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A federal judge is forbidding the city from calling Mayor Bloomberg as a witness in its landmark suit against a gun salesman from Georgia. At a hearing yesterday, the judge, Jack Weinstein of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, explained his decision to keep the mayor off the witness stand by saying, "I'm not going to turn the case into a media circus for either side," according to a partial transcript. A jury will be picked next week to hear the city's claim that a store owned by the gun dealer, Jay Wallace, sold a disproportionate number of the guns that...

It’s not really about gay marriage. It’s about the balance of power. It’s about popular sovereignty. It’s about those very fundamental things that the Founding Fathers understood so well, but which have been omitted from the public consciousness and the school curricula for more than a generation. It’s about who, in our Republic, makes the rules. Yesterday, in California, by a 5-4 vote, a panel of judges redefined marriage. The fundamental relationship of society, a bedrock manifestation of culture and public sensibilities, was changed. And the people had no voice. In fact, the ruling specifically voided a 2000 vote of...

SIMI VALLEY - Shawn Sage long dreamed of joining the military, and watching "Full Metal Jacket" last year really sold him on becoming a Marine. But last fall, a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner dashed the foster teen's hopes of early enlistment for Marine sniper duty, plus a potential $10,000 signing bonus. In denying the Royal High School student delayed entry into the Marine Corps, Children's Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel reportedly told Sage and a recruiter that she didn't approve of the Iraq war, didn't trust recruiters and didn't support the military. "The judge said she didn't support the Iraq...

While unauthorized entry into the United States is illegal, being in the country after having entered illegally is not necessarily a crime, according to a new ruling by the Kansas Court of Appeals. In a Barton County case, a three-judge panel issued an opinion Friday that a judge could not deny probation and order jail time for convicted drug dealer Nicholas L. Martinez based solely on the grounds that Martinez is an unauthorized immigrant. "While Congress has criminalized the illegal entry into this country, it has not made the continued presence of an illegal alien in the United States a...

LOS ANGELES—A Torrance man cannot be reimbursed for thousands of dollars he was forced to pay to support a child he did not father, an appeals court ruled. State laws do not allow Taron James to demand repayment of the money he supplied before a DNA test confirmed that the child of a former girlfriend was someone else's, the state 2nd District Court of Appeal said in a ruling published Tuesday. James, 38, said he will appeal to the state Supreme Court. James said he has been in "financial hell" since the case began. "The fight is to keep this...

Recent attacks on "activist judges" by legislative bodies could be putting the concept of an independent judiciary at risk, retired Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Friday. "These are appalling times," O'Connor told a crowd of 700 during a moderated discussion about her career at the University of Tulsa. "There is so much rancor and dislike going on." O'Connor asked the crowd if it heard of the attacks on so-called "godless, secular humanist, activist judges," and cited cases in several states where people attempted to introduce ballot measures that would toss judges in jail for making the wrong...

From April 1775 to Yorktown in 1781, Americans fought and died to end that rule of kings – only to have their meek and timid heirs submit to a rule of judges. A tiny minority of judges in America now dictates to the Great Silent Majority. Of all these outrages and idiocies, one thing may be said: No legislature, no executive at the state or federal level would have survived imposing such measures upon us. For 50 years, this nation permitted the Warren Court, and its successors and imitators in the state courts, to create a body of judge-made law...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In a landmark ruling with nationwide implications, Lake County, Indiana Superior Court Judge Robert A. Pete on Monday declared unconstitutional a 2005 federal law backed by the gun lobby that sought to limit the legal liability of gun dealers and manufacturers in the case of City of Gary v. Smith & Wesson et al. The ruling held that the so-called "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" (which became effective exactly one year ago today) violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of Due Process and Separation of Powers. It allows Gary, Indiana's lawsuit against sixteen...

Oct. 9, 2006 issue - Seattle—as the comprehensive and sustained attack on Americans' freedom of political speech intensifies, this city has become a battleground. Campaign-finance "reformers," who advocate ever-increasing government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of political speech, always argue that they want to regulate "only" money, which, they say, leaves speech unaffected. But here they argue that political speech is money, and hence must be regulated. By demanding that the speech of two talk-radio hosts be monetized and strictly limited, reformers reveal the next stage in their stealthy repeal of the First Amendment.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled this month that a lawsuit filed against Target Corp. by the National Federation of the Blind challenging the accessibility of the retailer’s Web site can move forward. NFB officials contended that the ruling sets a precedent, establishing that retailers must make their Web sites accessible to the blind under the federal Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). “This ruling is a great victory for blind people throughout the country,” said NFB President Marc Maurer. When asked if the NFB would file lawsuits against other retailers in an effort to improve Web site accessibility, NFB...

