Free Republic

City officials want to know why police ejected Jason Peck, Libertarian candidate for the 24th District in the Kansas House, from the Mission Arts and Eats Festival. During the festival's second night, Peck conversed with event goers and distributed campaign literature. Peck said no one objected until Councilwoman Suzie Gibbs approached him with a Mission police officer. "They told me that I had to leave and that if I came back they would cite me for trespassing," Peck said. "I don't know if the decision came from a higher-up or what." Gibbs did not respond to messages left on her...

At the close of September, the FCC approved kid video rules for digital TV, created a homeland security bureau, established a task force on childhood obesity, and set forth the ground rules of its first official public hearing on media ownership. The kid vid rules require broadcasters to run three hours of children's programming on all of their multichannels, including 24/7 weather and news feeds. The original rules established by the FCC in November 2004 had the same requirement, eliciting objections from broadcasters, some of whom run weather radar maps on their second or third digital multicast. The 2004 rules...

WASHINGTON - The House approved a bill Thursday giving legal status to President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program with restrictions.

Two men traveling south on Interstate 85 southwest of Lexington Tuesday told Davidson County sheriff's deputies that the $88,000 in cash they had hidden in their car was to buy a house in Atlanta. Officers with the sheriff office's Interstate Criminal Enforcement unit didn't believe the story after a drug-sniffing dog found a strong odor of narcotics inside the car. No drugs were found, and the two men weren't charged with a crime, but officers did keep the money, citing a federal drug assets seizure and forfeiture law. Deputies first stopped the car for following too closely to another vehicle,...

INQUIRER SENIOR WRITER One-gun-a-month laws sound attractive to gun-control activists and draw broad public support in polls. But it's not clear that such statutes have had much impact on gun violence. A study published last year in the journal Injury Prevention found that the laws restricting purchases had had no measurable impact. The study was done by a team of doctors from the University of Washington, using data from 1979 to 1998. Another study, done in 2001 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, found evidence of a slight decrease in gun violence associated with Maryland's one-gun...

The LA County Gun Task Force has served another search warrant on the home of another member of the fifty caliber community. On Monday September 18th, eighteen police cars swarmed the neighborhood where the FCSA member lives and served a search warrant signed by Judge Steven Kleifield of the LA County Superior Court. The officers were at the residence for several hours and confiscated all semi-automatic firearms belonging to the victim. The probable cause for issuing the search warrant was not available in the body of the affidavit so the reason for the search is unknown at this time. It...

The New York City Rally FOR Illegal Guns, Monday 12:30pm at City Hall When: 12:30pm, Monday, September 25th, 2006 Where: Outside Gates at City Hall on Broadway, Downtown Manhattan, New York City Event: “The NYC Rally for Illegal Guns” New York City Gun Rights activists, Constitutional and civil libertarians, Human Rights activists, and pro-Liberty supporters will hold a rally on Monday, September 25th at 12:30pm outside City Hall in Manhattan to support so-called “illegal guns” and the thousands of decent, responsible New York State citizens and residents who own and carry them to preserve their Freedom and protect themselves from...

The city of Cooper City, Fla., has given itself the power to seize residents' personal property in times of emergency. Officials deemed this new law necessary because of what is expected to be a busy hurricane season. But don't worry, they say. The law would never be enforced unless there were no other options – presumably meaning that the city could not persuade private citizens to permit the government to borrow, rent or buy their equipment. Think of it as eminent domain for generators, power tools, trucks and anything else local czars determine they need. Not surprisingly, this plan has...

Straight woman seeks equality under gay-rights law: Unwed Redmond worker wants her male partner to receive health benefits One of the first tests for Washington's new gay civil rights law has an intriguing twist: The complaint was filed by a heterosexual woman. The state's discrimination watchdogs are investigating the case, which claims unmarried straight people should get the same domestic partner benefits as their gay and lesbian co-workers. But officials are treading carefully, Human Rights Commission Director Marc Brenman said, because upholding the claim could set a sweeping new precedent for Washington businesses. ... The complaint, filed last week, is...

