Free Republic

A group of Democratic lawmakers and left-leaning legal advocates have once again renewed their push for legislation expanding the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, reintroducing a bill Tuesday that perished in committee last Congress. The Judiciary Act of 2023 would add four seats to the high court, enlarging the bench from nine justices to 13 — a move some advocates have called for following the court's conservative majority's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization , which overturned the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade . Calls for court expansion have amplified recently following reports...

A conservative legal group is accusing the Biden administration of directing the Internal Revenue Service to audit more white and Asian Americans in an effort to boost 'equity.' The America First Legal Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to fight executive overreach, filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Tuesday claiming that an executive order President Biden signed last week encourages the IRS to alter its algorithms to audit more white and Asian taxpayers — and fewer black taxpayers. Though the Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government does not specifically...

Every so often, but especially in August before school starts, I like to see some evidence of my private-school tuition dollars at work. So I recently asked my sons what provoked the first gunshots in the American Revolutionary War. “The Tea Act of 1773,” said the 12-year-old, apparently tossing out the first Colonial grievance that came to mind. “King George's Stamp Act!” screamed his younger brother, apparently mistaking our conversation for a televised game show with prizes. “You're both wrong,” I said. For many years, the American colonists’ disaffection was manifest as a strictly political and social movement, free of...

I recently read with joy a conservative blogger’s attempt to connect the TEA party movement to its historic roots; a topic I have been meaning to write about for months now. The blogger rightly said that the “the historical precedent for the TPM wasn’t the Tea Party event in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773.” I actually uttered an “Amen, brother!” He went on to describe the Continental Association established on October 20, 1774 by the First Continental Congress in response to the Intolerable Acts. That’s when I realized that I have waited long enough to write this article. The...

The Boston Tea Party, 1773 Victory in the French and Indian War was costly for the British. At the war's conclusion in 1763, King George III and his government looked to taxing the American colonies as a way of recouping their war costs. They were also looking for ways to reestablish control over the colonial governments that had become increasingly independent while the Crown was distracted by the war. Royal ineptitude compounded the problem. A series of actions including the Stamp Act (1765), the Townsend Acts (1767) and the Boston Massacre (1770) agitated the colonists, straining relations with the mother...