Free Republic

Professional journalism groups reacted with alarm after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas released an opinion Tuesday urging the high court to reconsider a landmark freedom of the press decision called New York Times v. Sullivan. The Sullivan ruling generally shields reporters and news platforms from libel or defamation lawsuits provided they were acting in good faith. Though journalists believe that protection is essential, Justice Thomas said the high court was wrong to usurp the role of states in regulating libel. “[Sullivan] and the Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law,” Thomas’s opinion reads. “We should not...

The opening exchanges of a landmark Supreme Court hearing offered hope and confusion in equal parts. By W. Blake Gray | Posted Thursday, 17-Jan-2019 Wine lovers had nobody to argue for them in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, and it seemed several times as if the justices wished enophiles had an advocate – or at least some attorney willing to defend a pro-wine shipping argument. The Court heard one hour of arguments in Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association vs. Blair, a case that has the potential to invalidate liquor laws across the country. It might allow people in most...

This is the TL:DR version of our coverage of tomorrow's crucial wine hearing at the US Supreme Court. (The more detailed versions are here, here and here). The stakes: The Court could possibly throw out all state liquor laws that discriminate against out-of-state businesses, potentially allowing residents in much of the US to order wine from anywhere. The case: The state of Tennessee has laws requiring liquor store owners to be residents for two years, but a quirk in the law makes it effectively 10 years. Two shop owners – the multistate chain Total Wine and a couple who moved...

Kris Anne explains quickly and clearly a lot more than the Supremacy Clause in this, her explanation of the Supremacy Clause.There is SO much that is interconnected within the Constitution.

The left has always had great admiration for the conscientious objector. I know something about that because I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s when the Vietnam War was being fought. Some people refused to serve in the war because of their deeply held religious beliefs. To those on the right they were cowards. To those on the left they were heroes. As the son of a military officer I got one side of the story. As a student in the public schools I got the other. My teachers did their best to convince me there...

France made history by being the first country in the European Union to invoke the mutual defense clause following the brutal attacks in Paris.The French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union while in Brussels, USA Today reports.According to the text of the clause, “if a member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states shall have toward it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power.” This is the first time article 42.7 has ever come into play. French officials have opted...

VIDEO AT LINK Bernie Claus promises a lot of free stuff! But is ANY of it financially viable? Does his plan WORK? Well with with the help of a calculator and some common sense, we crunched the numbers. Watch and be ignorant no more... (VIDEO HERE) Now some of you think that the spending vs revenue math is more complex than people lead on, maybe so. But allow me to start off with an absolute: If you cut the United States military ENTIRELY and taxes all earnings over 1Million dollars at 100%... You still couldn’t pay for this... So disregarding...

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about an intriguing Commerce Clause case involving the Montana Firearms Freedom Act. To wit, Montana enacted a regulatory regime to cover guns manufactured and kept wholly within state lines that was less restrictive than federal law. The Montana Shooting Sports Association filed a claim for declaratory judgment to ensure that Montanans could enjoy the benefits of this state legislation without threat of federal prosecution. The federal district court ruled against the MSSA. On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, Cato joined the Goldwater Institute on an amicus brief, arguing that federal law doesn’t preempt Montana’s...

How's this for a doctrine of applying the General Welfare clause in justifying any control or money being spent by the Federal government ? If the effort in question can be done at the local or State level, then it must be done at the local or State level - and must NOT be done at all by the Federal government. Basically, if localities or States are doing it then the Federal government need not - and must not - do it. Quite simply because the fact that localities or States are doing something proves that they can. For roads,...

"....but you do burn the Bible, because..."

In 2005 the Supreme Court said the federal government's power to "regulate commerce…among the several states" extends to the tiniest speck of marijuana wherever it may be found, even in the home of a patient who grows it for her own medical use in compliance with state law. "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause," Justice Clarence Thomas warned in his dissent, "then it can regulate virtually anything—and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers." The Obama administration, which was in court this week defending the new federal requirement that every American obtain...

Sophistry from the Superior Court : Ruling on CityNorth amends the state Constitution Without A Vote by the People Robert Robb, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, April 08, 2008 The Superior Court decision upholding the massive subsidy Phoenix gave CityNorth is an exercise in legal sophistry. Judge Robert Miles held that there were considerable public benefits from the building of the shopping center, and so there wasn't a violation of the state Constitution's gift clause. There is not, however, a public purpose or benefits exception to the gift clause ban. It states that no Arizona government "shall ever give or loan...

"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or...

Early reports show the AFL-CIO spent $49 million (27 percent of its total annual budget) on political and lobbying activities but only $30 million (or 16.5 percent) to represent its members. That gap contributed to the breakaway from the AFL-CIO of the Teamsters, the Service Employees and other unions.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin's governor vetoed a bill Friday that would have allowed health care workers to opt out of a half-dozen procedures, including withdrawing a person's feeding tube and using embryonic stem cells, on religious or moral grounds. The "conscience clause" also would have protected medical workers against punishment from their bosses or state regulators if they refused to refer people elsewhere to get the procedures. "Because it puts a doctor's political views ahead of the best interests of patients, this legislation ought to be called the 'unconscionable clause,'" Gov. Jim Doyle said in a statement. "It is...

A few days ago, the majority of the Supreme Court ruled as if it were using the Constitution of France instead of the Constitution of the USA. The French Constitution states that its nation is a secular one, while our Constitution states that we are a nation under God. One would not know this if the majority of the Supreme Court today is to be believed Mark Levin states in his book, Men in Black, “Chief Justice William Rehnquist has written that the Court ‘bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life.’” Based on a misreading of Thomas...

<p>WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday rendered two more hairsplitting, migraine-inducing decisions about when religious displays on public property do and do not violate the First Amendment protection against ``establishment'' of religion. In a case from Texas, where a Ten Commandments monument stands outside the state Capitol, the court, splintered six ways from Sunday, said: We find no constitutional violation. The second case came from Kentucky, where the Commandments displayed in several courthouses are surrounded by historical symbols and documents -- e.g., copies of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Star Spangled Banner -- to comply with the ``reindeer rule,'' more about which anon. On Monday the court recoiled from Kentucky's displays, saying, they are unconstitutionally motivated by a ``predominately religious purpose.'' Not enough reindeer?</p>

The days of the judicial-filibuster compromise are numbered. The scuttlebutt on Capitol Hill these days is that the McCain compromise will vanish as soon as a Supreme Court nomination appears. That's because the so-called compromise has that one huge loophole: It allows Democrats to filibuster (and thereby block an up-or-down vote on) any nominee they define as an "extraordinary" circumstance. And if Democrats' recent behavior is any indication, "extraordinary" will be used as a ruse for discriminating against judges who give even the slightest hint of holding pro-life views or having faith in God. "Any agreement that opens filibusters to...

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution relates that "He [The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law..." So what does all that mean exactly? Well, the first part means...

Americans who hold to traditional values are expressing outrage this Christmas over the blatant double standards with which the enemies of this country’s Judeo-Christian heritage seek to completely expunge any vestige of it from their midst. Almost everywhere they look, Believers are confronted with legal actions of zealous individuals in authority positions, displaying outright hostility towards Biblical symbols of the Christmas season, while simultaneously encouraging every possible alternative, whether secular or otherwise. The very manner in which traditional America now seeks to defend itself, not on the basis that these actions result from a grotesque distortion of the First Amendment,...