Free Republic

The Biden campaign didn't like a headline written by the staff at USA Today, so USA Today was happy to oblige and change it. John Iadarola and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.

We Failed the Freedom TestThe remedy is worse than the disease.-Francis BaconThe government never cedes power willingly.Neither should we.If the Covid-19 debacle taught us one thing it is that, as Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged, “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned.We’re still allowing ourselves to be fully distracted by circus politics and a constant barrage of bad news screaming for attention.Four years after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which gave world governments (including our own) a convenient excuse for expanding...

The former civil liberties group continues morphing into a progressive organization.Among the unfortunate changes of recent years has been the transformation of the American Civil Liberties Union from an advocate for free speech and other individual rights into just another progressive political organization. Historically, despite much pushback, the group defended the right of people from across the political spectrum to advocate and protest. But the organization has become unreliable on the issue; most recently in the very 21st century debate over gender identity, which sees the ACLU of Missouri targeting a whistleblower who is critical of medical transitions for minors....

U.S. spies and cops are vacuuming up huge amounts of data about Americans from data brokers — a trend that puts us on a dangerous path already trodden out by authoritarian regimes such as China. In America, we curtail government powers and guarantee civil liberties by limiting the amount of information citizens provide to the state. Police need a warrant to strap a GPS device on your car or listen to your telephone calls. Intelligence agencies and military units are banned from targeting Americans for surveillance and are supposed to focus their attention overseas.

Late last year, Congress extended Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and, in doing so, secured “the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers” until April 2024. With that month fast approaching, House Republicans have unveiled a new package to reauthorize those same powers, within limits. As the Hill reports, the new package “focus[es] on more reforms at the FBI to address misuse of the powerful spy tool,” but the deal does not include requirements for a warrant, which is “deemed a red line for the intelligence community but nonetheless a top priority for privacy advocates in Congress.” The new...

Two years ago, I wrote a column denouncing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of a counter-terrorism law to shut down the Freedom Convoy trucker protests as an authoritarian attack on free speech. Now, a Canadian court has agreed and ruled that the use of the Emergencies Act was unlawful and “unreasonable.” Despite Trudeau’s attacks on civil liberties, he remains a favorite of the media as an iconic figure on the left. Various civil liberties groups have opposed the iron-handed measures of Trudeau, including The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Constitution Foundation. The characterization of political critics as...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, in a continuation of his efforts to protect Americans’ civil liberties and push for reform to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) forced a Senate vote to remove reauthorization of FISA from the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). A bipartisan group of 34 senators joined Dr. Paul in voting to remove the reauthorization of FISA from the annual NDAA. The final vote tally was 35-65, six votes short of ending domestic spying authority. Below are excerpts from Dr. Paul’s prepared remarks he delivered ahead of the vote:...

In a surprising development, the Biden administration has appointed James Clapper, John Brennan, and Paul Kolbe, all former intelligence officials, to a DHS “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” responsible for addressing critical national security matters. This decision has raised eyebrows and concerns due to the history of these individuals. It’s worth noting that Clapper, Brennan, and Kolbe were signatories of the controversial October 2020 letter that made deceptive claims about Hunter Biden’s laptop, suggesting it might be Russian disinformation. This false assertion had significant ramifications, particularly in the tightly contested 2020 election, where the outcomes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin were...

March 25, 2021, Rutgers University became the first university in the nation to announce it would require students to take COVID vaccines for fall 2021 enrollment, retracting its January 8, 2021 announcement that “…with our stance of human liberties and our history of protecting that, the vaccine is not mandatory.” What happened within a few short months that made Rutgers ultimately decide to hell with student civil liberties? Rutgers claimed and still does to this day that it has a “commitment to health and safety for all members of its community” even though on July 30, 2021, Rochelle Walensky issued...

