Free Republic

Attorney General Loretta Lynch overruled FBI Director James B. Comey on Thursday, saying the Obama administration does support a ban on firearms sales to those on terrorist watch lists. Mr. Comey last year had told Congress that the ban could end up alerting suspected terrorists that they are being investigated, and that could “blow” the cases his agents are trying to build. But his superiors at the Justice Department rejected that, issuing a statement Thursday saying they want to see Congress approve the “no-fly, no-buy” plan Democrats are pursuing. “The amendment gives the Justice Department an important additional tool to...

During a PBS town hall meeting, president Obama was asked why he and Hillary want to control and restrict guns and ammunition to responsible gun owners. Obama's response was the typical stock answer of rejecting the "notion" that anyone is hell-bent on taking away "folks' guns", yada yada. However, as AllOutdoor notes, if you listen carefully to Obama's full response, there is a comment Obama gives about knowing browser history that should sent everyone into a blind rage. "I just came from a meeting, today, in the situation room, in which I’ve got people who we know have been on...

In two federal lawsuits this week, CAIR alleges that the U.S. government’s terror watch list is unconstitutional because it violates the rights of individuals on the list, according to a report by Courthouse News Service. ... Executive Director of CAIR Dawud Walid said that if the federal government was going to track Islamic extremism, it should also surveillance Donald Trump supporters. "I think the question is, are we going to be selective about this?" Walid said. "Are we following people and placing people on this list who go to KKK meetings, people who go to Donald Trump rallies?"

On Thursday, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy announced plans to issue an executive order barring anyone listed on federal terrorist watch lists from purchasing a gun in the state. But while the idea of “no fly, no gun” has found growing support following the mass shooting in San Bernardino last week, including that of President Obama, experts say such a policy may be unconstitutional. The problem lies with the terrorist watch lists themselves, which are both secret and routinely updated without the typical due process given to those who are accused of breaking the law, such as court proceedings. Without a...

THE BODIES of the San Bernardino victims were still warm, and President Obama conceded that officials didn't "know that much yet" about the circumstances or motives of the killers. But that didn't stop him from exploiting the moment to call for more gun control. There was the usual shopworn pitch for "stronger background checks." There was also a demand that anyone on the "no-fly" list be prohibited from buying guns. "We have a no-fly list where people can't get on planes," Obama told CBS News, "but those same people who we don't allow to fly could go into a store...

Last week during a visit to The Herald News, U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III spoke about the difficulty of addressing the issue of gun control in Congress. From Herald News reporter Michael Holtzman's report: He remembered his freshman orientation to Congress at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The mass shooting of innocent children and teaching staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, happened that day. Kennedy spoke of the Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing of three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic, including a campus police officer, a week ago and then a much...

Judge Napolitano thinks that Barry’s common sense approach to gun “safety” is a Trojan horse. He called the Prezzy’s proposed “no-fly, no-guns” law a trick used to find a way around a Supreme Court decision he hates.Now - in addition to being placed on a no-fly list by some nameless, faceless, Kafkaesque bureaucracy accountable to no one – you may also be denied your Second Amendment right to bear arms.Expressing the opinion of many others, the Judge expects that this ‘common sense’ measure will expand the “no fly, no arms” list exponentially. He also thinks the concept is unconstitutional –...

Yesterday, the FBI publicly announced that their investigation into the mass shooting in San Bernardino had become a terrorism probe. After discovering a Facebook posting by Tashfeen Malik pledging allegiance to ISIS, the FBI took over the investigation. During the presser, the FBI also said that they had some evidence that Malik and Syed Farook had been in contact with “foreign terrorist organizations” as well: The FBI is investigating the fatal shooting of 14 people in California by a married couple as an “act of terrorism,” officials said on Friday, noting the wife was believed to have pledged allegiance to...

Poster Boy for 'Islamophobia' Tries to Join ISIS Muslim supposedly placed unjustly on No-Fly List belonged there after all. November 25, 2015 Robert Spencer Saadiq Long was framed, I tell ya. Set up by The Man for the crime of being Muslim. Back in 2012 and 2013, the Leftist/Islamic supremacist axis was working hard, wanting you to weep for Saadiq Long. MSNBC's Chris Hayes, hard-Left activist Glenn Greenwald, and the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) all pitched in to make Long a martyr of "Islamophobia" and howling at the injustice done to him. But they aren't howling so...

