Free Republic

As his administration prepares an executive order tightening access to guns, President Obama met Wednesday with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a proponent of new gun laws who has become the chief enemy of the National Rifle Association. Obama has met with many gun control advocates in recent weeks as his aides complete work on a potential order expected to expand background checks on gun sales by closing the so-called "gun show loophole." A timeline on the order -- which has been tangled in legal and administrative questions -- is still unknown. The White House said Wednesday evening...

Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero observed, “No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.” The greatness of our Constitution’s framers is evident in the document they created, which has successfully endured for 228 years – longer than that of any other nation. But today our Constitution, which serves as the foundation for our nation’s law, is routinely ignored or subjected to federal encroachment and judicial overreach at the state, local, and individual levels. Fortunately the framers wisely built-in a simple yet effective remedy to illegitimate laws and judicial encroachment, one which has been successfully used many times...

Mecosta County District Court Judge Peter Jaklevic is a former career prosecutor, like all righteous judges, and knows the purpose of jurors: to convict like they're told. So when Keith Wood — a wild-eyed former pastor and current lawless anarchist — began distributing seditious incitement to destroy the judicial system, Judge Peter Jaklevic knew just what to do: arrest him. " A 39-year-old former pastor was arrested and jailed in Mecosta County after he handed out fliers informing people about jury nullification in front of the county courthouse. " Keith Wood said he was handing out pamphlets from the Fully...

The National Security Agency has significantly enhanced its capabilities for detecting cyber-threats in the two-plus years since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden pilfered and disclosed classified information. The multi-layered capabilities, which include user behavior analytics, now protect a private cloud that provides storage, computing and operational analytics to the intelligence community, CIO Greg Smithberger tells CIO.com. "There are a number of initiatives we have underway there to really use a lot of our big data analytics, a lot of the technology we have developed for our foreign intelligence mission, as well as technology we've developed inside our Information Assurance Directorate,"...

A poster showing Barack Obama is seen in the background as customers line up to look at firearms at a gun shop in Fort Worth, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008. The Cheaper Than Dirt gun store recorded a record day of gun sales the day after the election of President-elect Barack Obama and is having trouble keeping up with the demand for assault riffles. (Flickr) William La Jeunesse reported today on FOX News that 100 million guns have been sold in the US since Obama became president. Today's increase in sales is nationwide not just in California. La Jeunesse...

One problem is that the people on the no-fly list (as well as the broader terror watch list from which it is drawn) have not been convicted of doing anything wrong. They are merely suspected of having terror connections. And the United States doesn't generally punish or penalize people unless and until they have been charged and convicted of a crime. In this case, the government would be infringing on a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — and yes, like it or not, the right to buy a gun is a constitutional right according to the U.S. Supreme Court....

Google’s chairman wants algorithms to censor the internet for hate speech - Quartz In an op-ed for The New York Times (paywall), Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, inserted himself directly into the middle of a heated debate about the line between fighting terrorism’s online reach and internet censorship. “It’s our responsibility to demonstrate that stability and free expression go hand in hand,” he writes. “We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media—sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment.” His words came just after Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, called...

Contending that its ability to adequately monitor, measure and police tax-deductible donations is greatly hampered by insufficient data, the IRS is demanding that all organizations receiving such donations obtain donors' Social Security numbers and forward this information to the IRS. "It's bad enough that the law allows a person to reduce the amount of tax he pays to us by deducting charitable contributions," Commissioner John Koskinen lamented. "What's worse is that the task of verifying the amount and legitimacy of these donations is tedious and time-consuming. Having all donors' Social Security numbers supplied by the receiving organization would substantially ease...

Nonsensical Gun Control is the kind that wants to disarm you just when you need it most. It goes beyond nonsensical really. It goes all the way to tyrannical, murderous, and conspiratorial. Former inmate of Dachau, Theodore Haas, was asked by Aaron Zelman, founder, ‘Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership’ “Did the camp inmates ever bring up the topic, “If only we were armed before, we would not be here now”?” Hass responded: “Many, many times. Before Adolph Hitler came to power, there was a black market in firearms, but the German people had been so conditioned to be...

