Free Republic

Felons Want Second Amendment Rights Restored Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 WASHINGTON – Under current law, a person convicted of a federal felony loses his Second Amendment right to own and carry a firearm. Many people, including many federally convicted felons, believe that is an absolute, irrevocable part of their sentence. But a provision of the United States code says otherwise. Under Title 18 Section 925(c), federally convicted felons "may make application to the Secretary [of the Treasury] for relief from the disabilities imposed by Federal laws with respect to the acquisition, receipt, transfer, shipment, transportation, or possession ...

Next to go: The U.S. aircraft industry © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com During the great NAFTA debate of 1993, Americans were told the only jobs we would lose to Mexico were "dead-end" jobs, that our high-tech labor force should no longer be doing. At the same time, we would be creating the kinds of jobs Americans do best, like building commercial jetliners. And indeed, since 1994, America has lost 689,000 jobs in textiles and apparel – dead-end jobs to pundits, but to the folks who lost them, the best jobs they ever had. Suddenly, however, after the textile industry went to Mexico, ...

Justice or revenge? As a hostage in Beirut, Terry Waite was chained to a wall, beaten and denied all human rights. Here he gives his thoughts on America's treatment of the al-Qaida detainees in Guantanamo Bay Wednesday January 23, 2002 The Guardian I can recognise the conditions that prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet; beaten on the soles of my ...

Spann and Afghan War Gain CIA Mileage by Paul Fallavollita The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is reaping the benefits of the Afghan war, according to John Donnelly’s recent report in the Boston Globe, "CIA takes on major new military role." He assembles an array of revealing facts and quotes of interest to patriots and constitutionalists, including from an agent who stated on condition of anonymity, "we are doing things I never believed we would do – and I mean killing people." Donnelly notes that the CIA’s 200 operatives in Afghanistan represent the "largest on-ground military presence since Vietnam," and that ...

What Do We Owe the State? by Joseph Sobran I’ve had a lot of response to my column on Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s new book Democracy – The God That Failed , most of it enthusiastic. [See the column of December 20, 2001, "The Myth of ‘Limited Government’."] A surprising number of citizens of this democracy have lost faith in the state, democratic or otherwise. It’s amazing how seldom we ask the most basic questions. What is a state, anyway? Where does it get its authority? Might we be better off without it? These are serious questions. One scholar estimates that during ...

January 15, 2002 A.C. resident guns down 2 alleged home invaders By BRIDGET MURPHY Staff Writer, (609) 272-7257, E-Mail ATLANTIC CITY - One intruder was dead and one was clinging to life Monday after a North Indiana Avenue resident warded off a home invasion by firing his own weapon at two masked men who pushed their way into his apartment armed with guns. The incident happened around 2 a.m. at the back door of 5011/2 North Indiana Ave., an apartment shared by Dennis Burleigh, 54, and his girlfriend, Carol Kelly, authorities said. Burleigh went to the back door with his ...

ARMED AND DANGEROUS Senators take fresh look at Waco evidence New activity said to be part of 'interest in cleaning up the FBI' By Jon Dougherty © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com A small group of senators is set to take a fresh look at materials that cast doubt on former special counsel John Danforth's conclusion that FBI agents did not fire on Branch Davidians who were fleeing their burning Mount Carmel complex outside of Waco, Texas, nearly nine years ago. A spokesman in the Tempe, Ariz., office of Republican Sen. John McCain confirmed that he has been given "a tape" as well ...

Slavery Reparations in a PC Society Michael Shaffer Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2002 Article one of a two-article series on the new book "Uncivil Wars" by David Horowitz "Political correctness" has become the buzzword of today’s culture, especially on our nation’s college campuses. However, when it comes to the subject of race, it is almost impossible to contain the fiery emotions and long-simmering negative feelings of the African-American community. Slavery reparations asseverate the idea that American taxpayers should pay the African-American community for the damages that slavery and segregation caused to their ancestors. The idea has been met with thunderous support ...

US doesn't have the right to decide who is or isn't a PoW Ignore the Geneva convention and we put our own citizens in peril Michael Byers Monday January 14, 2002 The Guardian Would you want your life to be in the hands of US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld? Hundreds of captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters don't have a choice. Chained, manacled, hooded, even sedated, their beards shorn off against their will, they are being flown around the world to Guantanamo Bay, a century-old military outpost seized during the Spanish-American war and subsequently leased from Cuba by the US. ...

The Tough-Minded Charles Dickens: Libertarian and Copperhead by Joe Pryce In the aftermath of the "Great War" of 1914-1918 many of the most highly-revered Victorian idols were dragged from their pedestals by the deracinated members of the "Bloomsbury" coterie and by marxisant wise-guys, who sneered and snickered as they launched their thunder-bolts and bellowed their bulls against their vile forefathers. Predictably, Charles Dickens was on the receiving end of much of this abuse, and it must have seemed to many a post-war iconoclast that the destruction of his reputation had been accomplished with astonishing ease… However, Charles Dickens was reinstated ...

