Free Republic

We have all said it time and time again, Obama is NOT a Christian. He is a Muslim, he even bows down to Muslim leaders, but will give no respect to Christan leaders. We have for many years seen the courts make rulings based on their belief that our founding fathers did not want God anywhere near our government. Well, if we are supposed to be a country who's government is by and for the people, and it is people who wrote the preambles of the US Constitution and the State Constitutions, then God is very much as part of...

ALT LAKE CITY -- Utah lawmakers are considering following Montana's lead and claiming state's rights in the war over gun control. The Montana Legislature passed and its governor signed into law a measure making guns that are made and kept within state boundaries exempt from federal regulations. That means they're exempt from things like background checks, licensing and registration.

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s ability to do the same. This study improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: (1) it includes measures of social and personal...

Although Gov. Brad Henry vetoed similar legislation 10 days earlier, House members Monday again approved a resolution claiming Oklahoma’s sovereignty. Unlike House Joint Resolution 1003, House Concurrent Resolution 1028 does not need the governor’s approval. The House passed the measure 73-22. It now goes to the Senate. "We’re going to get it done one way or the other,” said the resolutions’ author, Rep. Charles Key, R-Oklahoma City. "I think our governor is out of step.” House Democrats objected, saying the issue already had been taken up and had been vetoed, but House Speaker Pro Tempore Kris Steele, R-Shawnee, ruled the...

The States still have the power and the means to bring the Federal Government into compliance with the intent of the Founders, but to do so they must be willing to kill the Sacred Cow of American politics - democracy. Mostly unheralded and unknown, the Founding Fathers feared and rejected it. Examination of Farrand's Records, (The minutes and journal of the 1787 convention) clearly reveals the Founders' intent. For instance: Gerry, "The evils we experience (in the confederation) flow from an excess of democracy." Madison describing Randolph: "the General Object (of the Convention) was to find a cure for the...

Politics » Conservative lawmakers want to keep firearms liberally accessible. Some Utah legislators are eyeing a bill aimed at preventing the federal government from regulating guns in the state. Montana's Legislature recently passed a bill that Gov. Brian Schweitzer signed into law that would exempt guns made in the state and kept within its borders from federal regulations, including registration, background checks and dealer-licensing. It's an idea that's appealing to some of Utah's conservative legislators, who say President Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress are strongly anti-gun and are trying to overstep their bounds and infringing on states' rights. "I...

The U.S Constitution "originally" laid out the separation of powers between the federal government and the State governments in the first paragraph of article 1 section 3. How this paragraph accomplished that goal will become clear later in this article. This paragraph states: "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the LEGISLATURE thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote." Then in Article I, section 4 we also find this: "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each...

WASHINGTON – Virulent swine flu spread to 10 U.S. states from coast to coast Wednesday and swept deeper into Europe, extending its global reach as President Barack Obama mourned the first U.S. death, a Mexican toddler who had traveled with his family to Texas. Total American cases surged to nearly 100, and Obama said wider school closings might be necessary. The World Health Organization said the outbreak is moving closer to becoming a full-scale pandemic. Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the organization's top flu expert, told reporters in Geneva that the latest developments are moving the agency closer to raising its pandemic...

Last week the governor of Texas ignited a media firestorm for his remarks involving the idea of secession. He did not call for Texas to secede from the United States. He merely pointed out that the federal government was treading heavily on the sovereignty of the states and that this can not continue indefinitely without a breaking point. The reaction to Governor Perry’s statements has been nothing short of hysterical. He has been called treasonous for making this obvious point and opening up a discussion. I am not calling for secession either, however there is nothing wrong with a healthy...

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top Social Security official says benefits for tens of thousands of people with severe disabilities are being delayed by furloughs and layoffs of state employees around the country. The official, Michael J. Astrue, the commissioner of Social Security, said Sunday that “governors are hurting their own states, their own citizens, and increasing the backlog of claims” by furloughing workers who make disability decisions.

