Free Republic

There’s a reason no one expected this decision. It’s because it makes no sense. It’s not a rational view, it’s not consistent with any of the pleadings, it violates about 200 years of Supreme Court procedure. And it sets the Constitution on its ear. In a decision penned by the chief justice of the United States, the court has not only legislated, it has levied a tax. In support of an imperial presidency, it has become sovereign itself. Precedent is abandoned, rule of law is ignored, jurisprudence is bastardized. Obama wins and liberty loses. The government is more powerful, the...

The Assad regime has massed approximately 170 tanks near the Turkish border, according to an unconfirmed report on Friday by a general in the Free Syrian Army. General Mustafa al-Sheikh told Reuters that the tanks are now located 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border, northeast of Aleppo. "They either want to move toward the border to confront Turkish troops stationed there, or they are planning to attack rebels in towns near the border," al-Sheikh said. The move comes after Turkey on Thursday sent anti-aircraft guns, rocket launchers and other fortifications to the border, marking an escalation in hostilities between...

"The Constitution lives and dies with us. We have an obligation to defend and protect it." Nice compilation video of what Obama and Co. have done over the past four years.

Dear People Crying Racism: We're all friends here, right? All right, maybe we're not. But, we can still have an open honest conversation, can't we? Okay, we may not be there yet, but someone has to open up the lines of communication and say what we're all thinking: Crying racism just doesn't work like it used to, does it? There was a time when someone like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton could scream "racism" and people were horrified and swarmed around like ants at a picnic trying to make that awful word go away. Now, you cry racism and it...

In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of “Word for the Day”. LugubriousAdjective Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree. lugubriously, adverb lugubriousness, noun[From Latin lgubris, from lgre, to mourn.] Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the Word for the Day in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of the day. The Review threads are linked for your edification. ;-) Practice makes perfect.....post on.... Review Threads: Review Thread One: Word For The Day, Thursday...

Weren't moslems exempted from o-care? And...to be considered legitimate/legal, a tax has to apply to all equally? Please tell me if my memory is failing, or if I'm just stupid today, or if I'm right. No offense will be taken—life is too short.

Hannah Smith, Senior Counsel. Courtesy of the Becket Fund. Washington D.C., Jun 28, 2012 / 02:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the 2010 health care law, a leading religious freedom law firm has new confidence in the future of its lawsuits against the federal contraception mandate. Hannah Smith, senior counsel at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, explained that the arguments against the law that were recently rejected by the court are “separate and distinct legal challenges” from those being brought against the contraception mandate. In a June 28 press call...

Why not just cut open a goat and be done with it? In ancient Rome, a special kind of priest called a haruspex would "read" the entrails of sheep to divine the will of the gods, the health of the growing season, or whatever else was weighing on the minds of men. Because animal guts don't, in fact, impart that much information about, say, next year's wheat harvest, the haruspices (called "auspices" in Latin -- from which we get the English word) could pretty much make it up as they went along. The same went for the auguries (priests who...

Because 0bamacare was declared "Constitutional" by SCOTUS through the the funding mechanism, which was a tax according to Roberts, it should be deemed null and void on the grounds it did not originate in the House. Bohner should take this to the federal court immediately. Precisely because it WAS declared a tax, for that reason alone, it should have been found unconstitutional. Comments?

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie abandoned the original title of the proposed gay marriage amendment that voters will see on the November ballot and replaced it with one of his own, his office announced Thursday. The Democrat's office said the title, which will be directly above the ballot question, will read: "Limiting the Status of Marriage to Opposite Sex Couples." Republicans who backed the amendment effort wanted wording that focused on the traditional definition of marriage, "Recognition of Marriage Solely Between One Man and One Woman."

Often the most wondrous things come in the smallest of packages. Today, the hope of an Arab Spring is fast becoming the despair of a nuclear winter. We’re turning our backs to the only true ally we have in the Middle East, only to make alliances with tenuously formed governments. The United Nations is more concerned with wealth redistribution and political correctness than it is for its chief priority -- peacekeeping. In the void, it’s important to remember a time when a child stepped in to do the job the UN couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Her target? Yuri Andropov, the general...

