Free Republic

A Phoenix man who violated city zoning laws by hosting a Bible study in the privacy of his home has started serving a 60-day jail sentence for his crimes. Michael Salman was found guilty in the City of Phoenix Court of 67 code violations. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail along with three years of probation and a $12,180 fine. A spokesperson for the city attorney confirmed that Salman reported to a county jail Monday afternoon. Members of Salman’s Bible study group posted video of their teacher as he self-reported to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. It was...

The powerful American gun lobby worries about the reach of a global pact on conventional arms. Delegations from almost 200 countries convened at the United Nations this month to come up with a new treaty that would regulate international trade in conventional weapons. The effort, supported by the Obama administration, has very vocal opposition: the American gun lobby. Proponents of the Arms Trade Treaty argue that inadequate controls over the international arms market result in armed violence against civilians by human rights violators, criminals, gangs, warlords, and terrorists. The treaty would require governments to deny weapons transfers to states that...

CANYON LAKE [CALIFORNIA} (CBS) — A city in Riverside County will consider a plan to force all pet owners to spay and neuter their pets. KCAL9′s Jeff Nguyen reports not everyone in the guarded and gated city of Canyon Lake located just east of Lake Elsinore likes the proposal. Marlene Marich’s dog Skylar is fixed and has a microchip, but she doesn’t like the idea that the Canyon Lake city council is considering a plan to make the spaying, neutering and microchipping of cats and dogs mandatory. “That’s going too far, asking them to do that,” said dog owner Marlene...

DETROIT (AP) — Chevrolet is trying to pull more customers into its dealerships by offering a money-back guarantee on new cars and trucks. The General Motors brand said Tuesday that buyers can get refunds if they return their 2012 or 2013 vehicles for any reason. The guarantee lasts for up to 60 days from the date of purchase. Chevy Marketing Chief Chris Perry says research shows that customers like it when companies show confidence in their cars and trucks. Customers pay a set price equal to the discount GM offers to parts supply companies, including incentives. If they aren't satisfied with the vehicle,...

Second Amendment: The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on an Arms Trade Treaty that transcends borders and may even trample our Constitutional right to bear arms. Every indication is that the president will sign it. Like the New Start and Law of the Sea treaties before it, as well as the Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21, the Arms Trade Treaty being finalized at the U.N. this month is one of those feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along pieces of parchment whose net effect is to accomplish little except to eat away at American sovereignty and freedom. Just as the world's worst human...

With the economy threatening to fall into another recession and job growth plummeting, Obama came before the American people today demanding taxes be raised on those making over $250,000 a year, including what he admitted would include 3% of small businesses. Even if that 3% is correct, which is disputed, that 3% means a tax increase on 900,000 small businesses. That's nearly a million small business owners who will now be even more crippled and have less capital available to expand their payrolls -- which of course means fewer jobs for the middle class and the poor who would like...

The United Nations is deliberating over a treaty that will place comprehensive limits on the international weapons trade. The language of the draft agreement is so expansive it wouldn’t take an Obama-appointed judge very long to extend the treaty to cover the domestic firearms market as well. If American jurists continue to be enamored by the popular trend to consider international precedence when making U.S. rulings, you can kiss the Second Amendment goodbye. This week, the U.N. General Assembly began formal discussion of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which seeks to establish “common international standards for the import, export and...

President Obama is obviously panicked. Last month Obama and his supporters spent a lot more than Mitt Romney, but even with that cash advantage and the media on their side, the polls haven't budged. Moreover, the President and his campaign have been running around frantically trying to find something that will stick to Romney, be it provable lies about his outsourcing and outright smears involving offshore accounts. Still, Obama can't get above 47% and Romney hasn't even started campaigning in earnest or spending the $160 million he has on hand. Today, in yet another desperate attempt to win a news...

With the Supreme Court giving President Obama’s new health care law a green light, federal and state officials are turning to implementation of the law — a lengthy and massive undertaking still in its early stages, but already costing money and expanding the government. The Health and Human Services Department “was given a billion dollars implementation money,” Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana said. “That money is gone already on additional bureaucrats and IT programs, computerization for the implementation.” “Oh boy,” Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute said. “HHS has a huge amount of work to do and the states...

