Free Republic

DOVER, Del. (AP) - The state of Delaware is working to set up a task force to help residents with a hoarding problem. As many as 45,000 people in the state are estimated to have problems with hoarding. In advance of the hoarding task force, the state is creating an advisory panel to try to determine stakeholders who may be able to offer input into hoarding issues.

Ahead of the Tape Smith & Wesson Can Still Defy the Odds By Spencer Jakab Updated Dec. 10, 2013 12:17 a.m. ET America's largest gun maker will get some extra attention this week. Four days after it unveils fiscal second-quarter results on Tuesday, the nation will mark the anniversary of last December's school massacre in Newtown, Conn. The shooting's effect on Smith & Wesson Holding Corp.'s SWHC -0.08% financial fortunes shows how wrong the market's initial reaction was. The stock fell sharply as the grisly details of the rampage emerged, but it has bounced back by 58% since its trough...

Propaganda: A lesson plan for third-graders linked to a controversial federal education initiative makes sure America's next generation does not forget who is the one we have been waiting for. During the Soul Train Awards in 2012, comedian and actor Jamie Foxx exhorted a wildly cheering crowd to "first of all (give) honor to god, and our lord and savior Barack Obama," exhibiting the all-too-widespread hero worship that casts rational thought aside and labels even legitimate criticism as virtual blasphemy. The same cult of personality is creeping into lesson plans and reading materials being created under the guise of the...

Federal ATF agents in cities across the country reportedly used rogue tactics to go after guns on the street -- allegedly exploiting the mentally ill, buying up weapons for way more than they're worth and letting minors smoke pot and drink. The details were included in an expose by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which reported earlier this year on an embarrassing set of blunders made by the Milwaukee arm of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The operation in Milwaukee apparently was not a one-off, as officials claimed.

Support Tuffy the Clown I'm out here at the NFR and I have talked to over 15 Rodeo Committee's about hiring me and working. Everyone has said "We can't hire you. This stuff needs to blow over first". What stuff needs to blow over? I did nothing wrong! These "Committee's" will privately tell me that I got a raw deal but they can't hire me and they won't make a statement? I'm a good rodeo clown. What are these committee's afraid of. Watch the video on my website www.tuffytheclown.com . Watch the video that started this whole thing! I did...

Subtitle: The solution to a dysfunctional Congress is not for Obama to govern the country all by himself. In the face of congressional gridlock, President Obama has started taking more and more matters into his own hands. In recent months, he has announced new gun control measures, put in place limited immigration reform and made fixes to the Affordable Care Act — all without Congress. Many liberals who once worried about presidential overreach have applauded his robust use of presidential power. Yet the president's increasing unilateralism shouldn't be cause for celebration. Bypassing Congress means bypassing democratic checks. It also means...

It's not a stretch of the imagination to say that the United States of America is on the edge of complete and total economic, political, and social disaster. The socialist scam known as Obamacare is ravaging the economy and destroying the greatest healthcare system in the world. The NSA is spying on American citizens instead of Islamonazi terrorists. The Infernal Revenue Service has become the Democrat Party's personal Gestapo, harassing the political enemies of the unholy Obama Regime. Homosexual "marriage" is being pushed down the throats of the American people by commie liberal judicial oligarchs who would sooner use the...

People, it is time to talk about guns. My entire adult life has been dedicated to the deliberate management of violence. There are no two ways around that fact. My job, at the end of the day, is about killing. I orchestrate violence. I am not proud of that fact. Indeed, I am often torn-up by the realization that not only is this my job, but that I am really good at my job. But my profession is about directed violence on behalf of the nation. What is happening inside our country is random and disgusting, and living here in...

Executive Orders: A liberal constitutional scholar warns of the concentration of power not only in the hands of one branch of government but in a single man who ignores the Constitution and acts of Congress on a whim. As the story goes, Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on Sept. 18, 1787, when a woman asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin is said to have replied, "A republic, madam — if you can keep it." The Founders designed a system of checks and balances...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — AT&T, under fire for ongoing revelations that it shares and sells customers' communications records to the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence offices, says it isn't required to disclose to shareholders what it does with customers' data. In a letter sent Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, AT&T said it protects customer information and complies with government requests for call records "only to the extent required by law." The telecom giant's letter was a response to a shareholder revolt sparked on Nov. 20 by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the ACLU of...