Saturday, December 05, 2015 ILLINOIS Kirk sides with U.S. Senate Democrats on gun rights WASHINGTON DC - During four crucial votes on Second Amendment issues, U.S. Senator Mark Kirk departed from the Republican majority last week in D.C. Illinois' junior senator chose instead to vote with senior Senator Dick Durbin and the Democrat minority. Kirk was the only Republican to vote with Democrats on the following votes on December 3:

In the old Soviet Union, there was a class of citizen known as the Refusenik. In Russian, the word was отказник, pronounced 'otkaznik'. There were two definitions for this label: One, people who were not allowed to emigrate -- especially Russian Jews -- and two, people who willfully disobeyed laws as a form of protest. As America careens into a fascist state most reminiscent of the former Soviet Union, it will be necessary and useful to adopt the techniques of the oppressed citizenry of that empire. As free speech is squelched via 'hate speech' laws, we will need to adopt...

The massacre of 14 unarmed civilians in San Bernardino, California by two Islamic terrorists this week provided Democrats with more ammunition in their argument for stricter gun-control. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) called for legislation that would empower the FBI to bar anyone on its "watch list" from legally purchasing a firearm. "Right now, regulations are focused on blocking persons with demonstrated histories of criminal or mental problems from obtaining weapons," Pelosi observed. "To often a person with no previous record of this sort commits a crime with a gun. By trusting the judgment of the government's best...

he day after a horrific shooting spree by what appears to be a radicalized Muslim man and his partner in San Bernardino, California, Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged to a group of Muslim activists that she would take aggressive action against anyone who used "anti-Muslim rhetoric" that "edges toward violence." Speaking to the audience at the Muslim Advocate's 10th anniversary dinner Thursday, Lynch said her "greatest fear" is the "incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric" in America and vowed to prosecute any guilty of what she deemed violence-inspiring speech. "The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my...

A federal judge has banished the Baby Jesus and the Three Wise Men from an Indiana high school's Christmas musical. U.S. District Court Judge Jon DeGuilio, appointed to the bench by President Obama, issued an injunction against Concord Community Schools on Dec. 2. The court order forbids students from presenting a live Nativity scene during the Concord High School's Christmas Spectacular. The judge said that portion of the show is overtly religious in nature. "The living nativity scene impermissibly conveys an endorsement of religion and thus runs afoul of the Establishment Clause," the judge wrote in his ruling.

WASHINGTON — One day after 14 people were slain in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid on Thursday blamed lawmakers for not acting on an "epidemic of gun violence" and described the National Rife Association as the Republican Party's "quasi-militant wing." "Republicans must decide if they are more scared of gun violence or the NRA," the Nevadan said. Delivering his comments on the Senate floor, Reid ticked off a list of some of the nation's deadliest mass shootings in recent years that included the young students killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A third-grader was taken off a school bus and questioned for hours by police because another girl falsely reported the 8-year-old had chemicals in her backpack, her family said in a lawsuit Thursday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, which filed the federal lawsuit against the town of Tiverton, compared the case to that of a Texas teenager who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school in September. The group said such actions terrorize and traumatize children. The family's lawyer, Amato DeLuca, said police essentially arrested the girl with no evidence. They...

Should Obama be impeached and removed from office for being on a Terror watch list? With terrorism in the news the Democratic national socialist party has once again trotted out one of it's perennially favorite scams: The "terror watch list" issue. They have few concerns about the importation of terrorist 'Refugees' [and future illegal Democratic voters] and the down play the threat of ISIS (Daesh) but suddenly become agitated over the possibility of using those issues against their enemies. Yes, there nothing like a serious crisis that can be used for crass political gain to energize the Democratic national socialist...

(CNSNews.com) - At news conference in Paris on Tuesday, President Obama said "the most elegant way" to reduce carbon emissions is "to put a price on it." He was responding to a reporter who asked Obama, "I wonder if you see any political path back home toward putting a price on carbon?" "I have long believed that the most elegant way to drive innovation and to reduce carbon emissions is to put a price on it. This is a classic market failure," Obama replied. "If you open up an Econ 101 textbook, it will say the market's very good about...

The United States recognizes its role in contributing to climate change and its responsibility to address it, U.S. President Barack Obama said.... Shortly afterward, French President Francois Hollande acknowledged the magnitude of both events. "France is receiving 150 heads of state," the President said. "Never have the stakes been so high because this is about the future of the planet, the future of life. And yet two weeks ago, here in Paris itself, a group of fanatics was sowing the seeds of death in the streets."

<p>COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The latest on the shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.</p> <p>A friend says of one of the three people who died in a shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic was an Iraq War veteran who had recently left the military.</p>