The diversity of the Old South still holds the imagination of many people who come from around the world to see; Southern Belle’s with hoop skirts, Confederate flags and soldier memorials like the Confederate Memorial carving of: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis at Stone Mountain Memorial Park near Atlanta. This story is written in the spirit of the Sesquicentennial, 150th Anniversary of the War Between the States, which will be commemorated throughout the USA from 2011 to 2015. Americans observe Black, Jewish, Hispanic, Native American and Women’s History Month...And in April we also remember ‘Confederate History Month’...

---snip---- In 1994, the Colorado Legislature passed a 10th Amendment resolution and later introduced a bill titled "State Sovereignty Act." Had the State Sovereignty Act passed both houses of the legislature, it would have required all people liable for any federal tax that's a component of the highway users fund, such as a gasoline tax, to remit those taxes directly to the Colorado Department of Revenue. The money would have been deposited in an escrow account called the "Federal Tax Fund" and remitted monthly to the IRS, along with a list of payees and respective amounts paid. If Congress imposed...

Are You Breaking Up With Me?! The threat is only implied in more than two-dozen state sovereignty bills making the rounds in legislatures across the country, except for a New Hampshire bill where the authors didn't hold back. Any law infringing on the state's right to self govern would trigger the dissolution of the nation: "All powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution ... shall revert to the several states individually." The S.C. House of Representatives has approved a resolution with the same state's rights concerns (but omiting the dire consequences), and the Senate is...

I just ran into Patrick Rose at the gym. What a sniveling, worthless, nothing-of-a-man that guy is. I asked him if he knew Leo Berman and was familiar with House Concurrent Resolution No. 50. He looked at me with incredulity and answered me in a condescending tone. He told me "You State Sovereignty people are insane. The State of Texas derives its power from the Federal Government and not the other way around."

California lost the most jobs of all the states, 79,300, in January, while Michigan registered the highest unemployment rate at 11.6 percent, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. South Carolina followed Michigan with an unemployment rate of 10.4 percent. Rhode Island, which had its highest unemployment rate on record, was third at 10.3 percent. Besides losing more jobs than any other state, California had an unemployment rate of 10.1 percent, compared to the national rate of 7.6 percent that month. Since January 2008, the Pacific coast state shed nearly a half million jobs -- the largest decrease in the...

[....] On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be...

Hey,it's free money! Isn't that what they always say - they being state and local officials, and the money being federal grants? We, as in We the People, aren't supposed to notice the strings attached to federal funds, or the unintended consequences that may result from taking them. Maybe every federal grant should come with a warning label: Taking this money could have deleterious effects on your fiscal health. Consider the offer of increased federal funding for states that agree to expand their unemployment benefits. A state can't lose on a deal like that, right? Wrong. Because the states would...

From the Executive Summary: "This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. (snip) ...defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s ability to do the same." Freedom in the 50 States

For small-government die-hards, the $787 billion economic stimulus bill recently passed by Congress isn't a life saver. It's the last straw. Lawmakers across the country are sponsoring resolutions — most of them only symbolic — asserting state sovereignty, in effect the right to ignore any federal law or policies they deem unconstitutional, including the stimulus bill, the No Child Left Behind Act and any new assault rifle ban. (snip) "This has been a progression from (the New Deal) days to today, with the only break being Ronald Reagan," South Carolina state Rep. Michael Pitts said by e-mail. Pitts, a Republican,...

President Obama on Saturday struck back aggressively at critics of his $3.6 trillion budget proposal, casting himself as a populist crusader whose "sweeping change" has angered Washington's entrenched special interests, and promised to fight them. "I realize that passing this budget won't be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington," Mr. Obama said in his weekly video and radio address. Mr. Obama's language was combative and confrontational, as he promised to fight for "American families." "I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists...