Six Myths About Libertarianism by Murray N. Rothbard This article, first published in Modern Age, 24, 1 (Winter 1980), pp. 9-15, as "Myth and Truth About Libertarianism," is based on a paper presented at the April 1979 national meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Chicago. The theme of the meeting was "Conservatism and Libertarianism." LIBERTARIANISM is the fastest growing political creed in America today. Before judging and evaluating libertarianism, it is vitally important to find out precisely what that doctrine is, and, more particularly, what it is not. It is especially important to clear up a number of misconceptions about ...

January 8, 2002 Gerry DiNardo Named 25th Indiana University Head Football Coach Bloomington, Ind.--The Indiana University Athletic Department has announced Gerry DiNardo as the university's 25th head football coach. DiNardo, a member of two national collegiate championship teams, is a two-time collegiate head coach as he led Louisiana State from 1995-1999 and Vanderbilt from 1991-1994. He also served as an assistant coach at Colorado (1982-1990), Eastern Michigan (1978-1981) and Maine (1975-1977). While at LSU, DiNardo posted a 26-9-1 mark in his first three seasons, tied for first place in the Southeastern Conference's Western Division twice and won three bowl games ...

January 11, 2002 Conspiracy Goes Mainstream Forbidden Truths? By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair Conspiracy is going mainstream. On the morning of January 8 Paula Zahn of CNN went into wide-eyed mode as she parleyed with Richard Butler, former head of the UN inspection team in Iraq, latterly part of the wipe-out-Saddam lobby and now on the CNN payroll. They were discussing the hot book of the hour, ''Bin Laden, la verite interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie. It's just appeared in Paris. ZAHN: Start off with what your understanding is of what ...

January 13, 2002 Fighting for oil The U.S. is determined to dominate the world's richest new source By ERIC MARGOLIS Contributing Foreign Editor NEW YORK -- Partisans of President George Bush's jihad against Islamic opponents have been crowing that the quick military victory in Afghanistan showed that America's power is irresistible. War can indeed be waged with almost no U.S. casualties. The old Afghan hands who cautioned against plunging into Afghanistan were dead wrong, gleefully chorus right-wing hawks. Hardly any of them have ever been to Afghanistan or neighboring regions. All past invaders, beginning with Alexander's Macedonians, found it extremely ...

Performing a Historectomy on America David C. Stolinsky Monday, Jan. 14, 2002 First, let me make clear that I am not referring to a hysterectomy, or removal of the uterus, but a historectomy, or removal of our history. Next, let me explain why this is especially critical for America. To do so, let me contrast America with France. The area we now call France was settled by Celtic peoples called Gauls in prehistoric times, hundreds or perhaps thousands of years B.C. The Romans under Caesar invaded and spread Roman customs and law and the Latin language, on which French is ...

Microchip Tracking Device Alarms Libertarians John Rossomando, CNSNews.com Friday, Jan. 11, 2002 The development of a new implantable personal identification microchip has libertarians worried about how government might use the device. The dime-size microchip, or "VeriChip" as manufacturer Applied Digital Solutions calls it, acts like a personal bar code whereby personal information can be stored and then retrieved with a special scanning device. "It contains a unique identification number and other data. Utilizing [the] scanner, radio frequency energy passes through the skin energizing the dormant VeriChip, then emits a radio frequency signal containing the identification number," the VeriChip Web site ...

Culture Wars Nearly Lost, Buchanan Warns Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com Thursday, Jan. 10, 2002 WASHINGTON – "Americans who look on this cultural revolution as politics as usual do not understand it,” Pat Buchanan writes in his new book, "The Death of the West .” It means an end to the country we love, he asserts. Those who seek to de-Christianize America, and who seek to demonize America’s heroes, trash our history and condemn our folk ways are not just presenting another "political opinion.” These people, or at least those who presume to speak for them, are revolutionaries. Buchanan quotes that "budding ...

McCarthy Was Right by Paul Gottfried A commentary published by Daniel McCarthy on this website (January 7) made the perceptive point that what is now officially viewed as "conservatism" bears no resemblance to the historical right in the US or anywhere else. This bogus Right is not only in no way conservative, but has little connection to the nineteenth and early twentieth-century liberalism to which it is often likened. That liberal worldview once mandated constitutional and ethical restraints on what government administration might do to social institutions and stressed the need for property qualifications on voting. (Under the old liberal ...

The Myth of 'Limited Government' by Joseph Sobran We are taught that the change from monarchy to democracy is progress; that is, a change from servitude to liberty. Yet no monarchy in Western history ever taxed its subjects as heavily as every modern democracy taxes its citizens. But we are taught that this condition is liberty, because "we" are – freely – taxing "ourselves." The individual, as a member of a democracy, is presumed to consent to being taxed and otherwise forced to do countless things he hasn’t chosen to do (or forbidden to do things he would prefer not ...

Nation: Columbine parents' request for investigation into possible police killing denied By STEVEN K. PAULSON, Associated Press LITTLETON, Colo. (January 3, 2002 10:05 p.m. EST) - Federal and county prosecutors on Thursday refused to convene a grand jury to investigate allegations that a police officer accidentally killed a student during the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999. Within hours, Gov. Bill Owens urged prosecutors to reconsider. "A grand jury investigation may be helpful in resolving the continuing controversies surrounding Columbine," he said in a statement. U.S. Attorney John Suthers said no one had formally requested a federal investigation and ...