Free Republic

Former New York Gov. George Pataki blasted the Bay State’s health care reform created under former Gov. Mitt Romney today, telling the Herald it’s “unconstitutional.” He also conceded that Romney is “probably the (Republican) front runner” in the 2012 presidential election. Pataki is in Boston on Sunday to kick off a nationwide effort to repeal President Obama’s health care reform. “I think the idea of what they call an individual mandate ... is not just wrong, in all likelihood it’s unconstitutional,” Pataki told the Herald in a telephone interview today. Romney has defended his plan, saying he was able to...

State officials in Wyoming and Utah plan to enter a lawsuit pending in Montana to argue the federal government lacks authority to regulate firearms that are made and sold in the same state. The attorneys general of Wyoming and Utah say they plan to file a brief in the Montana case this week. It's possible other states may sign on as well. The states involved have adopted "firearms freedom" laws that seek to exempt guns manufactured and sold in the same state from federal regulations.

Governor Jan Brewer (R) today signed HB2307, Arizona's version of the Firearms Freedom Act, making Arizona the sixth state, behind Montana and Tennessee, who passed theirs in 2009, and Wyoming, Utah, and South Dakota which did so earlier this year.For those not familiar, the FFA is a Tenth Amendment as much as a gun rights issue, declaring firearms and accessories manufactured, sold and used within the state to be beyond the reach of federal regulation.After Montana and Tennessee had the audacity last year to pass legislation after actually having read the Constitution, the ATF sent a letter to FFL's in...

An article by a conservative named Cliff Kincaid, who serves as editor of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report, provides a perfect example of how different libertarians are from conservatives and, well, for that matter, how there ain't a dime's worth of difference, when it comes to individual freedom, between conservatives and liberals. The article concerns the drug war and is entitled, "Dopey Conservatives for Dope." Ardently defending the continuation of the drug war, despite some 35 years of manifest failure, Kincaid takes fellow conservatives to task who are finally joining libertarians in calling for an end to the drug...

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." — Ronald Reagan Nonconformist: of or characterized by behavior or views that do not conform to prevailing ideas or practices. Recently Fox's Glenn Beck offered citizens a quiz to pinpoint where they fall in their political beliefs. The Nolan Chart (www.nolanchart.com/survey.php) provides questions which when answered honestly will place the responder somewhere on the political spectrum depicting conservative-libertarian-liberal-statist-centrist sections. Citizens who consider themselves conservative might be surprised to find they're somewhere between conservative and libertarian. Commentators have had a difficult time labeling tea party citizens....

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP) - The California Republican Party is just saying no to a November ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana in the state. The less-than-surprising news that the state GOP would oppose a measure known as the Tax Cannabis Act was announced Wednesday on the party's Web site. ... Party chairman Ron Nehring said the health and public safety costs of expanded marijuana use would far outweigh any tax revenue raised from legalizing the drug.

Whether citizens of a state have the right to recall from office a sitting U.S. senator is no longer an academic question. The second-highest New Jersey appeals court has just ruled that such an effort can proceed against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Several other states have provisions in their state constitutions and laws that may also allow recall efforts. And by the common provision of initiative by the people of state laws and constitutions, similar processes could be established in other states. So the question that has never been raised in the U.S. Supreme Court before will most likely be...

On a blog that we can't post from here in FR, Turley says constitutional challenges to Obamacare are not frivolous. Jonathan Turley, left-wing constitutional scholar and frequent quest of Olbermann's on MSNBC, has now come out pronouncing the Obamacare mandate provision as destroying what little is left of the founder's intended federalism. Now the Democrat talking points will have to be revised to remove their claim that "Not a single constitutional scholar believes that challenges based on the commerce clause will succeed." I seriously doubt that the Roberts Court will permit this to go down on their watch!

The conservative Townhall.com website, owned by the Salem Communications company, a Christian firm, is distributing a column by Steve Chapman claiming that the legalization of marijuana will somehow undermine the power of the Mexican drug trafficking organizations and usher in a new era of peace and tranquility north of the border. The silly column more appropriately belongs on a website associated with George Soros, the moneybags behind the drug legalization movement. "Mexico is the biggest supplier of cannabis to the United States," he writes. "Control of that market is one of the things that Mexican drug cartels are willing to...