The House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved a resolution that urges President Obama to resist any international attempts to regulate the Internet. The United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will meet in Dubai this December and initiatives that will put the Internet under greater government control are expected to be up for vote. The committee-approved resolution, introduced by Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), is intended to show the international community that the United States is united behind an open and innovative Internet, free from government control. But the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), the ITU meeting that will...

PHOENIX -- Voters could get the right to overrule federal laws and mandates under the terms of an initiative filed late Thursday. The Arizona Constitution already says the federal Constitution "is the supreme law of the land." This measure, if approved in November, it would add language saying that federal document may not be violated by any government -- including the federal government. More to the point, it would allow Arizonans "to reject any federal action that they determine violates the United States Constitution." That could occur through a vote of the state House and Senate with consent of the...

I came of age when the word “drive-by” entered the American lexicon. By high school graduation, I lost one cousin to gun violence and another was incarcerated for a gun crime. I know many harmed by guns and even more who feared the possibility. I always wonder if, but for the Second Amendment, there would be a more radical commitment to compromise and peacefully working through easy and difficult issues. In writing the Second Amendment, the Framers didn't envision the kind of gun toting that is permitted across this country today.... I am not naïve enough to believe that doing...

From the diseased mind of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: (Emphasis added where appropriate. Snarky comments from me are in [brackets].) *** "Every American deserves to have a clean, safe and healthy environment. Today, we understand better than ever before that our health is not only dependent on what happens in the doctor’s office but is determined by the air we breathe, the water we drink and the communities we call home. Over the past two years, the Administration and our agency have taken unprecedented steps to ensure strong protection from environmental and health hazards for all Americans. There’s nothing more...

A University of Maryland study funded by the Department of Homeland Security found that “persons reverent about individual liberty are likely to be right-wing terrorists.” “It makes perfect sense when you think about it,” said Secretary Janet Napolitano. “The phrase ‘individual liberty’ doesn’t appear in any of our nation’s founding documents. Its advocates are clearly and suspiciously out of step with America’s basic values.” if you missed any of this week's other semi-news posts you can find them at... http://constitutionclub.org/2012/07/07/semi-news-a-satire-of-recent-news-26/

ASSIGNMENT OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COMMUNICATIONS FUNCTIONS By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions. Survivable, resilient, enduring, and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial, and tribal governments; private sector...

Miffed that the Administration's dream of a nationwide high-speed rail passenger system may be derailed by uncooperative states, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he wished the US were more like China. Thus far Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin have opted out of participating in the President's high-speed rail scheme. “In China the government doesn't have to put up with people thwarting their plans,” LaHood explained. “If the top guy says do something, everyone has to go along. They don't have state legislatures or governors deciding they don't want to pony up their share of the cost for the rail program. And...

“I disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling and believe that state governments were intended to serve as a check on the federal government,” said Ritze, R-Broken Arrow. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is better known as ObamaCare, is an example of federal overreach and my legislation will authorize the state to resist it and ban the enforcement of it.”

“A republic, if you can keep it.” Ben Franklin Masked by chatter around judicial wrangling, electoral ramifications and how the surprising Obamacare decision impacts policy, many miss the wretched significance of Chief Justice Roberts’ twisted logic. He has empowered runaway government certain to incite chaos. The Affordable Care Act reflects the logical continuation of a decades-long drift toward domineering by Washington over every facet of life. Not logical as in likely to succeed. Few government initiatives do. But logical because rather than scuttle past failures, subsequent congresses spawn new efforts to offset what prior funding merely squandered. Taxpayers already footed...

Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington — too often, Republicans — who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by them, to use their wisdom instead of their cleverness. President Bush 41 epitomized these betrayals when he broke his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. He paid the price when he quickly went from high approval ratings as president to someone defeated for...