EX-OFFICIAL SAYS FBI CAN SECRETLY ACTIVATE AN INDIVIDUAL’S WEBCAM WITHOUT THE INDICATOR LIGHT TURNING ON The FBI can secretly activate a computer’s webcam to spy on an individual without turning on the indicator light, a former official revealed to the Washington Post in an article published Friday. According to the Washington Post’s account of what Marcus Thomas — former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico — said, “The FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years, and has...

Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, the second amendment-hating Army Officer who caused controversy after vowing to “pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers,” works closely with the Department of Homeland Security. Earlier this week, Bateman, an active military commander, penned a piece for Esquire magazine in which he promised to push for a total ban on all firearms besides muskets, shotguns and rifles, and shut down all gun manufacturers except for those who produced weapons for the federal government and the armed forces (you will be disarmed, the state will have a monopoly on firepower). Bateman is president and founder...

For America's businesses, the Obama administration has an unpleasant holiday surprise. A new report on the government's regulatory actions was released just before Thanksgiving, and it contains more than 3,300 rules -- which the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) estimates will cost more than $1.8 trillion to implement on an annual basis. At a time when the economy is still struggling to zoom out of its post-recession rut, businesses worry that the crush of regulation is another sandbag weighing down the recovery. "Back in the '90s, the federal budget itself was not even $1.8 trillion," said Wayne Crews, vice president of...

President Obama rejected the notion that the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups was illegal — or even improper — during his interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Thursday. Obama was at American University to sell his flailing healthcare law to the young people upon which the insurance exchanges heavily rely. As promised, Matthews allowed him to make his pitch with no tough questions or pushback. But the interview became interesting when the Hardball host asked why Americans were growing increasingly skeptical of government. Obama noted that the media never seems interested in government success stories. “When we do things...

After five years of stimulus schemes ranging from federal bailouts and a trillion-dollar stimulus package to the Cash for Clunkers program, Americans have yet to enjoy the “Recovery Summer” that they were once promised. Now, President Obama is promoting food stamps as the next great form of economic stimulus. The White House last week featured on its website a list of things Americans should “keep in mind” on Thanksgiving. Food stamps (officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) were at the top of the list. “SNAP is boosting the economy right now,” the administration explained. “SNAP’s effect...

Bureaucrats at the Federal Trade Commission must have a lot of spare time. The agency recently swooped to rescue the American people from the threat posed by a collaborative organization of 22,000 professionals who sit down with youngsters and teach them how to play a piano. As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, regulators forced the Music Teachers National Association, a century-old nonprofit, to accept a consent decree over the group’s code of ethics, which simply encouraged members not to pilfer or recruit students from fellow members. Only in a twisted bureaucratic mind would such a sensible provision be...

With his trademark grin and natural charm, President Obama knows how to connect with an audience. So it was when he gave the commencement address to Arizona State University’s class of 2009, thrilling a crowd of 60,000 assembled in Sun Devil Stadium. Looking back on his remarks today, his words are much less amusing. “Now, before I begin,” said Mr. Obama, “I’d just like to clear the air about that little controversy everybody was talking about a few weeks back.” The president was referring to the school basketball team, which had been knocked out in the second round of the...

At a fundraiser in Seattle on the day before Thanksgiving, President Obama told a group of Democratic donors, apparently without a hint of irony, “I’m not a particularly ideological person.” One wouldn’t know it from the ponderous 48-minute oration on income inequality that he delivered in Washington on Wednesday. Mr. Obama devoted the majority of it to the cause of lamenting a “dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility” that he says is jeopardizing the middle class. The unraveling of the “social compact,” he said, began in the late ‘70s. “The result is an economy that’s become profoundly...

WASHINGTON, December 4, 2013 — How far will President Obama go to control what we see and hear? How about removing First Amendment protections from FOX News or even from MSNBC, ABC, CNN, CBS or NBC. Maybe no free speech or freedom of the press for The Washington Times nor The Washington Post nor The New York Times or any other major media? Obama would justify it by claiming they are all tainted because they seek to profit from the news business. Don’t laugh. This is the danger from the ground-breaking legal theory being argued by the Obama Administration to...