Scottsdale made a deal with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Arizona Department of Public Safety in January to ignore their own speed violations snapped by the city’s pilot Loop 101 photo enforcement system. The arrangement meant sheriff’s office and DPS vehicles exceeding the posted 65 mph speed limit on Loop 101 received a free pass, even though in some cases police officials admitted the speeding might not have been justified. Some of the speeds recorded were significant, up to 117 mph. Since the high-profile camera system was turned on Jan. 22, city records show that 16 emergency vehicles...

by Mark Finkelstein July 23, 2006 - 06:47 Don't the press in general and the New York Times in particular take pride in portraying themselves as ever-the vigilant defenders of the First Amendment? But judging by an editorial in the paper this morning, the Times experiences a power loss worse than the one currently gripping Queens when it comes to defending the First Amendment rights of groups it disfavors, in this case the tobacco industry. Entitled Take the Tobacco Pledge, the editorial urges ratification of The World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, known colloquially as 'the tobacco treaty.'...

NEW YORK — Police have proposed placing tighter restrictions on protesters who march on sidewalks by making them obtain parade permits — a move civil libertarians say would cripple the rights of people to stage spontaneous demonstrations. The written proposal, made public on July 17, would require permits for any march on a sidewalk by 35 or more people or for street demonstrations involving 20 or more bicycles or other vehicles. It says the new rules are needed to better police “assemblies that obstruct the free passage of public streets and sidewalks.” Current regulations, which are more loosely worded, mandate...

TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas Libertarians were stopped from holding a fundraiser at a nudist camp in southwest Shawnee County, when sheriff's deputies blocked people from entering. Shawnee County deputies said they were merely enforcing a court order when they stopped people from accessing Lake Edun on Friday. Last year, Shawnee County District Judge Terry Bullock issued a court order banning "commercial or recreational activities" on the property unless the owners get a permit for such events - something the county refuses to provide. But Rob Hodgkinson, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Kansas, said a political party fundraiser isn't a...

Believes 'Cars' Gives Kids The Wrong Message About Racing Trains (CBS) -- Is Disney's hit movie "Cars" spinning its wheels when it comes to safety? CBS 2 West Suburban Bureau Chief Mike Puccinelli reports on the fight to put the brakes on a scene in the blockbuster animated picture about a fast talking rookie racer named Lightning McQueen. "As I'm sitting there, I couldn't believe it because this is a red car. My daughter was killed in a red car," said Lanny Wilson with the DuPage Railroad Safety Council. His 14-year-old daughter, Lauren, was killed in a collision 12 years...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A recent Supreme Court ruling that Congress can ban homegrown marijuana for medical use in California led Friday to the reinstatement of an Arizona man's overturned conviction for having homemade machine guns. Prosecutors in both cases invoked the Constitution's interstate commerce clause, despite the fact that the cases centered on items that were homemade, or homegrown, and didn't involve commerce or crossing state lines. The courts ruled, however, that the items still can affect interstate commerce and therefore can be regulated by federal law. In the machine gun case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on...

BERKLEY, Mich. -- The parking fine was $10. But the comment Robert Militzer added to the check could land him in jail for 30 days. The computer programmer from Allen Park got the ticket May 29. When Militzer wrote the check to Berkley District Court, he scribbled on the memo line, "BULL (expletive) MONEY GRAB." That got Militzer an in-person court appearance -- on a contempt of court charge. He's scheduled to go before a judge Wednesday, accompanied by an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who will argue Militzer's remark is protected by the First Amendment.

Marijuana users can be arrested for drugged driving weeks after they toast a joint, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a Jackson County appeal. A veteran prosecutor hailed the ruling as a correct interpretation of the zero-tolerance law that will make enforcement easier. A longtime defense attorney said the high court has opened the floodgates on overreaching government. "This goes to show the Supreme Court does not seem to care about individual rights," Jackson attorney Jerry Engle said. At issue were cases from Jackson and Grand Traverse counties. The local case involved the prosecution of Dennis Kurts for driving...

WASHINGTON // Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. fired one of his appointees to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority yesterday after the board member asserted on a local cable talk show that homosexuals lived a life of "sexual deviancy."

Breaking... Major 5-4 decision. This case was reargued and apparently Alito cast the deciding vote.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from news organizations fighting to protect confidential sources, refusing to consider the case of four reporters in legal trouble over their stories about former nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee The court's action, released Monday, was taken without comment. Late last week, Lee settled his privacy lawsuit, and he will receive $1.6 million from the government and five news organizations. Journalists had been in civil contempt of court for refusing to disclose who leaked them information about an espionage investigation of Lee, a nuclear weapons scientist fired from his job at Los...