Who does President Barack Obama think he is that he can change the wording of the Declaration of Independence? Again and again he presumes to quote the great Declaration while making a significant change: he omits the word “Creator.” Americans know that the Declaration of Independence proclaims as a matter of fact that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But when Obama recites this line, he omits the word “Creator.” Listen carefully to how Obama censors that famous line. Here are his own words: “all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with...

Hot Air Day is upon us. On July 4 hot air will spew forth all over the country as dignitaries deliver homilies to our “freedom and democracy” and praise “our brave troops” who are protecting our freedom by “killing them over there before they come over here.” Not a single one of these speeches will contain one word of truth. No speaker will lament the death of the US Constitution or urge his audience to action to restore the only document that protects their liberty. No speaker will acknowledge that in the 21st century the Bush/Obama Regime, with the complicity...

Declaration of Dependence When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for One Man to create political bands which shall bind a people unto himself, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and more equal station to which the Laws of Alinsky and of Alinsky's god Lucifer entitles him, a decent self-respect and care for the opinions of posterity requires that he should declare the methods which impel him to the Throne. I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, but that I am more Equal than others; that...

Two hundred thirty and six years ago our founding forebears risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to secure their liberty and bequeath it to their heirs. So precious and fragile, they sought to protect it from every enemy and thief, be they foreign or domestic. Time and again their inheritors were called upon to defend that treasured heirloom from enemies foreign with their labor, their ingenuity, and too often their blood. To secure it from that most rapacious robber, ourselves, they again called upon their ingenuity and wisdom to devise a system of constitutional domestic government based upon limiting...

A local libertarian think tank’s recent email blast to 12,000 teachers encouraging them to drop their union membership has further inflamed tense relations between the Clark County School District and the local teachers union.

  We conservatives keep arguing , “We are a nation of laws.�  I now think that is wrong.  Or at least not accurate.  For quite a while we have really been “a nation of whatever Judge Judy thinks the law the says.�  But we must remember that the Stamp Act, which riled our forefathers to revolution, was also a “law.�  So it ain’t just ANY law that guides us or that we will abide by.  It is “just� laws.   RIGHTEOUS laws.  Reverend Martin Luther King said it most eloquently: “A just law is a man made code that squares with...

First Amendment: The bizarre ObamaCare decision leaves unresolved the separate issue of whether government can define what a church is and what it can do. Will the courts also redefine the "free exercise" of religion? For now, ObamaCare remains largely intact and so does its attempt to rewrite the First Amendment by prohibiting the free exercise of religion through its mandate that religious institutions provide contraceptive coverage in violation of their church teachings and religious consciences. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty says it will move forward with litigation challenging a requirement from the federal health care law that employers...

President Barack Obama hailed the US Supreme Court’s narrow 5-4 decision to uphold his signature Affordable Care Act as “a victory for freedom.” “By affirming the legality of our health care plan, the Court has ensured that every American will be free from the worry of having no insurance,” the President said. “By compelling everyone to purchase insurance we are freeing them to enjoy the benefits of medical coverage and relieving them of the necessity to plan ahead and decide for themselves whether get this insurance.” The president attempted to reconcile the compulsory nature of the health care mandate with...

Press Secretary Jay Carney sought to get out ahead of the GOP's campaign rhetoric alleging that Obamacare is a huge tax imposed on the middle class. “There's no way this is a tax,” Carney insisted. “The President doesn't call it a tax. The legislation doesn't say it's a tax. Calling it a tax is idiotic. The President has made it quite clear that the $2,000 a person has to pay for refusing to buy health insurance is a punishment for disobedience, not a tax.” The fact that the Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare was founded on Chief Justice John Roberts'...

Led by feckless chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the ObamaCare law by a 5-to-4 decision, with Roberts voting with liberals Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. While the decision means many harmful things for the American public, the Second Amendment community remains greatly affected, as the law requires Americans’ medical information to be culled and entered into a national database. Centralizing these medical records will allow the FBI to troll a list of Americans for ailments such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to deny them their gun rights, in the same way that the Veterans...