Sean Hannity on FOX News reported Wednesday President Obama did not hold a private One-to-One meeting with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for three-and-a-half years leading up to the Obamacare launch. From July 2010 until November 2013 Obama did not hold any private meetings with Secretary Sebelius according to the official White House calendar. Obama met with his other cabinet secretaries 277 times during the same time period. [video] Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, December 4, 2013, 9:20 PM Sean Hannity on FOX News reported Wednesday President Obama did not hold a private One-to-One meeting with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius...

Politics Of Sport: While ads featuring violent movies and video games regularly appear on NFL broadcasts, pro football has banned an ad supporting the Second Amendment. The NFL is within its rights, since Item 5 in its prohibited list of Super Bowl ad categories includes "Firearms, ammunition or other weapons; however, stores that sell firearms and ammunitions (e.g., outdoor stores and camping stores) will be permitted, provided they sell other products and the ads do not mention firearms, ammunition or other weapons." But the ad submitted twice by Daniel Defense does not sell firearms or one of the company's popular...

<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A Kansas City man says he’s been terrified since an encounter with police on Monday evening. He says officers came to his home in southeast Kansas City looking for people he’d never heard of and when he refused to let them inside, things turned ugly.</p>

Tuesday, December 03, 2013 Illinois high school requires parents to self-identify as liberal or conservative An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a "political spectrum." The survey is part of Oak Forest High School's Common Core curriculum, which according to the school district's website is to ..."provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students...

Reps. Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan are demanding information from the FBI about alleged IRS targeting of tax-exempt groups, especially a group called True The Vote, and accuse the FBI and Department of Justice of obstructing their House committee’s investigation. In a letter sent Monday to FBI Director James Comey, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman and subcommittee chairman set a Dec. 16 deadline for the FBI to respond to a September request for information about investigations into the IRS actions and for any communications between any DOJ or FBI staff regarding the committee’s request. . . ....

The House Judiciary Committee is about to discuss what it calls “The President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws,” focusing on the Obamacare delays, enforcement of immigration laws, and more. As Mediaite notes, the question of whether the president can take unilateral action to cease enforcing laws stretches back at least to last summer, when President Barack Obama said he would stop deporting young undocumented immigrants, an end-run around congressional refusal to pass the DREAM Act.

I am one who steers very clear of tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. I often believe progressives plant stories in order to distract and disrupt, enabling them to pursue their true goals and objectives. That’s why I stress the importance of staying focused on the modern liberal socialist policies of the Obama administration, not the sideshow antics. However, as a former combat commander, I have been trained to look for trends. And I believe we’ve found a very disturbing one. it seems that back door gun control is in full effect in the United States. Why? Thanks to Obama’s Environmental Protection...

Recent events once again demonstrate that there is no point arguing with liberals. Reason, facts, truth – these bourgeois concepts mean nothing to the adherents of progressivism. You are never going to change the mind of someone who believes in nothing except the imperative of his own absolute power. You simply have to defeat him. Progressivism is not a coherent ideology so much as a purpose – to control every aspect of our lives. It is about consolidating progressive power. Nothing else matters. That includes the truth. This is why we see YouTube videos of Harry Reid, Joe Biden and...

Concerned that “excessive opposition is impeding the Administration’s ability to govern the country,” the IRS has moved to tighten regulations on “right-leaning” political “education” organizations. “The notion that anyone can organize to speak out against government policy and still get the same exemptions from taxes that those working to help the government is wrong-headed,” said Mark Mazur, Treasury Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. “People should all be pulling together to help propel the ship of state toward the attainment of the greater common good. Those rowing with us deserve preferential tax treatment. Those rowing against us do not. It’s as...

T.J. HOLMES, SUBSTITUTE HOST: Bob, you covered the White House for a long time. You’ve been around, and you were shaking your head there the whole time and wanting to chime in. What is it? BOB FRANKEN, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, let's use the "P" word here. This is propaganda when it comes from the White House: government covering the government. It’s not what you’re supposed to do in the United States of America. But we have an administration, every president gets to the point where he dislikes the press. It’s that simple. And every administration tries to manipulate the press....

"What if buying coffee was like buying health insurance?"