President Barack Obama's first budget includes $15 billion a year for renewable energy programs and an ambitious plan to raise $646 billion from a carbon reduction proposal. "Because our future depends on our ability to break free from oil that's controlled by foreign dictators, we need to make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Mr. Obama said Thursday morning. "That's why we'll be working with Congress on legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy." The plan uses money from a cap-and-trade program — which would allow companies to...

Is it possible that state legislators know precisely what they are doing? Whether they know it or not, they are putting the people in the proper position to reclaim their country. Do they have the courage to follow through? (snip) On February 5, 2009, I released a column titled New Hampshire Leads Next American Revolution! At the time, only a handful of states had introduced legislative efforts to reclaim state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the US Constitution. As of February 17th, when I released It’s Time for American Freedom Fighters to Unite, some twenty states had...

President Obama will pledge Tuesday night that the nation "will rebuild, we will recover," as he delivers an address to a joint session of Congress and with a nervous nation watching at home. "While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," Mr. Obama will say, according to excerpts of his remarks. In lofty language, Mr. Obama is expected to promise a new path forward...

"My country has let me down." That's the assessment of an Arizona rancher who was sued by six illegal immigrants he detained on his property and turned over to the Border Patrol in 2004. On Tuesday an eight-member federal jury in Tucson threw out the claim brought by the six illegal aliens that Roger Barnett violated their civil rights when he detained them at gunpoint on his ranch nearly five years ago. The panel also ruled against the plaintiffs' claims of battery and false imprisonment. But the jury did find Barnett liable on four claims of assault and four claims...

I probably should have just listened to Paul Harvey. Though it wasn’t actually Paul Harvey. It was Ron Chapman. And that’s probably the problem. I understand Ron Chapman is a radio legend somewhere, but I don’t live there. So, to me, he’s just an insufferable bore. But I should have been listening anyway. Instead I got an idea. An idea that had been kind of simmering in my head for a week or so. I was trying to think of a way to show that I wasn’t happy. That I was tired of bailouts. That I didn’t want to pay...

Barack Hussein Obama will propose a massive business tax on greenhouse gases in his FY 2010 federal budget to be presented this week.The massive tax increase and power grab was buried at the end on article on Obama's forthcoming budget proposal in The New York Times:On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since companies would pass their...

The "Nationwide Chicago TeaParty" sponsored by the #DONTGO movement, Smart Girl Politics (#SGP), Americans for Tax Reform, Heartland Institute, Top Conservatives on Twitter (#TCOT), and the American Spectator will be February 27 at Noon EST.

Holding signs reading "Stimulate Business, Not Government," "Families Against Porkulus" and "Say No To Generational Theft," protesters opposed to the $787 billion stimulus package have been mobilizing across the country. It started last Monday in Seattle, then moved Tuesday to Denver, where President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law. That was followed by another one in Mesa, Ariz., where Obama unveiled a mortgage rescue plan. Another protest was planned for Saturday outside the office of Rep. Dennis Moore in Overland Park, Kan. The Democrat voted for the stimulus. His office didn't return calls seeking comment. A New Populism? As...

Young smokers say continual taxation is a drag on their habit.Sixth grader Benji Mader, who waits in the playground for recess to be over at Altoona's Washington-Jefferson elementary school, takes a long drag on his Mal Pal candy cigarettes, knowing it might be his last one.End-ward G. Rendell, governor, announced recently that Pennsylvania is joining a long list of states mulling a tax on candy cigarettes to pay for looming deficits brought on by the impeccable government spending practices under his watch.Young smokers aren't amused."I love the iconic pose of a cigarette smoker, I mean, James Dean, Brando, Obama," said...

Joining with the other sovereign state legislation, Texas Rep. Creighton files concurrent resolution which states: WHEREAS, Many federal laws are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and...{snip} WHEREAS, A number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States; now, therefore, be it{snip}RESOLVED, That this serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers; and, be...