Washington, DC – The New Civil Liberties Alliance is challenging the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) in federal court for coordinating with Google to automatically install spyware on the smartphones of more than one million Commonwealth residents, without their knowledge or consent, in a misguided effort to combat Covid-19. A newly-released video details how DPH’s actions have violated fundamental constitutional rights. ... Thousands of people do not know DPH’s Covid-19 tracking app is on their phone, as it does not appear on their home screens like other apps. NCLA client Robert Wright, who commutes to Massachusetts for work, was...

A recently-declassified report alleges that multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have been actively “flouting the law” by gathering massive collections of “sensitive and intimate” data on American citizens. According to the New York Post, the claims were made in a report to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, which was only recently declassified and is now being amplified by watchdog groups and privacy advocates. The report details a loophole that has allowed intelligence agencies, including the FBI, DHS, and NSA, to simply buy large troves of cell phone data for tracking purposes without needing a warrant. If the information was...

High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of US citizens. They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—one of the nation’s most hotly contested government surveillance programs. Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics, including an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties, say those same agencies have morphed the provision into an unchecked, warrantless domestic spying tool....

Section 702 has easily become the security apparatus’ favorite excuse to conduct backdoor, warrantless surveillance on American citizens. Intelligence agencies, with the help of the current regime, market Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Congress as a means to keep Americans safe from foreign threats. Instead, as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee demonstrated on Tuesday, it’s become a proven loophole that lets verifiably corrupt bureaucrats spy on Americans. Nearly two decades after its inception, Section 702 has easily become the security apparatus’ favorite excuse to conduct backdoor, warrantless surveillance on American citizens. The FBI’s infamous and...

“Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”—Justice Neil Gorsuch We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency. Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security. COVID-19, for example, served as the driving force behind what Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch characterized as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” In a statement...

Justice Neil Gorsuch called government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic the “greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country” on Thursday... “Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” he said. “Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on.” ... Gorsuch slammed deference to “experts” for decision-making during the pandemic and warned that doing so could lead to losing “many cherished civil liberties.”...

The queries targeted people involved in Jan. 6 and George Floyd protests, and donors to a failed congressional candidate ... The FBI improperly used warrantless search powers against U.S. citizens more than 278,000 times in the year ending November 2021, according to an unsealed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) filing. U.S. citizens covered in that improper effort included people involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; George Floyd protesters during the summer of 2020; and donors to a failed congressional candidate, the filing said. ... The court filing, which spanned 127 pages, was unsealed Friday by the FISC,...

The Capitol Police couldn’t even defend their own building, nor could they defend Pelosi’s San Francisco home from an illegal alien hammer man, but somehow, they have now established national offices to monitor U.S. citizens outside their jurisdiction? Now they want more money and authority. Are you kidding me? This week, House Republicans crafted the annual appropriations bill funding the legislative branch of government, typically the smallest and least controversial of the 12 annual spending bills. However, in that bill they plan to provide $780.9 million to the U.S. Capitol police, which is $46.3 million more than enacted fiscal year...

From the conclusion: "Just two months later, it was claimed that an allegedly real zoonotic coronavirus had begun infecting people. The “new disease” had typical flu-like symptoms and very similar death rate to seasonal flu-like diseases. Coincidentally, in this period cases of flu reportedly dropped to almost zero. Tests for this “new virus” were rushed out, skipping the usual peer review process. Mass testing of asymptomatic people was used to create “covid cases”, while mass testing of those already dying in hospital was used to create “covid deaths”. As a “response” to the “pandemic”, lockdowns were introduced, crippling the economy...

Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services...

The allegations from FBI whistleblowers is the subject of a hearing on Thursday.. The Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained the financial records of Americans from Bank of America "without any legal process" following the January 6, 2021 riot, according to an interim staff report from the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The report containing allegations from FBI whistleblowers is the subject of a select committee hearing on Thursday. "Just like FBI whistleblowers [Garret] O’Boyle and [Stephen] Friend, retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill provided the Committee with detailed allegations of FBI...