So now, it is the federal government that picks and chooses the laws that shall be enforced, and unwarranted privilege is given to the illegal alien criminal to sidestep the law, but all citizens should be wary of crossing the line and daring to pursue their U.S. Constitutional justice. When the lawless decide the laws and the law abiding citizens become the victims of this presidential imposed lawlessness now unleashed upon the nation, every citizen must stand for regaining justice for the citizen, the family and for each and every American. Justice Scalia is quite clear where he stands on...

The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end. As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is - and it’s huge - it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now? First,...

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Why didn't Congress call it a tax, then? SG VERRILLI: Well - CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You're telling me they thought of it as a tax, they defended it on the tax power. Why didn't they say it was a tax? SG VERRILLI: They might have thought, Your Honor, that calling it a penalty as they did would make it more effective in accomplishing its objective. But it is — in the Internal Revenue Code it is collected by the IRS on April 15th. I don't think this is a situation in which you can say - CHIEF...

I originally penned this back when I was a n00b. It is, I admit, somewhat corny, but I think after today's debacle in the Supreme Court, I think it's worth revisiting. After all, our future now looks a whole lot like this, thanks to the vile John Roberts. God help us all. ********************************* It was a cold winter morning. Mary Jane was happy she wasn't pregnant during the summer. All of her friends who had been pregnant during the summer were universally miserable. This cool weather was a welcome treat, as she remembered that awful time in Florida when she...

Barry Friedman, a New York University law professor who wrote a brief supporting Obamacare, argued that by affirming the ability to regulate with taxing power, the decision created a precedent for future regulation along these lines. “They can’t make you eat broccoli, but they can tax you for not eating it,” Friedman joked, by way of summarizing the meaning of the decision. This is, of course, a reference to what Jonathan Bernstein has called the Broccoli Tyranny argument. If Friedman is right, then the upshot is: Broccoli Tyranny lives. Friedman pointed to this segment of the decision:

For those of you who hope to overturn all these huge government power grabs by election this November, name one tyranny in history that was overturned by popular vote. This week the SCOTUS has stamped 'closed' to the Constitution, state's rights, voter's rights... For almost a century the Marxists have been trying to run over the Constitution; this week it is signed, sealed and buried. Once again I call for a Constitutional Convention of states with a view towards secession! The country that used to be called 'The United States of America' will squabble and pettifog over all these issues,...

What say you to the king? He deemeth that thou shalt buy insurance, or face the wrath of a dictator scorn. You ready to stand on your feet? Or are you living on your knees?

Will Mark Levin blow a gasket ? Will he be depressed or on heavy medication? Legal precedent is set for perpetuity now. The Govt. can do literally, ANYTHING to you. Wickard v. Filburn was the 1st step, the ObamaDeathCare USSC ruling was the coup de grace. We do know he has quoted John Locke on many occasion including his published works so let`s review what Locke said regarding out of control government: " Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into...

The Supreme Court opinion on ObamaCare runs to 193 pages. It is the size of a book, only more boring than any book anyone would ever want to read — and that is true despite the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the worst writer on the court, didn’t write it. I’ve been making a valiant effort to read it, but because I have other things to do with my life, I abandoned the darn thing about one-third of the way through. For now, bottom line is sufficient. Per the Supreme Court, ObamaCare imposes a tax on people who refuse to...

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

WASHINGTON — As the nation’s capital prepared Wednesday for the Supreme Court’s long-awaited ruling on President Obama’s healthcare law, the White House was unusually quiet. The ruling on Obama’s biggest domestic accomplishment could be among the most consequential events in his presidency, but he will learn about it at the same time as the rest of the nation, receiving no advanced warning as he does for such government actions as the release of unemployment statistics. So, a White House that so often pre-spins the news has maintained a studied silence about Obama’s plans. His staff won't even say whether he...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld the first-ever U.S. proposed rules governing heat-trapping greenhouse gases, clearing a path for sweeping regulations affecting vehicles, coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. Handing a setback to industry and a victory to the Obama administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon dioxide is a public danger and the decision to set limits for emissions from cars and light trucks were "neither arbitrary nor capricious." The ruling, which addresses four separate lawsuits, upholds the underpinnings of the...

