Free Republic

Want to know how Republicans can win in 2024? By taking a few pages out of the Democrat playbook, that's how! You also need strong, principled and fearless leaders running your local Republican party. Not a bunch of spineless RINOs. But really courageous go-getters who aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work that's required to take on the well-oiled democrat election machine. Here's some advice from the most unlikely of places, deep blue Connecticut, where Republicans did exactly that, and won. It started nearly two years ago when hundreds of energized Republicans from Greenwich, CT,...

A trio of Florida Republicans are among 20 GOP lawmakers demanding that the FBI explain why it is targeting conservative Catholics for surveillance and intelligence-gathering. Sen. Rick Scott and Reps. Greg Steube and Bill Posey, of Sarasota and Rockledge, respectively, signed a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray expressing deep concerns about the Richmond field office’s warning about “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology.”

FBI Internal Memo Warns against ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology’The FBI’s Richmond field office released an internal memo last month warning against “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology,” and claiming it “almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities,” according to a document shared by an FBI whistleblower on Wednesday. Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022, published the document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” on UncoverDC.com. “In making this assessment, FBI Richmond relied on...

http://www.justice.gov/usao/ct/Press2011/20110621.html June 21, 2011 STAMFORD MAN INDICTED FOR EXTORTION AND ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF AMMUNITION NICOLA MELIA, 78, five counts of collecting extensions of credit by extortionate means and one count of possession of ammunition by a previously convicted felon. Allegations set forth: MELIA made “loan shark” at high interest rates. MELIA illegally possessed approximately 40 bullets, that had moved in interstate or foreign commerce. MELIA has been detained since his arrest on March of 2011. Extortion: imprisonment of 20 years and a fine up to $250,000, (each). Ammunition: imprisonment of 10 years and a fine up to $250,000. //Snipp// U.S....

Funds Will Allow RTC To Purchase 24 New Compressed Natural Gas Buses July 26, 2012 Washington, D.C.- Nevada Senator Harry Reid announced $14,750,000 in grants for the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) of Southern Nevada. The first two grants are for $8,000,000 dollars and $5,000,000 respectively, and they will go to purchase 24 new CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) buses which demonstrate a positive environmental impact on air quality, and will replace vehicles that significantly exceeded their useful life. The second grant for $1,750,000 will help fund critical maintenance projects at the RTC's 36-acre Integrated Bus Maintenance Facility (IBMF), one of two...

In soft-pedaling that 2009 encounter, Giffords was doing a balancing act that she’d perfected during her political career as a rather progressive Democrat in a increasingly conservative state. She was the spunky Western girl with a populist agenda mixed with down-home values, one of which was opposition to gun control. But those protesters had been following her around for a while. Her staff members were clearly scared for her, and they put me in touch with Ruiz, who told me the story. Back then, the amazing thing about the incident in the supermarket parking lot was that the guy with...

<p>Saturday's rampage does illustrate the need for tighter control of semiautomatic weapons and ammunition. The gunman arrived at the supermarket with a Glock semiautomatic equipped with an extended magazine of about 30 bullets and additional ammunition. The long-lapsed federal ban on assault weapons, which prohibited such high-capacity magazines, should be reinstated: There is no justification, outside of law enforcement or military use, for such ammunition. A magazine with a smaller capacity might not have stopped the gunman, but it might have at least reduced the carnage. President Obama once promised to push to reinstate the assault weapons ban but has backed down in the face of political opposition, and it is, sadly, hard to imagine that the shooting will usher in a new era of political openness to even reasonable gun control measures. It is a sad irony that last year Arizona joined Alaska and Vermont in permitting anyone over 21 to carry a concealed weapon without a background check.</p>

Arizona gun laws were relaxed further in 2010 when Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed a National Rifle Association-backed bill repealing a state law requiring gun owners to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. State law now permits anyone 21 or older and legally qualified to own a firearm to carry the weapon without a concealed-to-carry permit. Brewer's predecessor, Janet Napolitano, now secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had previously vetoed attempts to toss out the concealed-carry permit law. The new law won praise from gun groups. "This is a major victory for gun owners in Arizona,"...

Arizona has some of the weakest gun control laws in the nation. To gun owners, those laws — which allow them to carry guns in their cars, in restaurants and other public places — are their last defense against unexpected evil. Gun control activists say the state's laws put weapons into the hands of the mentally unstable, and demand that federal officials impose tougher background checks and reinstate a ban on assault weapons. Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik said the state's gun laws contributed to the shooting. He singled out the law passed last year that allows those 21...