A man, who just two years ago was the poster boy for the far-Left media's attacks against the U.S. government's no-fly list for "unfairly" targeting Muslims, finds himself and several family members sitting in a Turkish prison -- arrested earlier this month near the Turkey-Syria border as members of an ISIS cell. It's a long way from 2013 when Saadiq Long's cause was being championed by MSNBC's Chris Hayes, Glenn Greenwald, and Mother Jones, and was being represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) terror front. His story got considerable media attention when his CAIR media representatives here pushed...

U.S. authorities are seeking to revoke the citizenship of an Oregon imam who they say tried to conceal past associations with radical Islamic groups. Mohamed Sheikh Abdirahman Kariye raised money, recruited fighters and provided training for insurgent groups battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Justice says in a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Portland. Kariye was one of more than a dozen people who filed a lawsuit challenging the no-fly list, winning last year a court order saying the government must provide information about why people are on the list. The...

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday rejected a call for travel bans from Ebola-ravaged West Africa, suggesting that it was too early for such a move. “We have a lot of people in Sierra Leone and in places like Liberia who are dual citizens,” the Nevada Democrat said in Henderson. “If there was a ban they would just fly to smaller countries before coming here.” House Republicans had called for such a travel ban at a congressional hearing Thursday. President Barack Obama rejected the proposal on Friday. Reid also backed the Obama administration’s approach to the deadly, expressing...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering adding the names of healthcare workers being monitored for the Ebola virus to the government's no-fly list, federal officials tell Fox News. The move is being considered as a response to Wednesday's disclosure that Dallas nurse Amber Joy Vinson was cleared to fly on a commercial airliner earlier this week despite having been exposed to the Ebola virus while treating Thomas Edward Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

Last Saturday, Kahler Nygard took a Spirit Airlines flight to Denver to visit with friends. When he departed from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Transportation Security Administration agents patted him down and allowed him to board his flight. When the plane landed, he was singled out and ordered to exit before the other passengers. After he exited the aircraft, TSA agents approached Nygard and demanded that he go through an additional pat-down and a screening of his luggage for explosive materials. He had already arrived safely at his destination in Denver and simply wanted to leave the airport. After an argument,...

President Obama has presided over a massive increase in the size and scope of the country's "no-fly" list, which bars individuals suspected of having terrorist ties from flying on airlines. Forty-seven thousand people were on the no-fly list in 2013, marking an all-time high that dwarfs the amount ever included during George W. Bush's presidency, according to an analysis of newly released classified documents published Tuesday by The Intercept. In addition, a "selectee list" used to pull out travelers for heightened scrutiny at airports and border crossings has grown larger than 16,000 people, including 1,200 Americans. The classified documents also...

The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept. The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals...

A federal judge in Oregon says the process surrounding the federal government's "no-fly list" is unconstitutional. Specifically, U.S. District Judge Anna Brown said the process doesn't give Americans on the list an effective way to challenge their inclusion.

Americans have always treasured the freedom to pick up and go anywhere they please. Our forebears had to travel to get here, often had to travel more after they arrived and sometimes moved on to uncharted territories out West only to return East. No one stopped them, whatever direction they were going. They had the good fortune to live and migrate before the creation of the all-encompassing national security state. After the 9/11 attacks, Americans woke up to find that their freedom to travel was not a fundamental right but a vaporous privilege, bestowed by the government and revocable at...

Over the last three years, the FBI has dramatically expanded its No-Fly List of suspected terrorists, including blacklisting innocent Americans who present no threat to security.... The FBI's violation of these Americans' due process rights is, in and of itself, abusive and unlawful. After all, preventing people from correcting the errors that led to their inclusion on a blacklist does not make our skies any safer, but it does harm constitutionally protected rights to travel and reputation—as a federal court recently recognized. And a closer look into the experiences of several ACLU clients shows another, even darker side to the...

A Mississippi man flying to visit his wife in Japan on Monday was detained during a stop in Hawaii and has been barred from reboarding his flight - or any other flight - because his name came up on the U.S. No-Fly List, leaving him stranded on the island. Gulfport resident Wade Hicks, Jr., boarded a military jet at Travis Air Force Base in San Francisco so he could spend time with his newlywed wife, a U.S. Navy lieutenant stationed in Okinawa, Japan, the Canada Free Press reports.