Richard J. Emmert, 69, has been charged in a sting by the UPD Special Operations Unit in Roscoe Conkling Park. Emmert, a longtime Democratic party operative and retired Utica College professor, was charged with Exposure of a person, a violation, and Public Lewdness, a misdemeanor. The sting came after the UPD received numerous complaints regarding men engaging in sexual acts in Roscoe Conkling Park attached to Valley View Golf Course. It was reported that the men would meet each other for the purposes of engaging in sexual acts on themselves and each other. They would also accost people passing...

As more and more localities declare their independence from budget-destroying unions, the United Auto Workers is reaching into its bag of liberal magic tricks to help breakup non-union plants in the Deep South. It’s the last gasp of the UAW that knows it must perish if it is not successful in breaking into non-union shops operating in the U.S., such as foreign automakers Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen. Not surprisingly, given the desperate times for unions, the UAW is relying on an appeal to racism in the south- one of the only tricks left in the liberal bag- in order to...

The Supreme Court's ruling in Obamacare v. the United States of America is yet another body blow to the U.S. Constitution's principle of limited government and the freedom tradition, but there is a major upside. Despite President Obama's opposition to an individual mandate when he was debating Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries and despite his postelection insistence that Obamacare's mandate does not constitute a tax, his lawyers insisted otherwise, and the Supreme Court bought it. So we have a law with enormous reach -- one-seventh to one-sixth of the economy -- having been fundamentally misrepresented to the American...

Meanwhile, Facebook censors Ohio pro-family advocate’s photo exposing lewdness of “gay pride” parade [Quote, Bangor Daily News]: "PORTLAND, Maine — Supporters of same-sex marriage exceeded the $100,000 they needed to raise to receive a matching contribution from a co-founder of Facebook. The Mainers United for Marriage campaign raised $121,197 as of Friday but topped $100,000 on Thursday, the deadline for raising the matching funds. . . Chris Hughes, editor-in-chief of the liberal magazine The New Republic, who owns 1 percent of Facebook, and his fiance, Sean Eldridge, president of Hudson River Ventures and senior adviser to the national organization Freedom...

HBO should really try a new slogan for its original programming. Indeed they already had one courtesy of Aaron Sorkin's acid pen in the debut of his ridiculous new series "The Newsroom." That slogan is "Speaking Truth to Stupid." It's an appropriate slogan for a pay-cable channel that insists only the really smart people pay the extra fee to join the television elite. But do Sorkin and HBO really deserve their lofty, arrogant position as the smart people? Let's count the ways this new show demolishes that proposition: 1. It's preposterous that this "Newsroom" is realistic. The first glaring indicator...

This is a personal declaration, which I wish to make in front of Free Republic, and anyone who comes across it. As a whole, the ACA (aka ObamaCare) is bad law; in that through it the government is over stepping its bounds and is becoming more overly intrusive in the daily lives of Americans. The mandate, now tax, is especially onerous, because it penalizes American citizens for non activity. With the Supreme Court ruling on June 28th, 2012, the government now has precedent to try and force Americans, who are literally doing nothing into activity, through the threat of a...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Did you know that President Obama has been incommunicado with Colorado's governor for more than two weeks as the nation's worst wildfires rage across the state? Maybe he thought we were all "doing fine." After an embarrassing Beltway press briefing revelation about our out-of-touch White House, the administration finally decided to divert the campaigner in chief from his nationwide fundraising frenzy for a quick look-see at our devastated city on Friday. It's "leadership from behind" you can count on. On Wednesday, press secretary Jay Carney acknowledged that Obama hadn't talked to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - The Persecution of Pakistan’s ChristiansPosted By Faith J. H. McDonnell On June 29, 2012 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments “The People of the Book” is Islam’s distinctive name for non-Muslim monotheists such as Jews and Christians. It sounds like a title given to those respected and revered. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. “Protected People,” another such term, sounds so reassuring. Who doesn’t want to be protected? But for the Islamic world’s “Protected People” there is no protection.Nowhere is this truer than for Pakistan’s tiny minority Christian population. Rather than being...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Get Ready For More Charges of RacismPosted By Bruce Thornton On June 29, 2012 @ 12:44 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments The implosion of the Obama administration will create more and more desperate narratives on the part of progressives as we head toward the November election. With no record of achievement to run on, Obama must try to misdirect voters by shifting blame elsewhere: so far George Bush, the Eurozone crisis, the Japanese tsunami, even ATMs have all been fingered as the cause of our sluggish economic growth and high unemployment. Since...