Indiana Joins Health Care Reform Lawsuit InsideINdianaBusiness.com Report Attorney General Greg Zoeller says Indiana is joining at least 13 other states in a legal challenge to the new federal health care law. He says it is in the best interests of all to raise constitutional questions about the reform package to the United State Supreme Court. Many of Zoeller's concerns are in a 55 page report on the changes, put together at the request of U.S. Senator Richard Lugar. . . . (more) . .

Washington is out of control. It does as it likes, without restraint. It spends American money and American lives to fight remote wars for which it cannot provide a plausible reason. It determines what our children will be taught, who we can hire and fire, to whom we can sell our houses, whether we can defend ourselves, even what names we can call each other. The feds read our email and track the web sites we visit, make us hop around barefoot in airports at the command of surly unaccountable rentacops. They search us at random in train stations without...

When someone next door is coping with trouble, the neighborly thing to do is help. Mexico has a growing problem with extreme violence. And many people in California have a good idea of how to help. Mexico has been wracked by murders connected to the drug trade. Last year, it suffered more than 6,500 drug-related killings, triple the number in 2007. And 2010 looks worse. As of mid-March, more than 2,000 people have died in drug-related homicides -- which puts Mexico on pace for more than 10,000 such deaths this year. That's more than one every hour. When someone next...

Oklahoma Senate approves health care opt out. Published: March 23, 2010 The Oklahoma Senate has approved a measure that would allow Oklahoma voters to opt out of key provisions of the federal health care bill signed into law by President Obama. The joint resolution approved Tuesday by a 36-11 vote would send to a vote of the people in November a state question to prohibit any requirement that a person, employer or hospital participate in a health care system. A similar resolution is expected to be approved in the House later this week. Both measures are destined for a conference...

At a press conference on Thursday morning, Democratic Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, both from Texas, equated the suits filed by fourteen state attorneys general, particularly that of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot, fighting the health care bill recently passed in Congress, to the suits that were filed following the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. (all emphasis is mine) “...[with] the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act--lo and behold states' rights activists wanted to use the Commerce Clause then. Then, African Americans were second class citizens. That legislation was to...

WASHINGTON, March 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Yesterday, Illinois became the 40th state where legislators have introduced, or will introduce, legislation modeled after the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. Illinois House Bill 6842 prohibits a requirement to purchase health insurance and would provide the state with protection in a constitutional challenge of the federal health reform bill.

In response to an unprecedented expansion of federal power, citizens have held hundreds of "tea party" rallies around the country, and various states are considering "sovereignty resolutions" invoking the Constitution's Ninth and Tenth Amendments. For example, Michigan's proposal urges "the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States." While well-intentioned, such symbolic resolutions are not likely to have the slightest impact on the federal courts, which long ago adopted a virtually unlimited construction of Congressional power. But state legislatures have a real power under the...

As far as I can tell, there are 3 active bills in the Georgia Congress right now pertaining to the healthcare bill. SB 317 http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2009_10/search/sb317.htm HR 1086 http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2009_10/search/hr1086.htm SR 794 http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2009_10/sum/sr794.htm I am having trouble understanding the status on each of these. Can someone give me some insight as to what is going on? What percentage in each chamber do we need to pass them, etc.?

The war against mandated socialist insurance. Lawsuits are being prepared by states and individuals. Michelle Bachman has introduced legislation to repeal HR3590. Some states are passing laws to make their state exempt. The leaders of several states have been fighting the war against socialized insurance for almost a year, but the leadership of Arkansas has been silent. Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has announced that he will not file suit to keep Arkansas legally exempt from mandated healthcare. In addition, McDaniel is stalling another Secure Arkansas ballot initiative that would "provide that no law shall directly or indirectly compel a person,...

The Vote: Conned by the promise of an ephemeral executive order, the last holdouts cave and ObamaCare advances. It doesn't add a single doctor or hospital room, but needs 17,000 new IRS agents to enforce it. Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., spent months spelling out in minute detail how the Senate version of the health care overhaul permitted federal funding of abortion through its failure to expressly prohibit it. In the end, he cashed in his principles for an unenforceable executive order that is trumped by the Senate bill he voted to pass. An executive order is not the law of...

@Abbott2010 I am organizing a conference call tonight for AGs across the country. We will discuss our litigation strategy... http://bit.ly/c73oKV