Tulsa, Oklahoma City officials destroyed resident Denise Morrison’s “survival garden” because “this abnormal use of her property was causing anxiety in the neighborhood.” Morrison started the garden after she lost her job. The garden consisted of food and medicinal plants. Before embarking on her agricultural venture, Morrison researched City ordinances to ensure she complied. “Lack of compliance was not the issue,” said City Zoning Director, Leroy Fiat. “The fact that there are no official rules against what she did doesn’t matter. No one else in the city does this.” As for her nutritional and medical needs, Fiat advised that “there...

Sam Donaldson, who regularly treated President Ronald Reagan with disrespect, feels he knows exactly why Neil Munro of the right-leaning Daily Caller treated Barack Obama with disrespect. During the president’s recent announcement that he had decided to make up laws by himself from now on, effectively granting immunity to some illegal aliens with a wave of his almighty hand, Munro shouted out a question rather than waiting for the president to leave the podium without taking any questions. Donaldson’s reaction in part: “Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says a federal court’s overturning of a city firearms ordinance “won’t stop us from carrying out our over all crime strategy.” “The problem from our perspective is that too many people have access to guns,” Emanuel asserted. “We won’t have law and order until everyone except the police is disarmed. The City must have a monopoly on the use of deadly force. Only then will the balance of terror be sufficiently one-sided to ensure peace.” As for the court’s ruling, Emanuel suggested that “the court may take whatever position it likes in the courtroom. But we...

For the first time in history of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has declared a Fortnight for Freedom in direct response to the attack on the Catholic Church and religious freedom by the Obama administration. The US bishops are asking the faithful to pray, say the Rosary, fast, sacrifice, take action and attend rallies in support of religious freedom. The Fortnight began on the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More–July 22–and will continue through July 4th. Most Reverend William E. Lori, Archbishop of Baltimore, fired the opening shots on Sunday. This homily was posted by the Baltimore...

In the U.S. Air Force, the one thing leaders are throttling back is faith. When President Obama took office, his policies had a chilling effect on religion across the military--but no branch has taken Christian censorship to extremes like the Air Force. To most people, the turning point came last year after a service-wide memo from Gen. Norman Schwartz. It was a stern warning that religious favoritism and proselytizing would not be tolerated in the Force. Instead, Gen. Schwartz urged "neutrality"--which has since turned to hostility--on faith. Assaults on religion have come in almost daily waves since then, and service...

The theory of "American" liberalism can be summed up in three words: socialism, sexual deviancy, and surrender. No, really, I promise. It's that simple. I dare say it's like stating two and two make four. Ever since the first progressiveviks slithered out of the primordial soup of failed European political theories, their focus, when they're not high on some drug or another, has been to promote socialism, sexual deviancy, and surrender. Every program, every speech, and every street agitation ranging from Woodrow Wilson's War Socialism to Chairman Obama's Hopey-Changey crap has had either the redistribution of wealth, the institution of...

[Yester]day the Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision that the SEIU was violating nonmembers’ rights to decide whether or not they want to pay unexpected fee increases or special assessments, known as Beck rights. Members of the SEIU’s local 1000 were not given proper notice of a dues increase that would fund a $12 million special assessment for political campaigning. The union, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the annual notice that the union gives was enough notice, but SCOTUS disagreed. Obviously workers’ rights prevailed in this case and the Court saw the violation of First...

Video of Kris Kobach on Lou Dobbs show on June 19, 2012 discussing Obama's new policy on illegal aliens: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1697614789001/obamas-immigration-policy-breaking-federal-law

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: April 16, 2009. This from CNN's website: "Reviving a ban on assault weapons and more strictly enforcing existing gun laws could help tamp down drug violence that has run rampant on the US-Mexican border, President Obama said Thursday. Speaking alongside Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama said he has 'not backed off at all' on a campaign pledge to try to restore the ban. It was instituted under President Clinton and allowed to lapse by President George W. Bush. 'I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment right in our Constitution -- the...