Free Republic

Two stepbrothers suspected of trying to steal beer from a grocery store were not armed with guns when they were shot Thursday by a police officer who confronted them in Washington state’s capital city, authorities said. The officer reported he was being assaulted with a skateboard early Thursday before the shooting in Olympia that left a 21-year-old man critically injured and a 24-year-old man in stable condition. Both were expected to survive. The shooting, which is being investigated by a team of detectives from several agencies, prompted some protests. “We are committed to helping our community work through this difficult...

Thirty-nine minutes into his southbound ride from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, DC, Joseph H. Boardman, president and CEO of Amtrak, begins to cry. We're in the dining car of a train called the Silver Star, surrounded by people eating hamburgers. The Silver Star runs from New York City to Miami in 31 hours, or five more hours than the route took in 1958, which is when our dining car was built. Boardman and I have been discussing the unfortunate fact that 45 years since its inception, the company he oversees remains a poorly funded, largely neglected ward of the state,...

Before the New DealThe essay Federalism: Yesterday and Today covers Federalism from the Founding period to the modern era, with some attention paid to the Progressive Movement. The Progressives thought that the solutions to America’s problems, which they believed originated with Big Business, would only be found in Big Government as a counterbalance. They believed that Big Government should nudge, or even coerce, Americans to “live properly” – which meant to live as this university-educated elite saw fit. The earlier essay laid out their political and social agendas. The Constitution was an impediment to this agenda, and the Progressives needed...

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday quietly approved nearly $8 billion in funding for Amtrak. The measure calls for spending approximately $1.7 billion annually over the next four years on the rail service, a slight increase from the present level of funding. Prior Amtrak funding debates in Washington have been contentious affairs, but lawmakers said this year's bill — which was approved unanimously — is fair to both supporters and critics of the national rail service. "This is a good reform bill that firmly moves passenger rail towards greater transparency and accountability, and forces Amtrak to operate like...

A state-level campaign to rein in the federal government by calling an unprecedented convention to amend the U.S. Constitution is gaining steam, picking up support from two high-profile Republicans as more states explore the idea. Coburn, a legendary government-waste watchdog, announced this week that he has joined the effort by becoming a senior adviser for the group Convention of States Action, which wants states, not just Congress, to pass constitutional amendments. Article V of the Constitution states amendments can be ratified either by Congress or by states if two-thirds of them petition Congress to call a convention. Then, any amendment...

It takes a fair amount of audacity for a pair of political bloggers to call a group of lawyers that includes professors from Princeton and Georgetown Law School, two former Supreme Court law clerks, a White House Counsel, a law school dean, an attorney with actual Article V litigation experience and a former attorney general of Virginia “a posse of supposed conservative constitutional scholars.” What could merit this kind of sneering vilification from the local political bloggers? We merely contend that the states should use the explicit text of Article V of the Constitution to stop the abuse of power...

IntroductionFederalism, or States’ Rights, has a long and honored history. To define terms, Federalism involves the assignment of powers between the entities that make up a federation and the federal authority created by those entities to act on behalf of that federation. In the United States Constitution, the people delegated certain enumerated powers to the federal government for the sake of operating a federated union. The 10th Amendment was put in place to insure that the federal government would never assume powers not delegated to it. It reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor...

“The only thing the ‘prevent defense’ does it prevent you from winning,” quipped legendary NFL coach and broadcaster John Madden. Conservatives, therefore, should be terrified to read this week that the House Republican leadership’s goal for September is “to play prevent defense,” according to The Hill newspaper. The Republican leadership’s logic is tempting at first glance: Conservatives have reason to be cautiously optimistic about the 2014 elections. Unfortunately, this initial temptation does not stand up to stricter scrutiny. The reason Republicans are in a good position for this election is because they created a favorable contrast between themselves and the...

Should “In God We Trust” adorn the chambers of Washington state’s Pierce County Council? That’s the apparently controversial question facing councilmembers on Tuesday, a day after a council committee decided to bring the proposal to a vote of the full seven-member council, the Tacoma News Tribune reports. Councilman Jim McCune, the Republican sponsor of the measure, said the national motto is inspiring and patriotic — and he’s unclear why the proposal has created such controversy. “’In God We Trust’ is universal,” he told the newspaper. “It doesn’t have ‘In Muhammad We Trust,’ it doesn’t have ‘In Jesus We Trust.’” Council...

History, politics and law are all tangled up in contemporary court interpretations and public understanding of the Second Amendment, and politics is the greater part of the mix these days. Last week, I wrote that we’ve so misread the amendment that maybe we ought to get rid of it. That’s certainly not on the horizon, but the idea drew a strong response and suggested to me that a review of the amendment’s history might be helpful. (Some of the responses also reinforced my belief there are many people who should not be allowed anywhere near a gun. What does racist...

