Free Republic

Josh, My first memory of you was in Olympia, Washington standing in my driveway as a grinning kid when you were about nine years old. I saw you many times as your dad and I spoke at many conferences over the years. How can I forget that meeting in the lobby of a hotel in Rochester, New York when you told me you had signed a book deal for “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”? I told you it was a bad title and wouldn’t sell. Of course, it outsold everything I have ever written by a wide margin. The last time...

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...

A LINE IN THE SAND by Michael Farris The following article will appear in the Second Quarter 2014 Home School Court Report, due in mailboxes late August. Two prominent speakers on the homeschooling circuit have experienced dramatic falls from favor due to admitted sin. Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips have both been accused of serious sins involving young women. The accusations are sexual in nature. Both men have admitted to some form of sin with regard to these accusations, although each has disputed some of the details. Gothard disputes that his sins were sexual in nature. Phillips admits to an...

If you’re interested in the Convention of States Project and enjoy a good, old-fashioned debate, you’re in for a treat. Convention of States Project director Michael Farris will join Oklahoma State Senator Rob Standridge on March 19 and 20 to debate leaders of the Oklahoma John Birch Society on the efficacy of calling a Convention of States to stop the abuses of Washington, D.C. Questions have been swirling around the Convention of States issue, and Michael and Rob look forward to answering many of them. A Convention of States is our best chance to stop the overreach of the federal...

CALDWELL, Idaho — Police say an Idaho woman who made a false 911 call to lure paramedics out of their station made a real emergency call minutes later when she got trapped under the station's garage door. Melissa R. Farris died Oct. 2 of injuries suffered when she was crushed by the closing garage door at the Canyon County station. Farris, a former paramedic at the station, had been trying to crawl under the door after the ambulance left to respond to a nonexistent traffic accident she'd called in a few minutes earlier.

"The spread of small arms creates a serious global problem and requires an equally urgent response because the lives and futures of children are at stake. These weapons have extinguished more young lives than they have protected." – Carol Bellamy, Executive Director, UNICEF The vast majority of Americans, regardless of their opinions on the increasing scope of international law, agree with the proposition that children should not be used as soldiers. Accordingly, much of the UN literature that addresses children and guns deals with this military-related issue. However, a second theme is quickly found in virtually all UN pronouncements about...

“The spread of small arms creates a serious global problem and requires an equally urgent response because the lives and futures of children are at stake. These weapons have extinguished more young lives than they have protected.” – Carol Bellamy, Executive Director, UNICEF The vast majority of Americans, regardless of their opinions on the increasing scope of international law, agree with the proposition that children should not be used as soldiers. Accordingly, much of the UN literature that addresses children and guns deals with this military-related issue. However, a second theme is quickly found in virtually all UN pronouncements about...

Supporters of a plan to amend the U.S. Constitution to include parental rights are warning moms and dads across the United States they already are losing their rights to make decisions regarding their children's health, education, welfare, finances, sex education, access to abortion and even leisure time. "The erosion is upon us," said Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a college and a church and now a dedicated leader in the effort to change the U.S. Constitution through the amendment process to restore and protect parental rights. Eighty years ago, the amendment website notes, "the Supreme...

NPR.org, October 22, 2008 · The ferociously conservative Christian right may be an unfashionable bunch this political season, but when it comes to the notion of a need for change, there are no truer or more fervently motivated believers. In fact, the recently founded Patrick Henry College is churning out these family-values crusaders in force.Inspired by journalist Hanna Rosin's 2005 New Yorker article about Purcellville, Va.'s so-called "Harvard For Homeschoolers" (subsequently expanded in the book God's Harvard), photographer Jona Frank put aside her own lefty leanings and set out — with Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League — to...

Federal authorities expect to file terrorism charges soon against a detained Pakistani man with ties to the shipping industry and links to a senior al Qaeda leader, law enforcement officials said yesterday. Uzair Paracha, 23, has been secretly detained as a material witness since his arrest March 31 in the offices of a New York clothing import firm owned by his father, sources said. Authorities believe the Paracha family business may have been used as cover for attempts to smuggle al Qaeda operatives or weapons into the United States, according to several sources familiar with the case. Paracha's father, who...