Free Republic

Former President James Madison – Father of the U.S. Constitution – would be proud. A West Virginia lawmaker has introduced a bill to the state House that would outlaw enforcement of current and future gun-control laws that violate the U.S. or state constitutions. House Bill 2138, introduced by Republican Del. Pat McGeehan, would effectively nullify all federal gun control within the state’s boundaries, according to a report from the Tenth Amendment Center. The bill would make any attempt to enforce such laws a felony. HB2138 reads: “All current and future federal, state, and local statutes, ordinances, laws, orders, rules, and...

A progressive correspondent asks: “If you were drafting the Constitution in 2017, would you include the Second Amendment?” It’s an ignorant question, but one that was asked in good faith, and the answer may be illuminating to some of our friends who are mystified by conservative thinking on the question. The short answer is: Yes, of course a 21st-century Bill of Rights should codify the right to keep and bear arms. The document does not create the right; the right precedes the document, which merely recognizes it and ensures that the government is constrained when, inevitably, its all-too-human members are...

I don’t agree with liberals often, because I’m not an idiot and because I love America, but when they once again say, “We must have a conversation about guns!” I still couldn’t agree more. And, since all we’ve heard is you leftists shrieking at us all week, I’ll start it off.You don’t ever get to disarm us. Not ever.There. It sure feels good to engage in a constructive dialogue.Now, we should have this conversation because in recent years we’ve seen a remarkable antipathy for the fact that normal Americans even have rights among those on the left. We should have...

Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The International Trade Commission has found injury in a suit filed by Suniva and SolarWorld, a pair of struggling, foreign-owned, U.S.-based solar cell companies who claim foreign imports have unfairly harmed their bottom lines. ITC judges voted four to zero to advance the suit into the remedy phase. While it's not yet clear what the commission will recommend, the two companies have requested a tariff of 40 cents per watt for foreign-made solar cells, as well as a price floor for solar cells manufactured in the United States. Such a remedy, should it be granted by...

Regarding the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum scheduled for September 25, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said that the United Nations and Ankara can “be guarantors of their rights.”

Ankara "will not refrain from using its natural rights"

Banning social media trolls from voting could help reduce the amount of abuse faced by politicians, the election watchdog has said. The Electoral Commission says legislation around elections should be reviewed and new offences could be introduced. In the commission’s submission to a committee on standards in public life inquiry into the intimidation of political candidates, officials say many offences under electoral law date back to the 1800s or earlier. They say some electoral offences can result in an offender being disqualified from voting or from registering to vote. Such deterrents could be considered to stop abusive people, the submission...

Saturday, President Donald Trump said in his “Celebrate Freedom Rally” speech honoring veterans at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. that ever since signing the Declaration of Independence, America had “affirmed that liberty comes from our creator,” adding that “no earthly force can ever take those rights away.” “Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago, America always affirmed that liberty comes from our creator,” Trump declared. “Our rights are given to us by God and no earthly force can ever take those rights away. That is why my administration is returning that power back to where...

Sweeping new gun laws passed last year by California voters and legislators require those with magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition to get rid of them by July 1. The question is: How many of California’s 6 million-plus gun owners are actually going to comply, even though violators face potential jail time if they’re caught? Talk to gun owners, retailers and pro-gun sheriffs across California and you’ll get something akin to an eye roll when they’re asked if gun owners are going to voluntarily part with their property because Democratic politicians and voters who favor gun...

As Turkey’s Council of State marked its 149th anniversary of its foundation this week, its president delivered a speech that left jaws among members of judiciary wide open, capturing the picture of how Turkey’s top courts, high justice toed the line with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government. “The notion of separation of powers have become more clear with the April 16 referendum,” said Council of State President Zerrin Gungor. Her remarks represented a complete break with the majority of legal experts and government critics in Turkey over what the referendum meant for the rule of law and separation...

Bay Area Assemblyman got an earful last week as he pushed a largely symbolic bill that would have made it legal for California public employees to be members of the Communist Party. Rob Bonta of Oakland contritely withdrew the measure, which had passed out of committee, after leaders from the state’s large Vietnamese community gave him an earful. California has many problems — none of which are the doing of avowed communists in state government. Instead of worrying about this nonsense, Republicans should be gearing up to fight a frightening Bonta-coauthored bill that makes no direct reference to communism, but...

