Free Republic

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter. A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates...

When someone comes to your door, you can let them in — or not. But keeping out a representative from the Michigan Tax Commission could be costly. At least that's what some residents in Davison Township are finding. When the local tax assessor showed up at homeowner John McLaughlin's house in the Genesee County community he said he wasn't going to let them in. So what happened after he declined the appointment: "My taxes went up," he said. The executive director of the Michigan Tax Commission said local tax assessors are supposed to be getting inside all homes to see...

San Diego Judge Gary Kreep, a conservative legal activist who led a failed fight to challenge President Obama’s citizenship, has been exiled to traffic court after several Superior Court rulings favoring defendants’ constitutional rights. Kreep, 63, was reassigned on Sept. 9 from the downtown San Diego courthouse to a Kearny Mesa facility that handles traffic offenses and small claims. The move came after prosecutors from the City Attorney’s Office began to boycott his courtroom over his legal approach. For instance, Kreep often declined to take away a defendant’s 4th Amendment rights against search and seizure — something prosecutors can legally...

The fine print of Obamacare says “The 4th Amendment be damned, we’re coming into your house when we feel like it.” There is no other way to interpret what the allowable government raids of otherwise law abiding American homes will be. Under the provisions of the healthcare law given to Barack Obama by the Democrats and Chief Justice John Roberts, government thugs will have the right to kick in doors and search homes in a number of circumstances. These are by no means situations that would cause the average low information voter to shrug and acknowledge that “Maybe that’s not...

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction of a man who was charged with possession of a handgun. According to the Legal Times, an officer approached Ernest Ramsey because he suspected that he was urinating in an alley. Somehow, the officer ended up running his name through the police database and searching him.The court ruled that since the officer didn't have cause to look Ramsey up, the search was unlawful and a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.Judge Phyllis Thompson wrote that without "reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause," the police can't detain individuals to look...

This past week I was over on Officer.com trying to convince some hot-headed, patriot-hating young cops that the Constitution is actually the law of the land. I failed. One of them refers to open carriers as “attention whores.” I was denounced as a traitor to law enforcement for insisting that gun owners actually have rights that LEO’s are legally and morally bound to respect. It got me thinking about the great gulf that separates the law enforcement profession that I knew as compared to the one that exists today. I never thought I’d be one of those geezers that says,...

The Taiwanese animators strike again!! "Stop and Frisk" It's code for racial profiling to people of color, or a warm privileged safety blanket if you're caucasian. The policy has seen over 4 million New Yorkers stopped at random over the last 10 years, with the vast majority of those stops targeting black and latino New Yorkers, far beyond what their demographic numbers would justify.

The discussion that will take place next year in the Utah Legislature over law enforcement raid-style search warrants is a necessary topic to debate. Certainly, the use of a battering rams to combat minor offenses is something that should not occur. A libertarian group, the Libertas Institute, and others, including the American Civil Liberties Institute, will lobby for limits on police use of force during search warrants for minor crimes. When this discussion occurs, it must focus on the safety aspects — to police and suspects — that these raids provide. These raids, as conducted now, are too dangerous. One...

The Fourth Amendment protects us from random invasions of our homes by police, right? We know we're secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects" unless the cops demonstrate probable cause to a judge and get a warrant. Except... Except when they don't. The fact of the matter is that police have a lot of leeway to bust your door down and take a look around if they fear that waiting for a warrant could lead to loss of evidence or danger to people. Or lead to something, anyway. That end run around the Fourth Amendment is called "exigent circumstances,"...

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say. -SNIP- “The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar, who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. — incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if they were just able to pry it out of...

In a major victory for the Justice Department over privacy advocates, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that government agencies can collect records showing the location of an individual's cell phone without obtaining a warrant. The 2-1 ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the Justice Department's argument that "historical" records showing the location of cell phones, gleaned from cell site location towers, are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. A key basis for the ruling: The use of cell phones is "entirely voluntarily" and therefore individuals who use them have forfeited the right to...

“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice.” – Franz Kafka, The Trial In a bizarre and ludicrous attempt at “transparency,” the Obama administration has announced that it asked a secret court to approve a secret order to...

The traitor to our country and NSA, Edward Snowden, is now making the rounds of the major Communist countries; China and Russia, with either Ecuador or Venezuela or possible Cuba being a final destination. Who knows, it may be someplace no one ever thought about. For all of you who labeled him a hero, I must excuse your ignorance on national security issues. If you haven’t worked in the intelligence community, you have no idea the damage that this sniveling coward has done to the intelligence community’s efforts and endangered your life and those of your loved ones.. When both...

“If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.” – Philip K. Dick, author of Minority Report On any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes...

Last night the Constitution was, we hope only temporarily defeated by the “security at any cost” surveillance state when, in a close vote, 94 establishment Republicans teamed with 111 Democrats to defeat Rep. Justin Amash’s amendment to H.R. 2397, Department of Defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2014. Amash’s amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2014 would have limited the National Security Agency’s use of taxpayer funds under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Amash’s amendment simply said: “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to collect tangible things (including telephone numbers...

Microsoft has collaborated closely with U.S. intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, top-secret documents obtained Thursday by the British Guardian show. The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month. According to the Guardian, the documents show that: snip

Video: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9e3_1373034153

Brandy Hamilton, 26, and Alexandria Randle, 24, say their civil rights were violated by the invasive search Texas Department of Public Safety trooper ordered the body cavity search because he smelled marijuana and allegedly found the end of a blunt The women say that the female trooper used the same glove to search inside both of them ============= Disturbing video shows two women in bikinis being subjected to body cavity searches on the side of a Texas highway after they were stopped returning from a weekend at the beach. Brandy Hamilton, 26, and Alexandria Randle, 24, are suing the Texas...

The big lie is that the National Security Agency (NSA) could have prevented 9/11 hence the need for its expanded powers. This agency in some form has been in the spying business since 1949 and it didn’t prevent that nor were they identifiers for the recent Boston Marathon bombers whom even the Russians had warned a security threat. They did however do a good job of scanning for the bombers once the deed was done. In 1949 the predecessor of NSA, the Armed Forces Security Agency was established as a cryptologic (decipherer of communications) intelligence body. The activities of NSA...

LAKELAND -- The State Attorney's Office that covers Polk county has criticized a Lakeland Police officer for his method of searching a female for drugs. State Attorney Jerry Hill wrote the Department saying Officer Dustin Fetz's request for a woman to shake her bra to free any hidden drugs was 'demeaning.' Hill went on to say the method used on the May 21 traffic stop was also ineffective and dangerous, according to Bay News 9's coverage partner, The Lakeland Ledger. Hill's letter to Police Chief Lisa Womack said an investigation showed Fetz did not have a reason to ask for...