Free Republic

We are all Steve Baker now, writes a longtime personal friend of Baker's, who, along with Baker, has contributed to American Thinker. As many of you know by now, The Blaze’s journalist Steve Baker was arrested yesterday by the FBI, put in handcuffs, leg irons, and paraded before a magistrate who read off charges of ... wait for it ... four misdemeanors. Four FRIGGIN misdemeanors. Charges, not convictions, mind you. Nonetheless: Leg irons. Handcuffs. Hours in a jail cell. The message is clear: you dare go against the government narrative, this could be you. All that was missing was the...

Sic semper tyrannis — “Thus always to tyrants” — is the state motto of Virginia, which was my home for the first five years I served as an FBI special agent. Virginia is also the home to the FBI Academy at Quantico. I don’t know if it is poetic or ironic that this motto adorns the flags flying over the land where new agents accept their badges, their duty weapons, and their credentials identifying them as special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That is usually a proud moment for what my fellow FBI whistleblower Steve Friend calls a...

President Joe Biden appears to be facing increasing demands to declare a climate emergency, like the one declared for the COVID-19 pandemic that had a devastating impact on the country, warns a top advocate for the U.S. oil and gas industry. "They're leaning to that direction," U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart recently told Just the News. "If you grant the president's emergency powers to declare a climate emergency, it's just like COVID.” Stewart also said such a declaration would give the president “vast and unchecked authority to shut down everything from communications to infrastructure." He said infrastructure...

OTTAWA, CANADA (TND) — Sources say Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to invoke “martial law” to give the nation’s federal government greater authority to quell anti-vaccine mandate protests taking place across the country. Anonymous sources who reportedly could not speak on the matter publicly told the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) Trudeau indicated to his caucus Monday morning he will invoke the never-before-used Emergencies Act. ... Ottawa-based journalist Keean Bexte said Trudeau will deliver remarks during a press conference with top cabinet officials at 4:30 p.m. local time, and “will likely invoke martial law” at that time.

Governor Jay Inslee says unvaccinated Washingtonians are domestic terrorists. It’s a ridiculous insult that shows just how simple-minded our governor is when facing anyone who doesn’t bend to his will. Are you an unvaccinated Christian, Muslim, or Jew, resistant to get the COVID vaccine? Inslee says you’re carrying “a time bomb” in your backpack. Does your doctor warn against this vaccine because of your private medical history that Inslee doesn’t understand? You’re a terrorist. No matter the context, Inslee thinks you’re as dangerous as a criminal and he has no regrets. It’s the latest divisive comment from the power-hungry governor...

MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign manager, compared the lockdown protestors in Michigan to the Nazi Party’s original wing...Melber said, “You have Michigan state Senator Dayna Polehanki, ‘Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us. Some of my colleagues who own bulletproof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our Sergeants-at-Arms more than today.’ Your view of this, Steve?”Schmidt said, “This is appalling. Someone needs to explain to me what the difference is between those guys and a bunch of brown-shirted Stormtroopers in 1925 is. I’m very serious about this. This is about the...

Far-left Virginia Democrat Governor Ralph Northam announced this week that he will aggressively work to implement extreme anti-gun laws in the state now that Democrats control the state, including confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens. During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Northam “mentioned universal background checks, banning the sale of [semi-automatic firearms] and high-capacity magazines, restoring the law that limits purchases to one gun a month, and a red flag law that would empower a court to temporarily remove a gun from a person deemed to be a risk to himself or others,” The Washington Post reported. “We will at least...

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed that her country's gun laws will change in the wake of Friday's terror attack. "I've already indicated there will be changes to our gun laws. This will be discussed in cabinet tomorrow," said Arden during a press conference in Wellington, Sunday. Until Friday, the biggest massacre in New Zealand's history occurred 30 years ago, when a man named David Gray went on a shooting rampage, killing 13 people. Following that attack, the nation's gun laws -- which were first passed in 1983 -- came under scrutiny. The ensuing debate led to a...

“I disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling and believe that state governments were intended to serve as a check on the federal government,” said Ritze, R-Broken Arrow. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is better known as ObamaCare, is an example of federal overreach and my legislation will authorize the state to resist it and ban the enforcement of it.”

....Under the health care law, by 2014, states must implement a health insurance exchange, or a Web-based marketplace where people can shop for insurance, or defer to a federal program. States need to submit plans to the federal government by Nov. 16 that demonstrate their readiness to launch health exchanges. ....."We care about having a health care safety net for the vulnerable Floridians," Scott said on Fox. "But this is an expansion that just doesn't make any sense." ....."Hopefully we won't have to worry about it because by November we're going to have a new president-elect who is going to...

As another hearing is scheduled for this Thursday at 10:00am on the Senate floor and we get closer to a June vote on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), I would like to call out attention on the remaining 20 Republican Senators that have not yet signed the letter to Sen. Reid which would block the passage of this bill. Yes I wrote about this few weeks ago in hopes that RedStaters would help prod their Senators into getting on board to stop this UN agenda. There has been some success since my last diary, probably due to your...

Looks like the end is drawing near, and one can smell sulphur. I will guess first. (Location is optional but I put one down anyway). Please join, too.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's absence from the spotlight, his creation of a formal advisory committee, and media leaks of medical details are feeding speculation of a downturn in his nearly year-long battle with cancer. With a presidential election looming for October 7 in the OPEC nation ruled by Chavez since 1999, Venezuelans are obsessively focused on his condition and fretting about the consequences of a possible succession struggle. Should the rumors be true - and they are fiercely denied by government officials - an end to the Chavez era would shake Venezuela and have major repercussions around...

In a display of defiance at the U.S. Capitol’s governing gun lobby, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., and eight colleagues have introduced legislation to reinstate a ban on carrying loaded firearms in America’s national parks. The legislation was prompted by January’s murder of Mt. Rainier National Park ranger Margaret Anderson. Anderson was shot as she set up a road block for a car that didn’t stop at a chain-up checkpoint. By Joe Sebille“The dreadful and deeply saddening event that occurred on Mt. Rainier makes me question why on earth people should be allowed to carry loaded weapons in our national parks,”...

“We have to look at the root cause of why the economy is struggling as much as it is,” Santorum said. “Government intervention. Government regulation. Government taxation. Government is crushing and destroying the American spirit and the American free enterprise system.” Santorum said that government spending was impinging on personal freedoms and ultimately chipping away at what made the country great. “When the government gets as big as it’s gotten and starts to take over more of your life, then you get smaller as the individual, you get weaker, you lose control over your lives. You lose the rights that...

One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD. “We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just...

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company. When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com. The good news is that this firm promptly reports precinct-level detail in downloadable spreadsheet format. As reported by BlackBoxVoting.org in 2008, the bad news is that...

Hugo Chavez, who has been fighting cancer, was rushed to a military hospital for emergency care following kidney failure, according to reports.

As a way to solve the national debt crisis, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue recommends suspending Congressional elections for the next couple of years. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, North Carolina, according to the Raleigh News and Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.” Perdue said she thinks that temporarily halting elections would allow members...

The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination - that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from...