I don’t believe the Second Amendment was ever intended to support the kind of gun craziness we contend with today, but since it’s always used to ward off any common-sense gun reforms, maybe we ought to just fix the Constitution and be done with it. Yes, I know the odds against that are immense, but maybe we could start by nibbling away at the idea that the Constitution is infallible or that the founders had the answers to everything. They were smart men but neither perfect nor prescient. One of the ways they showed how smart they were, was that...

China National Gold Group Corporation General Manager Sun Zhaoxue has come out and told the world media that the US is suppressing the gold price. The reason for America’s manipulation of gold is to ensure US Dollar dominance on the world stage. America has by default ended up with the world’s reserve currency and therefore gets the world to work for them in exchange for an ever increasing supply of printed greenbacks. He also went on with an excellent analysis of America’s war against Europe and the Euro using their investment banks. Another good insight from Sun Zhaoxue is that...

Who is John Galt?: A Navigational Guide to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is now available at Amazon. Click here for a link to the book. This book is the result of our first FReeper Book Club. In recent press articles and among the general public, there is a sense that Ayn Rand’s monumental Atlas Shrugged is a prophetic work, accurately predicting the Great Recession and the path on which America’s economy and society are set. But Atlas Shrugged is a difficult book to read. Many are daunted by its extreme length, Rand’s prose style, interminable speeches where the action stops...

1973 REPORT OF THE ABA SPECIAL CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION STUDY COMMITTEERECOMMENDATIONWHEREAS, the House of Delegates, at its July 1971 meeting, created the Constitutional Convention Study Committee “to analyze and study all questions of law concerned with the calling of a national Constitutional Convention, including, but not limited to, the question of whether such a Convention’s jurisdiction can be limited to the subject matter given rise to its call, or whether the convening of such a Convention, as a matter of constitutional law, opens such a Convention to multiple amendments and the consideration of a new Constitution”; and WHEREAS, the Constitutional Convention...

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James Madison Drinks, and Writes an ArticlePhilip Freneau had set the deadline for the December 22nd edition of the National Gazette, and James Madison found himself racing the hourglass. Freneau published the newspaper, dedicated to the positions of Thomas Jefferson’s faction within the Congress and the council around His Excellency, while working for the red-haired Secretary of State as a translator. Mr. Jefferson saw neither difficulty nor conflict with this arrangement. Freneau had labeled the men of Alexander Hamilton’s faction as Monarchists, Tories, and Anti-Republicans, claiming their role was to reverse the results of 1776. The Secretary of the Treasury...

Paul Ryan is Romney’s pick for Vice President and now Ayn Rand’s name is on everyone’s lips. Many on the left are pillorying Ryan as an unrealistic “ideologue” because of his Rand connection. Many on the right accede, quickly trying to set aside Ryan’s admiration for "Atlas Shrugged" as youthful indiscretion. “Every young conservative has a fascination with Ayn Rand at some point,” Romney’s strategist Eric Fehrnstrom says dismissively. But hold on. If we actually consider the essence of what Rand advocates, the idea that her philosophy is childish over-simplification stands as condemnation not of her position but of the...

In the Beginning“While the mighty Pennsylvania boasted of having pushed its steel tentacles into some of the nation’s most populous cities, it could not make that claim with regard to New York City. Throughout the last years of the nineteenth century, the PRR struggled in vain to conquer the great natural barrier – the Hudson River – which lay between it and America’s largest metropolis.” – Michael Bezilla, Electric Traction on the Pennsylvania Railroad 1895-1968, Pennsylvania State University Press To understand the United States, one must contemplate the challenges of those earliest days of the Republic. The two largest cities...

To be clear, Atlas Shrugged may not win any Academy Awards. But that is not the point. The tale behind bringing Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel to the big screen is almost as long as the book itself. Loathed or loved, public sentiment is anything but neutral for Atlas Shrugged. In this first of possibly three installments, the year is 2016 and the national economy continues to spiral downward. As a result, commercial aviation is a recent memory and all traffic, freight and passenger, must move by rail. (It is ironic that in this alternate reality all rail traffic is still...

AfterwordThe flurry of newspaper pieces that began in October 1787 concluded some ten months later with a piece in which the reader senses as much exhaustion from Hamilton’s pen as exhilaration, as much trepidation as triumph. It turned out to be quite a series of papers: 85 in total. Taken along with papers written by the opposition, whose somewhat misleading name of “anti-Federalist” came about in part through the machinations of Hamilton himself, they compose a window on the creation of a government that was unique in history up to its time. The debates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia...