Free Republic

At a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Shkreli repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says no person shall be compelled in any criminal case "to be a witness against himself." Wearing a sport jacket and collared shirt rather than his usual T-shirt, he responded to questions by laughing, twirling a pencil and yawning. Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, asked Shkreli what he would tell a single, pregnant woman with AIDS who needed Daraprim to survive, and whether he thought he had done anything wrong. Shkreli declined to answer....

Move over Hillary Clinton, you’re not radical enough for the foaming-at-the-mouth Leftists who currently have the Democratic Party in their grip. Not even Hillary advocated for outright gun confiscation. Biden has voiced support for stronger gun-control measures than Hillary – including a ban on any gun that doesn’t have ‘smart’ features. But the NWO shill has never called for an end of our Second Amendment. He once told Anderson Cooper that there is “no legal way” to take guns away from U.S. citizens.

Top tech leaders and other billionaires would be forced to hand over billions of dollars in wealth they've gained during the coronavirus pandemic under a new bill introduced by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. The "Make Billionaires Pay Act" would impose a one-time 60% tax on wealth gains made by billionaires between March 18, 2020, and Jan. 1, 2021. The funds would be used to pay for out-of-pocket health-care expenses for all Americans for a year. As of Aug. 5, the bill would tax $731 billion in wealth accumulated by 467 billionaires since March...

<p>COLUMBIA, SC (AP) - The South Carolina Supreme Court has temporarily ordered judges to stop issuing “no-knock” search warrants.</p> <p>The announcement, signed by Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty on Friday, said circuit and summary judges cannot sign off on the warrants until they receive further instruction from the state’s judicial branch on how to issue the warrants.</p>

Mayors back reparations that could cost $6.2 quadrillion, or $151M per descendant" The nation’s mayors on Monday backed a national call for reparations to 41 million black people, a program that could cost taxpayers $6.2 quadrillion. The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a letter backing a Democratic plan to form a reparations commission to come up with a payment for slavery. “We recognize and support your legislation as a concrete first step in our larger reckoning as a nation, and a next step to guide the actions of both federal and local leaders who have promised to do better by...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Angus King (I-ME), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Mike Lee (R-UT) reintroduced the bipartisan Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, S. 4074, to protect property owners’ rights, defend innocent Americans, and restore the Fifth Amendment’s role in civil forfeiture proceedings. “The federal government has made it far too easy for government agencies to take and profit from the property of those who have not been convicted of a crime. The FAIR Act will uphold the Fifth Amendment and ensure government agencies no longer profit from taking American citizens’ property without due process....

Glenn Simpson, whose Fusion GPS firm has been tied to anti-Trump efforts and pro-Russian lobbying, will not talk to lawmakers in response to a subpoena, the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committe said Friday.... ..."Simpson’s attorney has asserted that his client will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to the subpoena," Grassley and Feinstein said. During the campaign, Fusion GPS contracted former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele to look into rumors about Trump's financial and social connections in Russia.

Congress is considering H.R. 6666, the “Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone Act” (“TRACE Act”), a bill by U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19. The bill ostensibly would achieve that goal by creating “mobile health units” to “conduct diagnostic testing . . . trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals” and then “support the quarantine of such contacts”—all at the cost of $100 billion. Rush says that “increased testing and contact tracing is the only way we will get back normal and safely reopen our economy.” Essentially, Rush’s position—which is echoed by the bulk...

On Wednesday the Monterey County District Attorney's Office filed criminal charges against the owner of the Tuck Box restaurant in Carmel for defying California's stay-at -home-order. Tuck Box owner Jeffrey LeTowt said he has no plans to close his business and on Thursday he was still seating and serving guests. Advertisement "I'm still going to stay open, if you want to send a SWAT team and come and cuff me, come on and do it," said LeTowt. LeTowt closed his doors when Monterey County issued its shelte-in-place-order in March. He estimates he lost about $60,000 in revenue following the order....

As governors crack down on religious services during the coronavirus pandemic, pastors across the United States weigh in on whether Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice are doing enough to protect their civil liberties. The attorney general has issued multiple statements on the importance of respecting religious liberty “even in times of emergency” and intervened in cases of government crackdowns on churches and pastors. The DOJ referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to several more instances of Justice Department intervention, including an April 27 memorandum from the attorney general on balancing public safety with the preservation of...

