Free Republic

You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings. BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on "the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams." In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit...

Evidence of growing ties between the quasi-libertarian “tea party” movement and supremacist “patriot” groups has the blogosphere all-a-Twitter after The New York Times ran a long story on the topic Tuesday, datelined rural Idaho. Judging by scorn heaped on the article from both the right and the left, NYT investigative reporter David Barstow may well have hit the issue pretty squarely on the head. “The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival … [b]ut it is also about the profound private transformation of … people who not long ago...

Our federal government, once limited to certain core functions, now dominates virtually every area of American life. Its authority is all but unquestioned, seemingly restricted only by expediency and the occasional budget constraint. Congress passes massive pieces of legislation with little serious deliberation, bills that are written in secret and generally unread before the vote. The national legislature is increasingly a supervisory body overseeing a vast array of administrative policymakers and rulemaking agencies. Although the Constitution vests legislative powers in Congress, the majority of “laws” are promulgated in the guise of “regulations” by bureaucrats who are mostly unaccountable and invisible...

When the Mormon pioneers headed West under duress in 1847, they had reason to feel bitter at their treatment by the world's foremost liberal democracy. For years, Americans had chased, robbed, beaten and killed them. Joseph Smith, seeking redress for his people, earlier had gone to Washington, D.C. The towering statesmen of the day who received him acted like, well, Washington politicians. According to Smith, the legendary Henry Clay said, "You had better go to Oregon." The revered John C. Calhoun counseled, "It is a nice question, a critical question, but it will not do to agitate it." And the...

In the cradle of the civil rights movement, a new secession effort is under way that would break off Atlanta's predominantly white, wealthy suburbs to the north from poorer, black neighborhoods in the south. There's a renewed push to take some suburbs out of Fulton County, Georgia's most populous and home to most of the city of Atlanta, and put them under the now-extinct Milton County. Its supporters hope resurrecting the county would give residents there more responsive government. But opponents say the measure is racially motivated and will open up a deep rift between black and white, rich

January 04, 2010, 0:00 a.m. Will the American People Finally Revolt?Federal indulgence and incompetence are too vast to catalogue. By Deroy Murdock Where is Nelson Mandela when we need him? In an especially memorable moment in Clint Eastwood’s fine new film Invictus, South Africa’s first black president (exquisitely portrayed by Morgan Freeman) inspects his first official paycheck. “This is terrible,” Mandela says. He decides he earns too much money and subsequently donates a third of his salary to charity. Thus was born the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. Mandela’s humility and fiscal restraint would be as exotic in the nation’s...

Going Rouge Sarah Palin: An American Nightmare Edited by Richard Kim and Sally Reed Thomas Allen, 320 pages, $20 Sarah Palin, who ran for U.S. vice-president on the McCain ticket in 2008, was not the sole cause of the Republican party's bitter loss. Then-Senator Barack Obama's charisma, his chief opponent's pomposity and crankiness, and an incumbent with a poor record about to see his country plunged into a severe recession, all played a role in the worst GOP bashing for years. Of course, she didn't help much. After the initial excitement, it became abundantly clear that she lacked the base...

In the dead of night on December 17, 2009, President Barack Hussein Obama placed the United States of America under the authority of the international police organization known as INTERPOL, granting the organization full immunity to operate within the United States. Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order "Amending Executive Order 12425." It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other "International Organizations" as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945. By removing language from President Reagan's 1983...

Salvation Army major shot dead in front of 3 children By The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette A Salvation Army major was fatally shot in front of his three children Thursday afternoon as he walked into the the organization's community center in North Little Rock, authorities said. Around 4 p.m., two black men dressed in black approached Philip Wise, 40, of Maumelle outside the community center at 1505 W. 18th St., Pulaski County Coroner Garland Camper said. Wise’ children — ages 4, 6, and 8 — were walking with him when the men came up to them, police said. His wife, Cindy, also...

