Free Republic

... One state where [civil asset forfeiture] reform sailed through the legislature with no opposition is New Mexico, where a very fair law was signed last year by Governor Martinez. That, however, was not enough to put an end to an extraordinarily aggressive system in Albuquerque, where the politicians had gotten hooked on funds derived from forfeited cars and other property. The claim by Albuquerque officials that the law did not apply to the city led to a suit filed by two state senators, Lisa Torraco and Daniel Ivey-Soto, to compel the city to obey. I wrote about that case...

Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to surround herself with more scandals than you can shake a stick at, as we said when I was growing up in Texas. We had the Mena, Arkansas scandals when her husband, Bubba, otherwise known as William Jefferson Clinton, was Attorney General and then Governor. Ambrose Evans Pritchard, the British Telegraph investigative journalist did a masterful documentation of that in his The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, when Bill was President facing impeachment in the 1990's. Then there are the Clinton Foundation scandals documented in the 2015 Peter Schweitzer book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of...

The debate expectations game. A busy October for President Obama. And a curious New Hampshire visit from a former presidential candidate. These stories and more are a part of the “Inside Politics” forecast this week. 1) Team Clinton tries to raise the debate bar Hillary Clinton’s campaign has an eye on the 2000 presidential race as it tries to frame the expectations for her upcoming debates with Donald Trump. Back then, Democrats think they made a mistake by ridiculing George W. Bush and suggesting he wasn’t up to the task of debating Al Gore. When Bush did better than expected,...

A female U.S. sailor was recognized last week for her efforts during the January incident that resulted in Iran detaining 10 Americans. Military.com reports the only female among the two crews of the Navy riverine boats that entered Iranian waters off Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf managed to activate an emergency beacon while she was kneeling, bound, and being held at gunpoint with her colleagues.

For those interested in Hillary's health, I would like to call your attention to two posts by fellow freeper SERKIT that may deserve additional attention, if you have not already come across them. Both posts originate from a 7/23/2016 FREEREPUBLIC OP titled "Breaking News, Hillary Clinton Has Epileptic Seizure On Camera!" SERKIT Post 119 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3452121/posts?q=1&;page=101#119 SERKIT Post 103 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3452121/posts?q=1&;page=101#103 I had not come across this information before and I wanted to hilight it for anyone else who may be interested and hadn't had the chance to read it.

Did you catch this? Hillary Clinton looked like she suffered another seizure last night after her DNC Convention speech–Wow! She must really like balloons! This woman isn't right. Something is off. pic.twitter.com/HXC2Vr3Pwa — Jason Bergkamp (@keksec__org) July 29, 2016This comes after her bizarre seizure moment last week during a campaign stop.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJjHTeo6mVw VIDEO: BIZARRE HILLARY BEHAVIOR CAUGHT ON CAMERA Hillary looks like her inner demons are trying to escape https://t.co/0uIoZVPPWz — art lowe 2012, 2016 (@freedomsforever) July 23, 2016  

Please open, and watch the video's attached in the link below, when one finishes, let it run into the next video. There is no doubt that Hillary Rodham Clinton is not physically fit to run for the Oval Office. What will the Democratic Party do now?

A vacant lot owned by a Jackson woman was foreclosed by Hillsdale County because she failed to pay a $7 late fee on her property taxes. A Freedom of Information Act request found that Pam Baker, a Jackson resident, owed Hillsdale County $7.70 in interest and late fees for delinquent taxes from 2013 on land she owned near Lake LeAnn in Somerset Township. The 2013 taxes on the property, which she owned since 2000, were due on Feb. 14, 2014. Baker says she paid her taxes two weeks late because she was in a car crash seven days before the...

" If some policeman thinks you’re doing something illegal, your life is over. Without money, you cannot hire a lawyer and they can just rob everything you have on a whim."

Prior to the election of AmericaÂ’s longest serving socialist president, our money was backed by gold. Anyone holding our paper currency could demand to exchange it for gold at a set price. In 1913, the gold standard was officially made part of the Federal Reserve and the price of gold was fixed at $20.67 per ounce. The same law mandated that the Federal Reserve kept enough gold on hand to equal 40% of the currency issued at the time.On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn into office for the first time. The day after his inauguration, Roosevelt closed...

