Free Republic

It's the stuff of libertarian dreams. The IRS admits that it wrongfully took money from innocent citizens, and it gives the money back. This is actually happening to victims of a little-known form of civil asset forfeiture carried out by the IRS on the premise of "structuring" violations. In case you didn't know, depositing or withdrawing just under $10,000 from your bank account multiple times is viewed as suspicious and possibly criminal activity. In a victory for lawmakers working to make it harder for the government to take property from innocent Americans, the Internal Revenue Service plans to give people...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it will herd uninsured Americans into Obamacare plans this fall by targeting young adults and working with the IRS to root out people who paid a penalty for lacking coverage last year. Officials said people who were fined under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate can expect to receive a paper notice that explains their coverage options on the law’s web-based exchanges. The state of Massachusetts is already working with its revenue agency to locate the uninsured, and the Obama administration said those efforts appeared to be working. The Health and Human Services Department said...

Let’s get it straight. Government self-interest is opposed to the Constitution and individual freedom. State and individual self-interest - embodied in the Constitution and state and individual freedom - is opposed to government self-interest. By its very nature the central government is against the interests of the states and the people. That is why we have a Constitution, to keep this potential monster in its constitutional cage. Again, let’s get it straight. Political government basically does only one thing well: coerce and kill. Government is VERY GOOD at coercion and killing. A good government, limited by the rule of law,...

Former Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) wrote an op ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he raised the question of why so many federal agents are authorized to carry weapons. In the op ed, Coburn wondered why the IRS needs assault rifles, why the Department of Veterans Affairs is arming 3,700 employees, and why the number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). IRS Commissioner John Koskinen responded that "it should be readily apparent why my agency needs to be armed. Taxes are very unpopular. Taxpayers...

President Barack Obama again failed to push through additional gun control efforts in Congress — even after blaming the terrorist attack in Florida on Republicans and supporters of the Second Amendment. White House press secretary Josh Earnest revealed that Obama was “profoundly frustrated” after Senate Republicans again blocked anti-gun legislation. Earnest suggested that the president would again turn to executive authority to try and enact gun control policies on his own.

While the French were fighting for what turned out to be a false equality through government control, Americans were fighting to obtain and hold on to unrestricted opportunity and freedom from government control To today’s liberal leftists, equality means taking from those who have abundance and transferring it to those in lack. But it fails to factor in the economic consequences of this transfer of wealth. The abundance they are drawing from begins to shrink as economic development is stifled by government policies. Communism and socialism promise equality but bring equality of poverty except for a privileged government bureaucracy and...

House Republicans are pressing efforts to safeguard the First Amendment rights of scientific skeptics who dissent from what they consider the Obama administration’s alarmist position on climate change, according to letters to 17 state attorneys general. The series of letters, sent Friday and signed by 19 of the 22 Republican members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, renew an earlier request to the state attorneys general for information detailing their communications with environmental organizations. They also ask for communications between employees for the state attorneys general and the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the White House.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- The Latest on the Orlando gay nightclub massacre (all times local): 12:20 p.m. Vice President Joe Biden is calling for banning civilian ownership of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines following the mass shooting in Orlando.

OUR FOUNDING FATHERS understood that tyranny wasn’t likely to come from a foreign invasion but from the step-by-step erosion of our freedoms by an expanding government. This is what we are facing today.... ...ominous trends threaten us... ...the typical professional in this country unknowingly commits several federal crimes during a typical workday. If Uncle Sam wants to get you, he can. – An 11-year-old girl in Virginia, who saved a woodpecker from a cat, was hit with a fine for “transporting” a protected species. – A fisherman who threw back some undersize fish he had caught was hauled into court...