The Constitution was written with the intent that it must endure for ages to come and be adaptable to the various crises of human affairs. Edmund Randolph, one of the five men charged with drafting the document, observed that it was necessary to stick to basic, “essential principles only; lest the operations of government be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable.” The Framers knew that principles of liberty remain constant throughout time, so they provided this foundation for altering future law. Let’s continue our study of the U.S. Constitution with Article I. Article I, Sec 1 basically set...

Miracle? State House passed a bill saying liberties ‘don’t come from governments, but from Almighty God’ May 10, 2017 | Scott Morefield | Print Article From whence do our liberties derive? Are they from the whims of man, of whoever has the power to grant or deny them at any given moment in history, or are they from an almighty, unchangeable force? It’s an important philosophical question, because if the answer is the latter, any attempts to deny humans their God-given liberties are by definition anti-God and worthy of opposition by decent-minded people.

It took some 6,000 years for persons to overcome slavery, serfdom, and oppressive rent and taxation to acquire secure property rights to farmland and to adjacent river water (riparian rights – see Joshua Getzler, A History of Water Rights and Common Law, [2004]). Enter Tim Stroshane, a former Berkeley central planner, activist and environmentalist, who proposes to abolish such property rights because farming monopolists in California allegedly fail to “share” water with the hordes of urbanites that want it. This post revisits Stroshane’s case in his 2016 book, Drought, Water Law and the Origins of California’s Central Valley Project (Reno:...

United Nations aid agencies in Geneva were nervous before Donald Trump was elected: his rhetoric on all sorts of key issues, from migrants to torture, was deeply worrying to a community dedicated to upholding what it believes are fundamental human rights. Once candidate Trump became President Trump, the nervousness increased. The executive order on immigration seemed, to many aid workers, to betray an almost total lack of understanding and compassion for the world's most vulnerable people. Now, 100 days in, there is a sense of wariness. Although that key executive order on immigration may have been stayed by the US...

Former Vermont governor and Democratic National Comittee chairman Howard Dean called out conservative pundit Ann Coulter on Twitter. Dean said, "Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment."

This is a revised version of the constitution. I support a Maine Republic as I feel that the US recently have isolated or forgot about Maine. However I feel like the post I saw from The_Republic_Of_Maine sounded to Theoretical. SO I made revisions that I think is fair. Here's the Original post;http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3159678/posts Now here is mine. PREAMBLE. We the people of the Republic of Maine, in order to establish justice, insure tranquility, provide for our mutual defense, promote our common welfare, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the...

Consider fedgov allows rogue state and local governments to publicly ignore and deliberately break fedral laws concerning illegal drugs, illegal aliens, the second amendment, and discrimination based on sex and race. Why cannot then states and local govenrments ignore fedgov court imposed gay marriage, obamacare, abortion, and god back in schools? Why is the left the only one who can say no to federal laws at state and local levels? We must start doing the same. They have no problem doing it when they want to. Either we are all equal and can do the exact same things or none...

Billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban criticized the Congressional Budget Office’s use of a 10-year score to determine the effects of the Republicans' American Health Care Act and said the U.S. Constitution should be amended to make healthcare a right. Cuban compared the CBO’s use of a decade timeframe to the ABC television show Shark Tank, where he stars as one of the investors that hears pitches from business owners. He said one- to four-year timeframes are better but “marginally predictable.”

About 2,000 people were killed and entire neighbourhoods razed in southeastern Turkey in 18 months of government security operations characterised by massive destruction and serious human rights violations, the United Nations said on Friday. The U.N. human rights office said in a report on the period July 2015-December 2016 that up to 500,000 people, mostly Kurds, had been displaced, while satellite imagery showed the "enormous scale of destruction of the housing stock by heavy weaponry". U.N. investigators documented human rights violations including killings, disappearances and torture, often during curfews lasting several days at a time.