American Patrol Report Opinion -- February 1 The Senate passed a stimulus bill has $9.6 billion in aid for California's Medicaid system (medical care for low income families). The house version has $11 billion. The House version has $7.9 billion for California's education system. The Senate version has $4 billion. The fight between the House and Senate is over whether California gets $18.9 billion for schools and health care, or $13.6 billion. And there is much more for California buried in the bill. Illegal immigrants and their anchor baby children cost California about $10 billion per year and this is...

South Mississippi residents interested in weather now have a way to help experts gather rainfall amounts that will be used to give more accurate rain, snow and hail data for the entire country. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network is made up of volunteers from across the country and regional coordinator Robert Ricks said the more people who participate, the more accurate the information. “It’s a national grass-roots effort,” he said. “We try to target weather enthusiasts. The only requirements are a rain gauge, an Internet connection and an e-mail address.” The network, known as CoCoRaHS, started in...

Right Side News' first issue of an eight part series written by Kathy Shaidle. excerpt: Today many Americans are either blissfully ignorant of, or simply indifferent to, the slow, incremental growth of radical Islam in their midst. We sometimes hear about terrorist cells or suspicious Muslim "compounds" on the news. However, these stories represent merely the tip of an Islamic iceberg that could very well doom America. Not today or tomorrow. But in our lifetimes? That is a real possibility. And don't shrug off Islam as "just another religion." Muslim sharia law deems women to be inferior to men, and...

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming. How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big...

When Detroit's auto makers begged for a federal bailout last month, Congress demanded that their CEOs make changes to their operating model in return for a check from Uncle Sam. If only Congress would demand the same from the state and local politicians now seeking $200 billion from federal taxpayers. President Obama has announced that a big check to state governments is part of his stimulus spending plan in order to "save the public sector jobs of teachers, police officers, firefighters, and others who provide vital services." But the states aren't innocent victims. Their revenues have collapsed of late,...

Robert MorleyColumnist The United Ponzi States of America January 20, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com If you thought Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was bad, don’t look now, but you’re in one. Robert Morley Anyone can work a simple swindle. But you need to be a special kind of con man to bilk billions from otherwise intelligent people. Bernard L. Madoff was one such man. Charles Ponzi was another. But the biggest fraud and scam master of all goes by the name of Uncle Sam. Just what does a person have to do to make his name synonymous with fraud? Charles Ponzi, the...

... It seems to me and a lot of other folks that we might label the current bunch of bozos in Congress the Know-Nothing Party because, Democrat or Republican, they have reached a point at which they can be stampeded into voting for the expenditure of huge amounts of money without a clue why or to whom. Now it appears they are getting ready to “stimulate the economy” with a giant, political grab-bag in excess of a trillion dollars. Much like earlier efforts, it is likely to fail while at the same time plunging the nation into deeper and deeper...

The United States will need $1.6 trillion to repair damage to its infrastructure from a massive influx of immigrants, a new report reveals. In his report titled, "The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure," prominent researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein examines 15 categories of infrastructure: airports, border security, bridges, dams and levees, electricity (the power grids), hazardous waste removal , hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation facilities, ports and navigable waterways, public schools, railroads, roads and highways, solid waste and trash, and water and sewer systems. Rubenstein, a financial analyst and former contributing editor of Forbes and economics editor of National Review,...

Federal prosecutors last summer rejected claims that ISNA was unfairly named an unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case. ISNA has admitted ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood is waging, in its own words, "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” And the head of ISNA is going to offer a

Not a week into her tenure, Gov. Beverly Perdue flew to Washington to tell North Carolina's congressional delegation she needs $18 billion to kick-start the economy -- on top of another unspecified amount to fill the state's budget hole.

Everyone is lining up with a case of the 'Gimmies' and the Governors David Paterson, Deval Patrick, Jon Corzine, Jim Doyle, and Ted Strickland are at the front of the line. The governors from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Ohio are asking the federal government for a $1 trillion bailout package, including $250 billion for education and $150 billion in middle class tax cuts. Paterson of New York said his state's budget deficit has surged to $15.4 billion currently from $5 billion in April 2008. "The assistance would be manna for us," Paterson said. As I am sure...