WITH THE BANKING CRISIS SHOWING NO SIGNS of abating, President Barack Obama's economic team is working furiously to craft in a matter of weeks a solution that President Bush's team couldn't arrive at in over a year. The leading plan right now is to create a huge "aggregator" bank to buy bad loans and money-losing securities from troubled lenders to keep them from failing, a gambit that likely would cost taxpayers at least another trillion dollars, and probably more. Approval of this could be the single most expensive decision the new president will make in his entire term. ... The...

Mobile broadband users in Stockholm will soon be able to surf the internet on a new high speed 4G network, following the signing of a deal between Ericsson and TeliaSonera. The order from Finnish-Swedish telecom provider TeliaSonera marks the first commercial deployment of Ericsson’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) network technology and will provide mobile internet users with data speeds up to ten times faster than those offered on current networks. "LTE brings the highest possible performance and network capacity, which is needed to meet the needs of the fast growing group of mobile broadband users around the world,” said Ericsson’s...

New York Giants star receiver Plaxico Burress is facing a mandatory 3½ years in prison and the end of his football career. His crime? Not having a license, which New York City never would have issued him, for the exercise of his constitutional right to bear arms. ...And then there is the issue of the permitting process for residents. In 40 states, including Connecticut, law-abiding adults are issued permits once they pass a fingerprint-based background check and a safety class. In New Jersey, carry permits are virtually never issued. In New York City, carry permits are issued, but to applicants...

Savor the occasional cause for optimism that top leaders can value teamwork over turf in the contentious area of transportation financing. Take the years of squabbling over how Texas can scrape up billions of dollars to catch up with road-building needs. Suddenly, there's positive movement, first from Gov. Rick Perry last week. He told this newspaper's transportation writer, Michael Lindenberger, that he would not use his veto to obstruct a move by lawmakers to index the lagging motor-fuels tax to inflation. "If it is the will of the people, and of the Legislature, I suspect I would go along with...

“The RTC’s cost for handling those failures was estimated at December 31, 1995, to be $87.5 billion, or about 22 percent of the assets at time of failure.” (page 25) “The $87.5 billion in costs was almost twice the initial $50.1 billion FIRREA appropriation, but it was substantially less than the high end of the range that the U.S. Treasury predicted at the peak of the cycle in June 1991 of close to $130 billion in 1989 present value costs or $160 billion in absolute dollars.” (page 25) “Another factor influencing the ultimate resolution costs for the RTC was inadequate...

Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson just wrapped up his press conference announcing the Mother of All Bailouts. He said a “bold” approach was needed to achieve “stability” in the market. Let me translate that. “Bold” = Massively massive, taxpayer-funded rescue. “Stability” = Privatizing profits and socializing losses on a scale we have never seen before in our lifetimes. I have had it with Pollyanna conservatives who continue to parrot the “fundamentals of the market are great!” line. The fundamentals of the market suck. The fundamentals of capitalism have been sabotaged.

We are in the midst of the worst financial turmoil since the Great Depression. Absent bold action, matters could well get worse. Neither the markets nor the ordinary diet of regulatory orders, bank examinations, rating downgrades and investigations can do the job. Extraordinary emergency actions by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to date, while necessary, are also insufficient to resolve the crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giants in the mortgage market, are overextended and now under new government protection. They are not in sufficiently robust shape to meet all the market's needs. The fact is that the...

The man who successfully challenged the D.C. handgun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court filed a second federal lawsuit yesterday, alleging that the District's new gun-registration system is burdensome and continues to unlawfully outlaw most semiautomatic pistols. Dick A. Heller, a 66-year-old security guard who lives on Capitol Hill, and two other plaintiffs allege in the lawsuit that the D.C. government violated the letter and the spirit of the landmark Supreme Court decision, issued June 26, that struck down the District's decades-old handgun ban. The 5 to 4 ruling concluded that the Second Amendment grants individuals the right to possess...

Three area women who took part in Million Mom Marches (MMM) against gun violence are putting their convictions to the test in this year's races for the state legislature. All of them have a respect for the Second Amendment, although they put the emphasis on "well-regulated" in the Constitutional wording. All are unhappy with the 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in June, which they contend promotes the availability of weapons over the safety of people.These state candidates said they're confident voters also are unhappy — even angry – that the pendulum has swung too far in a direction of unregulated...

A new Ohio law signed into effect this week, not only gives property owners the right to shoot intruders, but it's also changing Ohio's concealed carry law.

American voters are evenly divided on the need for stricter gun control laws but don't think city government should have the right to prevent citizens from owning handguns in their city. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% say stricter gun control laws while another 44% disagree and 12% are not sure. Most African-American and Hispanic voters believe stricter gun control laws are needed while a plurality (47%) of White voters disagree. Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats say stricter gun control laws are needed and 63% of Republicans hold the opposite view. Among unaffiliated voters, 37% want...