Free Republic

Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem? If the 80-year-old vet living on the city's West Side didn't have the gun the city said he shouldn't have, he and his 83-year-old wife and 12-year-old great-grandson might have joined those victims of gun violence about whom gun-control advocates constantly chirp. The vet obtained the gun in violation of the city's handgun ban after a prior incident in which the couple was...

The United States is sending a succession of envoys to engage with Hamas but lacks the bravery to talk to the Islamist movement openly, its leader, Khaled Meshal, said in an interview with the Guardian. Meshal praised President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia for meeting him in Damascus and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, for hosting the discussion 10 days ago. He told Medvedev that the US was also talking to him. "I thanked him for that meeting and told him the Americans contact us, but are not brave enough to do so openly," said Meshal. "I am confident that in...

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

Laughter is one of the most powerful political weapons, and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is taking advantage of that principle in a new television ad. In it, a frog puppet, reminiscent of Kermit from Sesame Street, extols the virtues of reading - with specific regard to the Arizona law. The ad is far more than merely clever. It hits the Obama administration critics where they live - in their inflated image of their own intelligence.

There they go again -- bashing America on the world stage. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reports that in recent talks with China, US officials put America's human-rights record on a par with Beijing's. "Part of a mature [US-Chinese] relationship is that you have an open discussion, where you not only raise the other guy's problems, but you raise your own, and you have a discussion about it, about your own [problems]," Posner said. "We did plenty of that." Moreover, he said, "experts from the US side" talked about America's "treatment of Muslim Americans in an immigration context." They...

Free Speech: President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up. The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of...

In Federalist 5, John Jay continues to discuss the need for a United States vs 13 individual states, or several groups of states. This time Jay brings us practical lessons from the nation American had just won it’s freedom from, Great Britain. Here he speaks of the time when a union was being formed between England and Scotland, and how many issues and conflicts were solved through this union. Jay rightfully warns that a divided America would experience these troubles, and then some. One must remember that trouble was already brewing at the time, with the several states often arguing...

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was asked in a Feb. 26, 2010, letter from Western Caucus Chairman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, and other representatives from western states for the missing pages from a leaked government memo that “contained detailed information about the administration’s plans to designate as many as 14 new national monuments and lock up as much as 13 million acres in states throughout the West.” Bishop and his colleagues asked Salazar to provide the missing pages by March 26, or a month after their letter went to the Interior chief. More than two months later and Bishop...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it would provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents. After days of negotiations, the Pentagon and Justice Department informed a Senate committee that they would not comply with congressional subpoenas to share investigative records from the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., which killed 13 people.

National Security Advisor James L. Jones: Iran won't use nukes if they have them [Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: What's the danger if Iran has nuclear bombs? "A nuclear-armed Iran could transform the landscape of the Middle East, precipitating a nuclear arms race, dramatically increasing the prospect and danger of local conflicts, fatally wounding the global non-proliferation regime, and emboldening the terrorists and extremists who threaten the United States and our allies." National Security Advisor James L. Jones So here is what National Security Advisor James L. Jones thinks the downside is if Iran has nukes: #1. Nuclear arms race...

Regime change. Generally it's a term and tactic reserved for America's enemies. But what if the Obama administration is developing a more nuanced version for one of the United States' closest allies -- Israel? As the brouhaha between Israel and the United States over settlements and Jerusalem continues to simmer, you have to wonder whether President Obama is focused on changing the behavior of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or changing prime ministers instead. The absence of a clear strategy to move the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations forward, highlighted by the administration's repeated calls for a settlements freeze -- which neither...

President Obama Sunday seemed to shrug off the brouhaha after he broke with White House tradition and ditched his press pool earlier this weekend to watch one of his daughter’s soccer games. Prior to Obama’s bilateral meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, Obama told his colleague, “apparently I caused quite a problem," , adding something about his secretary not telling the Secret Service, according to, ironically enough, the pool report.

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Monday claimed that allegations of wrongdoing surrounding the community group ACORN are bigger than the Watergate scandal that brought down the President Richard Nixon. King, a long-time critic of ACORN, told the conservative American Spectator that the ACORN scandals have been worse because they affect state, local and national politics. THE HILL comment E-mail Print share Rep. Steve King: ACORN scandal bigger than Watergate By Jordan Fabian - 12/21/09 11:14 AM ET Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Monday claimed that allegations of wrongdoing surrounding the community group ACORN are bigger than the Watergate scandal that...

The Obama administration is planning to repatriate six Yemenis held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a transfer that could be a prelude to the release of dozens more detainees to Yemen, according to sources with independent knowledge of the matter. The release is a significant first step toward dealing with the largest group of detainees at the prison -- there are currently 97 Yemenis there -- and toward meeting President Obama's goal of closing the facility. But Yemen's security problems and lack of resources have spawned fears about its ability to monitor and rehabilitate returnees. Critics...

Americans remain opposed to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and moving some of the terrorist suspects being held there to U.S. prisons: 30% favor such actions, while 64% do not. These attitudes could present a significant roadblock for President Obama at a time when he seeks congressional approval to move terrorist suspects from Guantanamo to a converted state prison in northwestern Illinois. President Obama signed an executive order after his inauguration that called for the closing of Guantanamo, and he recently reiterated his commitment to doing this in his West Point speech on Afghanistan. The plans announced this...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, frustrated by the Justice Department's failure to explain the dismissal of charges against New Black Panther Party members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's elections, has subpoenaed the department demanding records showing how the case was handled. David P. Blackwood, the commission's general counsel, said Tuesday in a letter to the Justice Department that efforts since June to obtain an explanation had proceeded "without any success" and the "dearth of cooperation" had prompted the commission to issue subpoenas. "We are both mindful of the sensitivity of the subject matter involved and...

A White House spokesman dismissed polling that shows President Barack Obama's approval rating at a new low. A Gallup poll released Monday showed Obama’s overall approval rating dropped to 47 percent -- the lowest during his presidency. On Tuesday morning White House press secretary Robert Gibbs compared the poll to a child's art work. Gibbs was specifically referring to the trend line, which shows Obama's approval ratings declining. Gibbs noted "a six year-old with a crayon could do something a lot like that."

In yesterday’s New York Times, there was an article about White House social secretary Desirée Rogers. In it, reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote: “When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a ‘non-religious Christmas….’” This same participant said that “the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display” (this was confirmed by the White House). Indeed, as Stolberg wrote, “there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the crèche.”Catholic League president Bill Donohue...

Nancy-Ann DeParle, one of President Obama's chief advocates for the health care reform bill wending its way through Congress, earned more than $6.6 million as a paid director for health care firms, some of which were targeted in government investigations or whistleblower lawsuits on suspicions of billing fraud and other legal problems.