There was a powerful description given by Pope Emeritus Benedict to describe the modern stance of a world that has abandoned any notion of objective truth to which it is accountable. The phrase was “The tyranny of relativism.”In effect the expression describes what happens when there is no standard outside ourselves to which reasonable people can and should appeal in order to square their views or opinions. In such a setting, appeals to reason and agreed upon standards cannot hold the day and resolve disputes.Thus who “wins”? Whose view prevails? The sad answer is that those with the most money,...

In the eyes of some, the great hope for mankind has always been a sort of communal society. The thought behind this idea is that everyone could work towards a common end and share the fruits of their labor. As a matter of fact, Liberalism and social progressives teach this today. So, “in order to form a more perfect Union”, at all costs they foist their communal ideals upon society. In a perfect world, this type of social order would be heavenly. Unfortunately, we don’t live in paradise. That being the case, there are two things that war against this...

Federal agencies have a packed schedule for the coming year that includes expected rules targeting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, tightening control over hydraulic fracturing on public lands and updating efficiency requirements on a variety of appliances, according to a sweeping plan released by the White House today.

Rights: The Supreme Court will hear a challenge by a Christian-owned store chain against the HHS birth-control mandate that requires businesses to provide contraception coverage, a violation of religious conscience. Some 16 months after the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare as a constitutional form of taxation, some 40 for-profit companies are about to find out its constitutionality on another front — whether they must cover some or all forms of birth control if doing so would violate their religious beliefs. The nation's highest court has agreed to hear the federal government's appeal of a June decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit...

Happy holidays from the Obama administration. Federal agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power plants and expand the agency’s authority to bodies of water on private property. On Tuesday, the White House released its regulatory agenda for the fall of 2013. It lists hundreds of pending energy and environmental regulations being crafting by executive branch agencies, including 134 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone. The EPA is currently crafting 134 major and minor regulations, according to the White House’s regulatory agenda. Seventy-six of the EPA’s pending...

One of the oldest notions in the history of mankind is that some people are to give orders and others are to obey. The powerful elite believe that they have wisdom superior to the masses and that they've been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Their agenda calls for an attack on the free market and what it implies — voluntary exchange. Tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, free markets are replaced with economic planning and regulation that is nothing less than the...

During remarks on immigration, President Obama was confronted onstage by a protester calling on him to use executive power to bypass Congress on the issue. The protester, standing behind the president during a speech in San Francisco, was joined by others who began to chant “Stop deportation!” “If, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing them through Congress, I would do so,” President Obama responded. “But we’re also a nation of laws.” During his remarks, the president praised supporters of the Senate bill, including activists fasting on the National Mall, and encouraged House Speaker John Boehner, whom...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is drafting regulations that would require all new cars to be equipped with tracking devices that constantly broadcast the car’s location, direction, speed and, possibly, even the number of passengers it is carrying. As NHTSA Administrator David Strickland explains, “we constantly admonish parents to watch their children at all times. Well, this would build on that same principle. How can the Government assure the safety and well-being of Americans if we don’t know where they are or what they’re doing at all times?” Strickland granted that “the proposed new regulation is only a partial...

It appears one Democrat member of Congress has decided to drop the mask and reveal who he really is. Unbelievably, Charlie Rangel told NY1 that “President Obama should drop the charade of democracy and rule directly through executive orders.” I mean, why not? After all, Rep. Rangel’s own relationship with following laws is fuzzy at best, given his problems with tax evasion.

An anti-freedom policy has been spreading across United States police departments, the legalized theft of citizens guns.  Recently, it occurred in Georgia.  I am not talking about forfeiture laws.   They are related but have been  covered elsewhere. This is a problem in many urban areas, and it is spreading.  The policy is to impound guns, in extreme cases, all guns that officers come across, whether involved in any crime or not, then to refuse to return the guns until a judge issues an order to return  them.   As the attorney fees needed to obtain a court order can...

November 21, 2013, may be another date that will live in infamy. Instead of conventional bombs and aerial torpedoes exploding at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the "nuclear option" went off in the U.S. Senate at Washington, D.C. By a 52-48 vote, the Senate voted to change the institution's regulations related to the filibuster, thereby emasculating a political minority's ability to thwart, or at least delay, majoritarian dictatorship. A Senate minority can no longer thwart the president's nominations of judges to lesser federal courts or of executive department officials. Although the filibuster can still be used in cases of nominations for the...

