registration is Gun Confiscation 

Wyoming --(Ammoland.com)- The war on freedom is hitting much closer to home, Platte County Wyoming to be exact. Like you, I am outraged at the actions of President Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein’s attempt to repeal the Second Amendment. And just as in Washington D.C. — the control freaks are at work right here in Wyoming. Remember during the last session when WY state “educators” stormed the capitol in Cheyenne — demanding that our pro-gun legislation was killed in committee?Well now they are scheming at the “local” level to rob you and me of our God-given rights.The Platte County...

After reporting that she'd been raped to Dubai police, a 25-year-old Norwegian woman who was on a business trip to the United Arab Emirates city found herself being jailed on "suspicion of having sex outside of marriage." Following the report of her rape to police, the 25-year-old had her passport and personal possessions seized and was immediately placed in a jail cell. It took three days before she was able to gain access to a phone and contact her family to let them know what had happened to her. ... the 25-year-old was given a sentence of 16 months

It may turn out that within the IRS abuse of Tea Party, conservative, Jewish and other groups was another layer of abuse: women. Catherine Engelbrecht so far has the most harrowing story to tell, of abuse by multiple executive branch agencies after she founded the grassroots election security watchdog True the Vote. Now former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is naming names, saying that her tax information was compromised the very day she announced her Senate candidacy. That same day, the IRS slapped a lien on a house that it believed she owned, only to withdraw that lien when...

Rochester, N.Y. -- She says she had no warning that someone was going to search her car after she left to catch her flight. So the woman contacted News10NBC. We found out it happened to her because she valet parked her car. Those are the only cars that get inspected. So if security feels it is necessary to search some cars in the name of safety, why not search all of them? Laurie Iacuzza walked to her waiting car at the Greater Rochester International Airport after returning from a trip and that's when she found it -- a notice saying...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chances are, your local or state police departments have photographs of your car in their files, noting where you were driving on a particular day, even if you never did anything wrong. Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department says it is looking into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin to determine whether federal prosecutors should file criminal civil rights charges now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the state case.

Ron Kelly, a 20-year Army veteran, recently tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle at the Wal-Mart in Tomball, Texas. He was turned away because he failed the FBI background check. He appealed the rejection, and last month he got a Justice Department letter explaining that he was legally disqualified from owning guns, after handling them in defense of his country for two decades, because of a 42-year-old marijuana conviction. As a high school student in Durham, North Carolina, he had been caught with a small amount of pot and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession, receiving a sentence of probation because...

As expected, the Judge in the George Zimmerman case ruled that in addition to Second Degree Murder, she will instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of Manslaughter, as required by Florida case law. In a surprise move this morning, the prosecution asked the Judge to drop the Aggravated Assault charge and to instruct the jury on Third Degree Murder, which is murder in the course of committing a felony. The felony the State wanted as the predicate was Aggravated Child Abuse (Jury Instruction) because Trayvon Martin was 17 at the time of the shooting. According to Don West,...

Watching Fox News Channel coverage of Zimmerman trial. Judge has just sprung another surprise against Zimmerman, saying jury can consider Martin's death as child abuse so jury can convict based upon that, too, and perhaps convict him of voluntary manslaughter. This trial is a travesty.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become ALMOST A PARALLEL SUPREME COURT, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

Bias: Evidence revealed so far in the Trayvon Martin murder trial shatters the media narrative that shooter George Zimmerman acted as a rabid racist hunting down an angelic black boy. For a full week last year after the tragedy, NBC "Nightly News" and "Today" ran audio tape of Zimmerman allegedly telling a 911 dispatcher, "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." To an audience that didn't know better, that was damning evidence — a seemingly open-and-shut case of racial profiling. Only, it was a frame-up. NBC producers doctored the recording to portray Zimmerman as a...

A Christian street preacher has been arrested and questioned about his beliefs after saying that he thinks homosexuality is a “sin”.Tony Miano, 49, a former senior police officer from the US, was held for around six hours, had his fingerprints and DNA taken and was questioned about his faith, after delivering a sermon about “sexual immorality” on a London street. Mr Miano, who served as a Deputy Sherriff in Los Angeles County, said his experience suggested that the term “thought police” had become a reality in the UK. He said he was amazed that it was now possible “in the...

A family is suing the city of Henderson, Nevada for violating their Third Amendment rights — the constitutional prohibition against quartering soldiers in a private home during peacetime without the owner’s consent. The Mitchell family says that’s essentially what happened when Henderson police allegedly arrested them for refusing to let officers use their homes for a “tactical advantage” in a domestic violence investigation into a neighbor, according to an official complaint. Police officers contacted Anthony Mitchell on July 10, 2011, with a request to use his house as a lookout while investigating his neighbor. When Mitchell told police that he...