In what is being called “the mother of all corrections,” the American Journal of Political Science has admitted that the results of a study it published were unintentionally misrepresented. The study, “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies,” purported to show that conservatives are marked by an authoritarian streak. After the study had garnered much scholarly attention, Steven Ludeke and Stig H. R. Rasmussen of the University of Southern Denmark noticed that the data did not support the published results. The correct conclusion is that liberals, particularly economic liberals, lean toward authoritarianism. This study, which was...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a big win for the Obama administration, a federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the government's "net neutrality" rules that require internet providers to treat all web traffic equally.The 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is a victory for consumer groups and content companies such as Netflix that want to prevent online content from being blocked or channeled into fast and slow lanes.

This week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that government has a right to decide who will and won't be permitted to carry a concealed firearm. The ruling came in the case of Edward Peruta v. County of San Diego. The County denied Peruta and his fellow plaintiffs concealed carry permits on the grounds that they did not prove a need for them. Writing for the majority, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain asserted that "under California law, police authorities are empowered to determine who shall be allowed to bear arms and for what reasons. The plaintiffs' contention that personal self-defense was...

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — A recently launched government-controlled, home-delivery food distribution system in Venezuela has further riled the restive country, prompting fears that the state may withhold basic items from those who do not support it. The new system, known as Local Supply and Production Committees, or CLAP in Spanish, is meant to reduce hours-long lines outside of supermarkets. Lines, lootings and black market sales of everything from diapers to cooking oil have grown as shortages of basic commodities in the country have worsened in recent months.

The Washington National Cathedral says it will remove two images of the Confederate battle flag from the building's stained glass windows. Then the church will hold a period of public discussion on issues of race, slavery and justice, and revisit the question of how to treat other depictions of the Civil War on the windows. The windows in question memorialize Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson; they were installed in 1953 after lobbying by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. They feature images from the lives of the two generals, and include two Confederate battle flags. A...

Boy Scouts participation off limits to judges, says California Supreme Court By Kellan Howell - The Washington Times - Saturday, January 24, 2015 The Supreme Court of California announced Friday that California judges will no longer be permitted to participate in nonprofit youth groups like the Boy Scouts of America due to the groups position on gay rights issues. But justices have lifted a ban on judges belonging to a military organization now that LGBT people can serve openly in the U.S. Armed Services, The Bay Area Reporter reported Thursday. The court found fault with the scouting group, which does...

Yesterday we wrote about an already troubling attempt by Senator John Cornyn to attach a dangerous amendment to the Senate's ECPA reform bill that would massively expand what kinds of electronic communications the FBI has access to (as we noted, the FBI already pretends it has access to this very info, so really this law would be papering over the FBI's illegal collection of this info). But there's another amendment, put forth by Senator Jeff Sessions, that is just as, if not more, troubling. It's basically creating a massive loophole in the 4th Amendment, saying that any and all basic...

The debate over the future of Detroit’s public schools took a nasty turn over the weekend when the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press called for Republican state legislators to be murdered for disagreeing with him. “We really ought to round up the lawmakers who took money to protect and perpetuate the failing charter-school experiment in Detroit, sew them into burlap sacks with rabid animals, and toss them into the Straits of Mackinac,” wrote Stephen Henderson. The crime the lawmakers were guilty of? Supporting expanded choice for Detroit’s failing school system. “A sack. An animal. A lake. No...

Republicans controlling the Senate are abandoning an effort to use their power over the federal purse strings to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The more pragmatic approach with a huge $164 billion spending measure reflects a hope by top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to remove veto bait from must-pass spending bills in hopes of advancing them more easily. …

Full Title:FLASHBACK: Obama Said “Not a Smidgen of Corruption” in IRS Scandal – Now We Know Over 400 Conservative Groups TargetedRemember this? In February 2014 Barack Obama told Bill O’Reilly that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS scandal.This weekend the IRS finally admitted it targeted over 400 conservative groups for intrusive scrutiny. The Washington Times reported:The government released names of 426 organizations. Another 40 were not released as part of the list because they had already opted out of being part of the class-action suit. That total is much higher than the 298 groups the...

The San Jose police department is under increasing scrutiny over charges that they allowed Trump supporters to be attacked by violent rioters following a Trump event. What has gone largely unreported, is that police chief Eddie Garcia is affiliated with the far left group La Raza.