Students Labeled Racist For Years If They Don’t Go On Islamic Field Trip Posted 3 hours ago by Dave Jolly Filed under Christianity, Education, Islam, Racism, Religion My friends in the United Kingdom have told me that Muslims have taken over whole communities and small towns. In some of those areas, they have driven out non-Muslims by intimidation, sometimes with violence. They have forced people to sell or abandon their businesses. They’ve taken over the local governments, law enforcement and schools. Numbers of Christian churches have been turned into mosques. Now, Lynn Small, the headmistress of Littleton Green Community School...

Congress is broken, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday before holding a party-line vote that disposed of rules that have guided and protected the chamber since 1789. Democrats were fully justified in stripping Republicans of their right to filibuster President Obama’s nominees — yet they will come to deeply regret what they have done. Reid’s remedy — calling a simple-majority vote to undo more than two centuries of custom — has created a situation in which the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is expected to use the minority’s remaining powers to gum up the works, and to get...

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has done the nation a service by laying out the grand design underlying the secret plan to force the United States into a single payer system, with the government deciding who gets care and who is left to languish untreated and eventually die. It is the modern statist's dream, whereby the state becomes almighty, holding in its grasp the health of all its subjects (the term "citizens" becomes archaic at this point). Writing with precision, McCarthy lays out what he and other prosecutors of fraud mean by a scheme, and why it applies to Obamacare:...

That is the Obamacare scheme. It is a Fabian plan to move an unwilling nation, rooted in free enterprise, into Washington-controlled, fully socialized medicine. As its tentacles spread over time, the scheme (a) pushes all Americans into government markets (a metastasizing blend of Medicare, Medicaid, and “exchanges” run by state and federal agencies); (b) dictates the content of the “private” insurance product; (c) sets the price; (d) micromanages the patient access, business practices, and fees of doctors; and (e) rations medical care. Concurrently, the scheme purposely sows a financing crisis into the system, designed to explode after Leviathan has so...

Parents were ordered to send their children to a workshop on Islam or have them labelled as racist for the rest of their school career. They were sent a letter warning that the primary school pupils would have a ‘racial discrimination note’ put on their records if they did not go. Families were told to pay £5 per child for the Explore Islam trip next Wednesday to Staffordshire University, which would involve Year 4 and Year 6 children being shown Islamic artefacts. Mothers and fathers were warned: ‘Refusal to allow your child to attend will result in a Racial Discrimination...

Actor Richard Dreyfuss: "The NRA is Not the Enemy, They Should Be Thought of as Heroes" Katie Pavlich | Nov 22, 2013 Appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight earlier this week, actor Richard Dreyfuss made some refreshing comments about the National Rifle Association, saying that they are best group to turn to for solutions on gun violence while noting they are experts and were founded in order to education people about firearms. "I don't think the NRA is a villian," Dreyfuss said. "I think we should turn this over to the people who are expert at this and the original...

Spanish actor Antonio Banderas surprised CNN viewers when he criticized US President Barack Obama and suggested Europe and the US should apply the same economic policies as Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez. During his talk with Spanish journalist Ana Pastor, Banderas was asked several questions about the current financial crisis and possible solutions to it. The Malaga-born star pointed the finger of blame at “the markets, the lobbies, the big corporations” and suggested they didn’t have to take responsibility when countries and governments had problems. “We’re not being governed by the people we voted for,” he told Pastor. “How do...

Today's Democrats have grown up in the Saul Alinsky tradition, and on Thursday they proved it with a partisan vote to break the Senate filibuster rule for confirming judges and executive-branch nominees. The new rules will empower the party's liberals for as long as they control the White House and Senate, but they will also set a precedent for conservatives to exploit in the future. The immediate result of Harry Reid's power play will be that President Obama has a freer hand to pursue his agenda through regulation and the courts. Mr. Reid's new rules for Senate radicals are also...

Mission accomplished, and with the sequel, the gloves come off. “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” is a muscular, engrossing, unexpectedly bleak epic of oppression and insurrection, directed with dramatic urgency and a skilled eye by Francis Lawrence (“Constantine,” “I Am Legend”). Set in the fascist future state of Panem, the movie takes pains to show its young mass audience what living under a totalitarian dictatorship might look and feel like. But the sharpest aspects of “Catching Fire” — the parts that sting — play as an allegory for today. Very few people will take in this spectacle of a society...