Free Republic

In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It was a fairly short amendment, as such things go, weighing in at a whopping 30 words. It reads as follows: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration.It was a simple little thing, with rather large consequences for the republic. Prior to the income tax being instituted, the United States government managed to fund itself with various excise taxes, and duties on imports. Afterwards, such taxes...

I'm running Kubuntu 22.04. I've been annoyed for some time that Thunderbird removed support for Movemail a while back. I have searched for ways around it, to no avail. I'd like to be able to read my local system mail using something more then just the command-line mail program. Does anyone have a good recommendation for an email program that will move mail from /var/spool/mail/ This is strictly local mail. I do not intend to send mail at all from this

Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy."Deep state heads will be exploding over this one.

In Florida, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has ruled that the federal law prohibiting people from possessing firearms inside post offices is unconstitutional. The ruling is based on the 2022 Supreme Court ruling New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen recognized a person’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.The case concerned Emmanuel Ayala, a U.S. Postal Service truck driver, who had a concealed weapons permit and held a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun in a fanny pack for self-defense. When police tried to stop him, he ran and struggled with officers. While dismissing the...

In the email alert from LII (Cornell's Legal Information Institute), which previews cases before the Supreme Court for Oral Arguments, it mentioned the following case to be heard Tuesday:United States v. RahimiIssues:Does 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits people under domestic-violence restraining orders from possessing firearms, violate the Second Amendment?The transcript to the Oral Arguments should be available at the Supreme Court's website around 3pm central time. This one might be interesting.

I believe this was actually announced a while back, but I really don't keep up on some things very well.I thought I'd share. From the Baen website: It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that Eric Flint has passed away. We were proud to publish Eric’s first novel, Mother of Demons, in 1997, and to continue publishing his many worlds, including the best-selling Ring of Fire series that started with 1632. There are several of Eric’s works already delivered and on the schedule. Eric was a tireless collaborator, and readers can also expect more of his...

In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It was a fairly short amendment, as such things go, weighing in at a whopping 30 words. It reads as follows: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration.It was a simple little thing, with rather large consequences for the republic. Prior to the income tax being instituted, the United States government managed to fund itself with various excise taxes, and duties on imports. Afterwards, such taxes...

I have a general questions for freepers who might be knowledgeable about electronics and such things. I have a CyberPower UPS that I run my desktop and monitor through. It seems to work OK when I actually lose power here. However, we apparently get overvolts occasionally. When that happens the UPS just drops power and turns off. Obviously, this is a less than ideal situation. I have to physically power it back on before I can restart my desktop. Kinda defeats the whole idea of having a UPS. The reason I suspect an overvolt situation, is because the UPS has...

I couldn't tell exactly what company produced this, but it was very well done IMO. It is kinda long, and it's a bit slow to start at the beginning, but overall was excellent. It was also horrific. Watching it to the end is hard.

The Supreme Court rejected hearing the case cited below. Justice Thomas dissented in that denial of cert. The case concerned a business that operated a medical-marijuana dispensary in Colorado. Since marijuana is still illegal accordig to federal law, there are legal and tax implications to that. This is something that really needs to be dealt with by the court. It is exactly this sort of thing that the court exists for. For governments and courts at all levels to continue to just wink at this stuff and not actually resolve what is, and is not actually legal is really nothing...

I got this in email yesterday from GOA Texas. Tag! You're it Texas Senate! Hello friend, The Texas House took another step forward last night to move Constitutional Carry forward - despite the games being played by Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. As we told you earlier, the Senate passed HB 1927, the Constitutional Carry bill, last week. However, the Lt. Governor pushed through a packet of amendments that not only weakened the bill but also opened the door for anti-gun members of the Texas House to kill the bill on a procedural defect. Last night, bill author Rep. Schaefer brought...

Since the 87th Legislative Session began last week, Texas legislators have filed three important pieces of legislation to help restore our right to keep and bear arms and to keep Texans safe. All three of these are priority legislation for Gun Owners of America.SJR 24 by Senator Bob Hall: Constitutional Carry through Constitutional Amendment This piece of legislation proposes to amend the Texas Constitution by adding that the Legislature “may not require a citizen of this state to obtain a license or permit to wear arms.” It would nullify the current statutory requirement to have an LTC to carry a...

January 8, 1835 The U.S. national debt reaches $0 for the first timeOn January 8, 1835, President Andrew Jackson achieves his goal of entirely paying off the United States’ national debt. It was the only time in U.S. history that the national debt stood at zero, and it precipitated one of the worst financial crises in American history.The elimination of the national debt was both a personal issue for Jackson and the culmination of a political project as old as the nation itself. Since the time of the Revolution, American politicians had argued over the wisdom of the nation carrying...

Voting System ProposalThe recent Presidential election has brought up a lot of issues surrounding voting and the tallying of these votes. After thinking about it a bit, I figured I'd write up what I think would be a proposal for a way to have voting and vote tabulating systems that would be verifiable, open, and transparent. All voters shall be positively identified via standard state or national ID, i.e., drivers licenses, state ID cards, military ID, or passport). Each positively identified individual shall be logged both locally and reported immediately to a centralized location to combat fraud. This list of...

There is a bill before Congress called the "Open Courts Act", that is designed to make it easier for members of the public to have access to court documents at the Federal District and Appellate level. The bill is HR-8235, and is co-sponsored by Hank Johnson and Doug Collins. I would strongly support this as it is something we sorely need. Today, when a decision is made in federal courts at the district and appellate level, if you want to read the decision itself or transcript of the oral arguments, you have to have an account with the PACER system....

The case is Thomas Rogers, Et Al. V. Gurbir Grewal and was a 2nd Amendment case which was brought before the Supreme Court. The court denied the Petition of Cert, which means the court will not hear the case. Often times, when a case is denied cert, the court doesn't comment upon it at all. The petition is merely denied. In this case, Justice Thomas (joined by Justice Kavenaugh) wrote a dissent to this denial. You may read the full dissent HERE.

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar. Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so. But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression -- for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the...

Weird Linux Display issue Some time back I retired my old Pine64 Media Center. I replaced it with an Intel NUC cube which I'd loaded up with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. Soeed isn't really an issue with this system, so I went with spinnign platters rather than an SSD. I installed Linux Mint XFCE4 on it along with all of my music (90GB) and vids of various movies and cartoons I've ripped over the years. Everything is working great, and in fact, today I finally made it all the way through my first complete pass through...

Our Moon's appearance changes nightly. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the half illuminated by the Sun first becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The featured video animates images taken by NASA's Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to show all 12 lunations that appear this year, 2018. A single lunation describes one full cycle of our Moon, including all of its phases. A full lunation takes about 29.5 days, just under a month (moon-th). As each lunation progresses, sunlight reflects from the Moon at different angles, and so illuminates different features differently. During all of this, of course, the Moon always...

COLLINS v. VIRGINIA 292 Va. 486, 790 S.E. 2d 611, reversed and remanded. Opinion [Sotomayor] Concurrence [Thomas] Dissent [Alito] Syllabus SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Collins v. Virginia certiorari to the supreme court of virginia No. 16-1027. Argued January 9, 2018-Decided May 29, 2018 During the investigation of two traffic incidents involving an orange and black motorcycle with an extended frame, Officer David Rhodes learned that the motorcycle likely was stolen and in the possession of petitioner Ryan Collins. Officer Rhodes discovered photographs on Collins' Facebook profile of an orange and black motorcycle parked in the driveway of a...