I am not surprised, but I should be. It defies any kind of of uncommon or common sense. What is perfectly clear however is that the world we live in here and now is going to collapse, and hard. All bad things must come to an end eventually. Infusing more green toilet paper into the economy is not going to keep everyone clean and mean in the financial department. Instead, its going to add more fuel to the fire. I am not sure what the government thinks they are doing here. They do not have the cash to bail these...

I am not surprised, but I should be. It defies any kind of of uncommon or common sense. What is perfectly clear however is that the world we live in here and now is going to collapse, and hard. All bad things must come to an end eventually. Infusing more green toilet paper into the economy is not going to keep everyone clean and mean in the financial department. Instead, its going to add more fuel to the fire. I am not sure what the government thinks they are doing here. They do not have the cash to bail these...

A group of Democratic governors warned Friday that without as much as $1 trillion in federal assistance, many states will not be able to pay their bills in the next year. “There are states that are talking as California has of not being able to meet their financial obligations in the coming months,” New York Gov. David Paterson (D) said on a conference call with reporters. California announced in December that all state employees would be forced to take two days of unpaid leave. Paterson was joined by New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D), Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), Ohio...

No modern American president would repeat the fiscal mistake of 1932, in which the federal government tried to balance its budget in the face of a severe recession. The Obama administration will put deficit concerns on hold while it fights the economic crisis. But even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers — state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.

Removing All Doubt Obama Would Cede Southwest to Mexico American Patrol Report -- December 19 "We are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not" Anyone who still doubts that Barack Obama is determined to grant de-facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens should explain to the rest of us why he picked Hilda Solis to be Secretary of Labor. A long-time supporter of la Reconquista, the Mexican takeover of the American Southwest, Solis is also a leader in the movement to silence Americans who speaks out against the invasion, specifically Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. At a...

First, they hand us our Obama-approved tire gauges. Next, they police our odometers. Fresh from North Carolina, here’s the latest Nanny State proposal: Monitoring our odometers and taxing us accordingly. With gas-tax revenues plummeting, the state of North Carolina is looking seriously at taxing motorists for how far they drive. If the “road-use tax” is implemented, it would at first be simple – with the state checking your odometer annually and taxing you based on how many miles you have driven. But transportation experts say new GPS technology could allow the state to

Naming his national security team, President-elect Obama acknowledged that the attacks in Mumbai once again emphasized the threat of terrorism and the importance of these picks for “a new dawn of American leadership.” But Obama’s choice for Secretary of Homeland Security, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, has a record of opposing border control to stop the flow of illegal immigrants (and therefore the criminals, gangs, drug smugglers and terrorists that inevitably accompany it). She also opposes any internal controls to detect and prevent illegals from unlawfully exploiting the benefits and privileges of our society. Under Napolitano, “change” for DHS may mean...

Happy Holidays: Now dispose of all of your ammunition! Every last round! From now on, you will be able to buy only overpriced ammunition that will be registered to you in a government database. Not yet--at least for now. A small company, Ammunition Accountability--which wants to help anti-gunners price and regulate the Second Amendment out of existence, profit at the expense of our rights, or both--has found radical anti-gun legislators in 18 states willing to introduce bills pushing such nonsense. But few anti-gun proposals are so overtly aimed at destroying the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. As we began...

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month claimed some 500 casualties, dead and injured. Among the many questions raised by the outrage, there was a purely practical one: Why was the attack so successful? How could so few terrorists claim so many victims? One obvious answer is firepower. Guns were illegal in the hands of both the terrorists and the victims. The victims obeyed the laws, the terrorists didn’t. The police had guns, of course, but instead of protecting people, they stayed away until the massacre was practically over. Gun laws -- surprise, surprise! -- weren’t strong enough to defend...