LISBON - A judge’s directive giving custody of a child to a father instead of his smoking ex-wife is consistent with court rulings that smoking may be used in making such decisions, an appeals court said. The 7th Ohio District Court of Appeals, in a ruling last week, upheld the decision by the Columbiana County Common Pleas Court in favor of Joel Pierce of nearby Leetonia over his ex-wife, Tammy Pierce of Sanford, Fla. “The Ohio Supreme Court has catalogued the risks of secondhand smoke to children and courts have used the fact that a parent smokes as a factor...

In New Jersey, one's home is not one's castle after all. The real castle, it turns out, is the car. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled 4-3 yesterday that police do not need a reason to ask permission to search someone's home. The same court four years ago issued rules saying police must have a good reason before asking motorists if they can search their cars. Yesterday the court said the rules for cars -- which prohibit police from asking motorists if they can conduct a search unless they have "a reasonable and articulable suspicion" of criminal activity -- are...

In a rather bizarre ruling that has marine industry officials worried, Judge Robert G. James of the United States District Court, Western Division of Louisiana, has said that it is criminal trespass for the American boating public to boat, fish, or hunt on the Mississippi River and other navigable waters in the US. In the case of Normal Parm v. Sheriff Mark Shumate, James ruled that federal law grants exclusive and private control over the waters of the river, outside the main shipping channel, to riparian landowners. The shallows of the navigable waters are no longer open to the public....

Who is Anna Diggs Taylor and what does she have against national security? The answer to the first question is: a U.S. district judge in Detroit. The answer to the second is as mysterious as the decision she handed down Thursday. In her 44-page ruling, Judge Taylor ordered the National Security Agency to stop monitoring international calls to and from this country, aka "domestic spying" in New York Times style. The judge found the practice not just illegal but unconstitutional. And also un-American in just about every crass, rhetorical way she could. The crux of her opinion reads like an...

Washington, DC -- Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, the U.S. District Judge who presided over the highly controversial government wiretapping case, and decided against the President, may have had a conflict of interest that should have precluded her from judging the case. According to research by Judicial Watch, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor serves as the Secretary and Trustee of a foundation that donated funds to the ACLU of Michigan, a Plaintiff in the case.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor Serves as Secretary and Trustee of Foundation that donated funds to ACLU of Michigan, a Plaintiff in the Case Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and judicial abuse, announced today that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who last week ruled the government’s warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, serves as a Secretary and Trustee for a foundation that donated funds to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, a plaintiff in the case ACLU et al. v. National Security Agency. Judicial Watch discovered the potential conflict of interest after reviewing Judge Diggs...

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Junior Stowers raised his hands and exclaimed, "Thank you, Jesus!" in court last month when he was acquitted by a jury of abusing his son. But his joy was short-lived when Circuit Judge Patrick Border held him in contempt of court for the "outburst" and threw him in jail. Stowers, 47, sat in the courtroom and a cellblock for about six hours until the judge granted him a hearing on the contempt charge and released him. The judge at a July 7 hearing dropped the contempt charge, a petty misdemeanor that carries up to 30 days in jail. Stowers couldn't...

TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas Libertarians were stopped from holding a fundraiser at a nudist camp in southwest Shawnee County, when sheriff's deputies blocked people from entering. Shawnee County deputies said they were merely enforcing a court order when they stopped people from accessing Lake Edun on Friday. Last year, Shawnee County District Judge Terry Bullock issued a court order banning "commercial or recreational activities" on the property unless the owners get a permit for such events - something the county refuses to provide. But Rob Hodgkinson, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Kansas, said a political party fundraiser isn't a...

Should last week’s joint disqualify a pot smoker from driving today?A police officer pulls you over at a checkpoint and asks, "Have you been drinking?" Assuming he wants to know whether you have consumed alcohol in the last few hours, such that it might be affecting your ability to drive, you say no. "Not at all?" he asks. Well, you admit, you did have a beer the night before, whereupon he arrests you for driving under the influence. If that scenario makes sense to you, you should have no problem with Michigan's new policy regarding driving and drug use. As...