Free Republic

Submitted by Brannon LeBouefExecutive Summary: Yes, some guns were confiscated in New Orleans, LA (NOLA) following hurricane Katrina, but it was nowhere near as widespread as some would have you believe. They were isolated incidents and the majority of those were done by out of town LEO and MIL.What you are about to read are my personal experiences and recollection of events as I saw them. While not all-inclusive, I think they lend a fiar account of what really happened on the ground. Realities:While it has been nearly 8 years since the events of Hurricane Katrina, which in my opinion...

This week brought more bad news for Joshua Welch, the Baltimore-area second-grader who was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a breakfast pastry into something resembling a gun. School officials have denied an appeal to have the suspension expunged from the boy’s permanent record, reports The Baltimore Sun. Robin Ficker, the attorney representing Welch and his family, said he will now take the matter to the Anne Arundel County school board. Under local regulations, he has 30 days to do so. “If this school can’t educate a seven-year-old without putting him out of school, how are...

Anger was mounting in Congress on Tuesday night as politicians, briefed for the first time after revelations about the government's surveillance dragnet, vowed to rein in a system that one said amounted to "spying on Americans". Intelligence chiefs and FBI officials had hoped that the closed-door briefing with a full meeting of the House of Representatives would help reassure members about the widespread collection of US phone records revealed by the Guardian. But senior figures from both parties emerged from the meeting alarmed at the extent of a surveillance program that many claimed never to have heard of until whistleblower...

After you read this- you will wonder what country we are in. Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his "paint" program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form. On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of "Police!" The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could "take a look around." Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn't want any return visits) -...

The family of the 7-year-old boy from Ann Arundel County elementary school who was suspended for making a gun shape out of a pastry has tried to clear the boy’s record. This story made headlines across the country as the gun control debate has taken center stage among many elementary schools as some school administrators flex their muscles with a “zero tolerance policy” that excuses itself from common sense. But according to the Baltimore Sun school officials denied the boy’s family’s appeal on Monday, not allowing the boy’s record to be expunged of the incident. Robin Ficker, attorney for Park...

BOULDER, Colo. - Boulder police say they have a right to enter unsecured homes if residents leave an open door. Boulder police Sgt. Michael Everett tells the Boulder Daily Camera entering unsecured residences is a standard procedure for most law enforcement agencies, including Boulder police. He says the practice is not likely to stop. Chrissy Smiley called police to complain after she returned to her south Boulder condominium after walking her dogs Thursday and found a card from a Boulder police officer sitting on her dining room table letting her know he had been there. Boulder police officials told The...

June 10, 2013 EXCLUSIVE: Jailed filmmaker vows to finish film wrongly blamed for Benghazi attack by Joshua Rhett Miller EXCLUSIVE: The controversial filmmaker whose crude Internet trailer was wrongly blamed by the White House for sparking last year's deadly Benghazi attack vowed to finish his movie, which he said is aimed at fighting terrorism, not denigrating Islam. Breaking his silence from inside a facility under the authority of the federal Bureau of Prisons in southern California, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula told FoxNews.com in a series of phone interviews that his film "Innocence of Muslims" has been widely misunderstood, and not just...

... Bill Hemmer asked the judge what he thinks we need to understand about what Snowden is telling us. Judge Napolitano explained that the government has granted itself this sweeping authority without a national debate about how much privacy Americans are willing to sacrifice... He said the government wants Americans to sacrifice liberty in return for the promise of security... ...

The Scottish government is proposing a bill that would appoint a government supervisor to oversee every child in the country from birth onward. Children’s Minister Aileen Campbell said that under the Children and Young People Bill, the responsibility for appointing a “named person” for each child from birth, will lie with local health boards. These persons, who will be social or health workers, will “promote, support or safeguard the well-being of the child or young person.” There have been very few reservations about the bill raised in Scotland’s devolved parliament at Holyrood. The Iona Institute, a conservative think tank, noted...

A subset of visitors to New York City looks, on the surface, just like the rest. Some are high profile, like the boxer this year, and the football player, and the Tea Party leader from California. They are joined by the anonymous: the military wife from Minnesota, and the hazardous waste expert. There was a minister, and a surgeon, and someone in pest control. What sets them apart is what each brings along on a visit to the city. A handgun. The guns are legally owned, with the home state permits all in order. The visitors have locked the gun...

You don’t trust President Barack Obama? No faith in the massive federal bureaucracy? Don’t hold a huge reservoir of confidence in Congress representing your interests? How much do you trust the federal courts that handle secret requests from the Department of Justice . . .and then issue secret decisions based on the judge’s secret interpretation of the law? Be advised: President Obama finds “your lack of faith disturbing.” “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch, but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process, and rule of...

H.L. Mencken had Roosevelt nailed when he wrote the following: He didn't believe in democracy; he believed simply in government. In 'The "New Freedom" and the Courts', Theodore Roosevelt said the following: The "New Freedom" is nothing whatever but the right of the strong to prey on the weak, of the big men to crush down the little men, and to shield their iniquity beneath the cry that they are exercising freedom. The "New Freedom" when practically applied turns out to be that old kind of dreadful freedom which leaves the unscrupulous and powerful free to make slaves of the...

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that health insurance premiums will go up under Obamacare because people who did not buy insurance before, and thus had no premium at all, will now be forced to buy insurance. She also urged people to be “optimistic” about Obamacare. “You just see,” Pelosi said. “I mean be optimistic about it. It is a very, very exciting enterprise.”

The key question that needs to be answered now is...WHY WAS CATHERINE TARGETED PERSONALLY? Bell asked: "Was there anything in particular that you think may have triggered that special attention?" Catherine answered: "We believe that much of it had ultimately had to do with True the Vote activities involving our 'Verify the Recall' project to ensure that petition-gathering connected with actions in Wisconsin to remove Governor Scott Walker were following the rules. This was obviously seen as a threat by liberal organizations and unions bent upon recalling him. "It's important to understand that our purpose and actions in this project...

Elizabeth Hofacre has turned out to be a gold mine to investigators of political corruption at the IRS. The Cincinnati-office specialist didn’t take kindly to having the entire mess dumped on the shoulders of her colleagues and herself, and has made it plain in depositions that this was no low-level innovation. The Hill became the latest media outlet to peruse the transcripts, and added a little more to the growing public record of the targeting effort’s genesis in Washington rather than Cincinnati: An IRS staffer in Cincinnati told congressional investigators that a Washington official was the driving force behind the...

A Texas high school silenced its Valedictorian’s microphone during his speech when he diverted from his pre-approved remarks and instead spoke about the Constitution.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin Last February Maxine Waters in an interview stated “The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” She continued to reveal “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before”. This week Americans were surprised to learn that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting phone call information of American Verizon customers. Like all of the...

As a Second Amendment organization representing 375,000 members, we are writing to express our concern over Health And Human Services’ (HHS) proposed rule that was printed in the April 23rd, 2013 issue of the Federal Register. These regulations would, by executive fiat, waive all federal privacy laws and encourage doctors to report their patients to the FBI. Please understand a couple of things: First, the standard which a doctor would use to turn in a patient is embodied in Clinton-era ATF language and in the anti-gun Veterans Disarmament Act of 2007. Specifically, a doctor would report a patient if he...

The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities. The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.'s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers. The agency is using...

Liberty County (FL) Sheriff arrested by the governor for defending the Second Amendment of the Constitution and refusing to arrest citizen. See video at link.