"All might be free," wrote Samuel Adams, "if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought." Getting on the path to liberty means understanding some of the most important principles underlying it.
The post Liberty: 6 Foundational Principles from the Founders first appeared on Tenth Amendment Center.
We can't be happy without being free.
The post Freedom Is Happiness first appeared on Tenth Amendment Center."Henderson police arrested a family for refusing to let officers use their homes as lookouts for a domestic violence investigation of their neighbors, the family claims in court. The Mitchell family's claim includes Third Amendment violations, a rare claim in the United States. The Third Amendment prohibits quartering soldiers in citizens' homes in times of peace without the consent of the owner. Police took Anthony and Michael Mitchell to jail and booked them for obstructing an officer. They were jailed for at least nine hours before they bailed out, they say in the complaint." Continue reading →
"More patio than parking place or storage for power tools, Mariam Khalaf said her garage is primarily for 'chilling purposes' — including smoking, eating and watching TV with family and friends, including next-door neighbors Muheeb Nabulsy and his wife, Fatima Mkkawi. Now, officials in the Detroit suburb are looking at changing an ordinance on garage use, arguing that as people get a little too comfortable hanging out in the garage, more cars are clogging side streets. Dearborn officials say the ordinance-tightening is not meant to target Arabs or anyone else. They say the structures are not meant to be living spaces, so building permits cannot be issued to convert them." Continue reading →
"A medical marijuana dispensary billed as the world’s largest cannabis store may stay open while the city of Oakland fights a U.S. government effort to shut it down or seize the property, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. There has been a tug-of-war in California between federal and local authorities over cannabis sold for purported health reasons. In February, Magistrate Maria-Elena James, the same judge who ruled on Wednesday, said the city had no right to intervene in a federal prosecutor’s civil-forfeiture action against the Harborside Health Center, which was featured on the Discovery Channel reality TV show 'Weed Wars.'" Continue reading →
"A Missouri woman says that she is prepared to go to jail after authorities in Sugar Creek threatened her over a recycling project that turns tires into flower planters. 'I was just really interested in recycling and I’m really big on self-sufficiency,' she explained. Sugar Creek, however, claimed the number of tires she was storing could attract mosquitos and lower property values. Shelton was issued a citation, but she said she was refusing to pay the fine based on principle." Continue reading →
“An 84-year-old Florida man returned home with his wife Sunday afternoon only to find a burglar’s car parked in his driveway and the man stuffing the resident’s belongings into his car. After several warnings, the elderly man shot at the robber, but … Continue reading →
"The Supreme Court said a Florida property owner may be owed compensation from a government agency that refused to award him a development permit for his land. The legal issue was whether the agency’s action constituted a 'taking' subject to compensation, under the so-called takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, in a more than 18-year battle by Koontz and his late father over their nearly 15-acre parcel of land. After Florida designated much of the parcel as protected wetlands, Koontz proposed to develop about a quarter of it and dedicate the rest for conservation, only to have local officials insist that he pay money to protect wetlands elsewhere." Continue reading →
"Anaheim small business owner Tony Jalali faces the loss of his office building, which is worth $1.5 million, even though he has committed no crime. The city of Anaheim is colluding with federal prosecutors to do an end-run around state laws to take away Jalali’s building because he rented space to medical marijuana dispensaries, even though they operated legally under California law. Jalali is fighting back. Represented by the Institute for Justice, he is challenging the constitutionality of the taking of his land to put an end to the civil forfeiture in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Santa Ana, Calif." Continue reading →
"The Internal Revenue Service is looking at land-transfer records state-by-state for evidence of people neglecting to report within-family real-estate gifts. This year, large family land gifts were popular because of a new tax rule that established $5 million as the amount someone can give in a lifetime before having to pay a gift tax. However, any property worth more than $13,000, gifted to one person, is still supposed to be reported to the IRS. To be precise, Form 709 reports U.S. gifts and generation-skipping transfer taxes." Continue reading →