The practice of law enforcement using the property of citizens who have not been convicted of a crime as a revenue source is a scourge which needs to be abolished in this country. Fortunately, much of the burden of making this needed change falls on the states and Florida has taken a step in the right direction. (Reason) Some great news in asset forfeiture reform is coming out of Florida. S.B. 1044, approved by the legislature earlier in the month, was signed into law today by Gov. Rick Scott.The big deal with this particular reform is that, in most cases,...

Memo to The Donald: There are ways to acquire property without using government force. "Eminent domain is an absolute necessity," said Donald Trump during Saturday's Republican presidential debate. "Without it," he claimed, "you wouldn't have roads, you wouldn't have hospitals, you wouldn't have anything. You wouldn't have schools, you wouldn't have bridges. You need eminent domain." In fact, though, we would still have roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals. It's a relatively new phenomenon for the government to seize property on behalf of private development projects. And yet, so very many of these projects somehow used to get done. Only one...

The FBI seized four servers from the State Department building a few weeks ago as part of the investigation into classified material improperly stored on Hillary Clinton’s secret email server, particularly the Top Secret documents that have been discovered in her email trove. This revelation comes from Bill Gertz at the Washington Free Beacon, citing anonymous sources familiar with the investigation. Gertz notes that the State Department referred questions about the seized servers to the FBI, which declined to comment on the matter. It would be interesting to know exactly what the FBI computer forensics team is looking for on...

Lyndon McLellan fought the law -- and apparently, he won. The North Carolina business owner for months has been battling the federal government after IRS agents last fall seized $107,000 from him, under a controversial practice known as civil forfeiture. But his attorneys at the Institute for Justice announced Thursday that the IRS and Department of Justice have moved to dismiss the case and give him back his money. (snip) Two months ago, the government offered McLellan 50 percent of his money back and warned him against chasing publicity, even going so far as to suggest it would rile people...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has crafted a new policy that would allow government officials to seize bank accounts involved in financial structuring schemes prior to filing criminal charges against the individuals who own those accounts. The new policy stems from the Justice Department’s ongoing review of its asset forfeiture program. The policy is aimed at preventing criminals from making a series of currency transactions under a certain monetary threshold in order to evade reporting the transaction to the authorities, according to a department statement. Those types of transactions typically lead to “the most serious illegal banking transactions” and occur...

A routine traffic stop turned into a drug interrogation for an elderly couple in Walton County. CBS46 began investigating the incident when the couple passing through Georgia complained that a deputy crossed the line. Charles Tharp, 69, never expected that his family vacation would end the way it did. He and his wife had just visited their grandchild in Texas and were headed back home to North Carolina when a Walton County Sheriff's deputy stopped them. “It just seemed a little unusual because we're not speeding and we're always careful drivers,” said Charles Tharp. Tharp and his wife were told...

A quick glance at the Federal Register (Vol. 80, No. 37, p. 9987-88) today reveals that Attorney General Eric Holder, who earned cautious praise last month for a small reform to the federal equitable sharing program, has now delegated authority to the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to seize and “administratively forfeit” property involved in suspected drug offenses. Holder temporarily delegated this authority to the ATF on a trial basis in 2013, and today made the delegation permanent while lauding the ATF for seizing more than $19.3 million from Americans during the trial period....

When Carole Hinders answered a knock at the front door of her home in August 2013, she was confronted by two IRS agents. They told her they had just cleaned out the entire bank account of the restaurant, Mrs. Lady’s Mexican Food, that Hinders had owned and operated in tiny Spirit Lake, Iowa, for the past 30 years. The IRS seized more than $32,000. (snip) The aggressive tactics adopted by law enforcement in structuring cases are, perhaps, unsurprising given that the proceeds of forfeited property are funneled back to the very agencies responsible for the forfeiture — an arrangement that...

Andrew Clyde, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq, started his small firearms store in Athens, Ga., in the 1990s. Over the years, he watched his business grow. And then, on April 12, 2013, two IRS agents swooped in and seized nearly a million dollars from his company's bank account. Clyde was on the wrong end of a murky federal program that allows agencies to seize assets they suspect could be tied to criminal activity -- even without actual criminal activity.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a blow to the constitutional rights of citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Heien v. State of North Carolina that police officers are permitted to violate American citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights if the violation results from a “reasonable” mistake about the law on the part of police. Acting contrary to the venerable principle that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the Court ruled that evidence obtained by police during a traffic stop that was not legally justified can be used to prosecute the person if police were reasonably mistaken that the person had...