Free Republic

A number of municipalities throughout Pennsylvania have enacted, or are considering enacting, ordinances known popularly as “Lost or Stolen” that impose a duty to report lost or stolen firearms within a prescribed time period and set penalties for failure to make a report. The justification for these ordinances is that they will somehow restrict the flow of “illegal” firearms into their municipalities and/or restrict straw-purchases. When asked how these ordinances will work, one is met with a “deer in the headlights” stare. The municipalities involved are being lobbied by gun-control organizations, at least two attorneys, at least two PA legislators...

As Barack Obama and John McCain thrash it out over how they would deal with Iran, voices from inside Iran are weighing in with an unusual message: If the United States strikes hard and fast, we will support you. Emissaries from inside Iran have been meeting with Iranian exiles in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere in recent weeks to deliver this provocative message, which they claim comes from pro-U.S. dissidents at the upper-most levels of the regime. “U.S. airstrikes must be powerful and sustained enough to break the myth of the regime’s absolute power and reveal the weakness of...

BEIJING - The United Nations must show it is tough enough to ensure the security of its members so that individual countries do not take measures into their own hands, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday. Speaking to Chinese university students in Beijing, Annan said fighting terrorism was best achieved through cooperation and information-sharing between states, not the use of force. “Indeed, the first purpose of the United Nations, laid down in Article 1 of the Charter, is ’to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace’,” Annan said. “We must show that...