The battle that birthed our great nation was a battle well worth waging. Our founders declared that "taxation without representation" was unacceptable. So much so that men risked fortune, injury and even life in fighting a revolutionary war to break free from tyranny. Two-hundred thirty five years later, our nation finds itself facing a new tyranny – legislation without representation. Are there Americans willing to fight this time to break free again? Regardless of which poll one reads, the majority of Americans are clearly opposed to the health-care bill in its current form. As few as 52 percent and as...

Let's face it FRiends, if the unconstitutional healthcare bill passes, the socialist coup d'etat will have advanced well beyond the point of no return! There is nothing in the constitution that authorizes this illegal federal power-grab and plenty that forbids it. If the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Marxist attempted coup pulls this off without the people resisting to the hilt, then they'll have no restrictions whatsoever on implementing the rest of their Liberty killing Marxist agenda. America will be no more. The whole idea of our constitution is to severely restrict the federal government to only its dozen and a half expressly listed...

Britain and other countries with fast-rising government debts must steel themselves for a year in which “social and political cohesiveness” is tested, Moody’s warned. In a sombre report on the outlook for next year, the credit rating agency raised the prospect that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world. It said that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension may become just as important signs of whether a country will be able to adapt as traditional economic metrics. Signalling that a...

“Obstructing Obama Care is like obstructing the abolition of slavery!” Are them fightin’ words, or what?! And we, who want to “abolish” the tax-funded abortion contained in Obama Care, are the bad guys. We are apparently the Confederate States challenging the authority of our President of the United States. Of course, Obama is Abe Lincoln, women are enslaved by pregnancy and we are the rebels who keep them there, right? That, at least, is how Senator Harry Reid is setting things up for this showdown at the Barack Obama … uh … B.O. Corral.Isn’t there something rather wrong with this...

Let us assume for the moment that it became revealed that Barak Obama was not a natural born citizen of the United States, proving that he was ineligible to be President of the United States. Ok, now what? Would Obama be removed from office? Perhaps. Then what? Joseph Biden would be our next President. Ok, then what? Would the United States be freer? Would the States and the people regain their sovereignty stolen by the federal government? Would America’s form of government revert back to its original nature and character of 1787? Would self-government, the consent of the governed, limited...

This is a very slickly produced 16 minute short film, showing what Civil War Two might look like, on the first day of the 2nd American Revolution.It's very sobering, and very well worth watching. Land of the Free, Part One

A Housing and Urban Development Department lawyer asked the Justice Department whether the new law meant that pre-existing contracts with Acorn should be broken. And in a memorandum signed Oct. 23 and posted online this week, Mr. Barron said the government should continue to make payments to Acorn as required by such contracts. The new law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to Acorn or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability,” Mr. Barron wrote. The deputy director of...

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

AP Sources: 1 rampage gun purchased legally By LARA JAKES and DEVLIN BARRETT (AP) – 20 minutes ago WASHINGTON — A 5.7-millimeter pistol used in the Fort Hood shooting was purchased legally by suspect Nidal Hasan at a Texas gun shop, law enforcement officials said Friday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case. Records indicate Hasan bought the FN 5.7 at store called "Guns Galore" in Killeen, Texas, well before the attack that left 13 people dead, one of the officials said. The pistol has been dubbed a "cop killer" by...

My fellow Americans, if you believe in the Constitution, individual liberty, freedom, ownership of firearms, and personal property, along with being able to eat what you want, live how you want, smoke if you desire and make the kind of choices that a free people make, then you will put aside party differences, and stop the health care bill. Aside from bankrupting America and forcing our country to become beholden to the IMF and the United Nations, in order to avoid the kind of social decay that occurs in third world countries, YOU will lose everything, including your right to...

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article discussing a theoretical collapse of the United States in 2010. Igor Panarin presented his theory in 1998, and cites mass immigration, economic collapse, and moral decline as key triggers to a second American civil war that will fragment the US into four pieces, with Alaska going back to Russia and Hawaii ending up in Japanese or Chinese hands. Here’s what Panarin’s theoretical United States region would look like, post second American civil war: (MAP AT LINK) Now, there are a few things I agreed with right off the bat, like California being...