Today, Governor John Bel Edwards and the Louisiana Department of Health outlined a plan for COVID-19 testing and tracking that would hire as many as 700 Louisianans to serve as “contact tracers,” interviewing and advising people who have tested positive to determine who in their lives could also be at risk. This week, LDH signed a contract with Accenture and Salesforce to manage Louisiana’s contact tracing process, using two Louisiana-based call centers with 100 percent Louisiana agents. The training for these contact tracers will be managed by LSU’s Stephenson Disaster Management Institute. While hiring will be statewide the initial locations...

This cop is a must see. He is reaching out to other cops telling them to stop trampling on the rights of Americans.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said Tuesday that if President Trump refuses to send the documents and witnesses that House Democrats requested in the impeachment inquiry, “We can only conclude that you’re guilty,” sparking critics on Twitter to accuse him of suggesting the president is guilty until proven innocent. "In America, innocent men do not hide and conceal evidence," Swalwell added, in his conversation with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "They are forthcoming and they want to cooperate and the president is acting like a very guilty person right now." Among those objecting to Swalwell's remarks was Ben Williamson, communications director for Rep....

Helen Hudson will tell you what the 15th Ward was like when she was a girl. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the Syracuse neighborhood was home to thousands of predominantly black residents who had settled in the growing upstate New York city during and after the Great Migration. Those who remember it, like Hudson, describe it as thriving, self-sufficient community they were proud to call home. “Oh my god, the things we had,” she said recently, her voice softening with the distinct twang of nostalgia. “We had two bowling alleys. We had meat markets.” Charlie Pierce-El will tell you...

No new or specific details about the I-285 toll lanes project were revealed at a May 15 Georgia Department of Transportation meeting held in Dunwoody, but the state agency did fulfill a requirement to officially close out the “Revive285” project that began in 2006. A future round of public meetings that will include detailed maps of what properties could be taken are expected to occur in early 2020. Dubbed by GDOT as a “conversation” meeting about the planned toll lanes along the top end of I-285, the one held Tuesday afternoon at St. Luke’s Presbyterian Church attracted about 60 people....

In 1965, Mary Jane McGuire, her husband Cyril and their three children received a letter from the Michigan State Highway Department. It informed them that their Lansing home, where the family had lived for the past decade, would be demolished to make way for construction of Interstate 496. The letter was followed by an offer of federal dollars to purchase their property, a number the McGuires felt was far below its actual value. The couple’s initial refusal to accept the offer meant they were one of the final families of their African-American neighborhood to be displaced for construction of the...

The small industrial buildings and blighted homes that once dotted the landscape of Detroit's Delray neighborhood are gone for good as demolition and site-cleaning work for the Gordie Howe International Bridge is in full swing this summer. The long-anticipated bridge construction project is starting to take shape on the Michigan side of the Detroit River, as cranes have been working along the riverfront in recent weeks. The cranes were drilling test shafts into the ground that will determine the final design of the new span and its towers rivaling Detroit's 73-story Renaissance Center, said Aaron Epstein, CEO of Bridging North...

Our constitutional system assumes that federal courts serve to remedy an injustice created by officials in the legislative and executive branches. Unfortunately, federal courts, even the Supreme Court, sometimes are responsible for creating an injustice. Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court did that for property owners in Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City. On Friday, in Knick v. Township of Scott, the court ended that injustice by overruling Williamson County by a 5-4 vote. For more than 30 years, people with claims under the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause have been told, “Get in the back of the...

ORLANDO, Fla.—The state dubbed it the I-4 Ultimate for its grand scope. For some here, it’s more like the ultimate headache. A reconstruction of 21 miles of congested interstate highway through the heart of Orlando will build or rebuild 140 bridges, redesign 15 interchanges, move exits and add new toll lanes, in a $2.3 billion project to smooth traffic through one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities. Dense cities have grown up around the aging freeways, hemming them in so that expensive engineering feats are needed to do work on them. Yet work is often unavoidable. I-4, for instance, was built...

Toll lane plans for parts of the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270 are set to move forward next week, including plans for improvements to the American Legion Bridge. Maryland’s Board of Public Works — Gov. Larry Hogan, Treasurer Nancy Kopp and Comptroller Peter Franchot — is set to formally designate the planned toll lanes as a public-private partnership on May 8 and to support plans for separate phases of construction. Once the public-private partnership designation is approved, the state expects to quickly issue a request for qualifications from private companies so that a short list of the private firms or...