Free Republic

In another excellent victory for civil rights by attorney Alan Gura, United States District Court Judge Reed O’Connor struck down the federal interstate handgun sales ban earlier today, finding it unconstitutional (both facially and as-applied) under the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

This afternoon a district court in Utah held that the federal prohibition against “taking” Utah prairie dogs — listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act — exceeds the scope of federal power under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper clauses. Here is how Judge Dee Benson summarized his conclusion in People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: Although the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to do many things, it does not authorize Congress to regulate takes of a purely intrastate species that has no substantial effect on interstate commerce. Congress similarly lacks authority...

Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, are pushing for a federal ban on abortions after the end of the 20th week of pregnancy. … The planned legislation, though, will face many challenges, not only from the Democratic-controlled Senate, but from some Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee, Utah, who has concerns about Congress’ authority to regulate commerce as the law’s basis. …

CNSNews.com) - Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2012 opinion declaring the Obamacare law constitutional was self-contradictory, intellectually indefensible and just plain wrong. Thus argues Sen. Mike Lee (R.-Utah) in a new e-book, Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare: A Conservative Critique of the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling. Lee appeared on Online With Terry Jeffrey to discuss the book, what he sees as the potential long-term ramifications of Roberts’ decision, and what he believes Congress should do to counter it. Terry Jeffrey: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah was elected to the Senate in 2010. He graduated from Brigham Young University and...

U.S. states could collect millions of dollars in online sales taxes, with members of both parties in Congress sponsoring legislation Thursday that would resolve states' decades-long struggle to tax businesses beyond their borders. "Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due — not new — taxes from purchases made online," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., adding the legislation is a "bipartisan, bicameral, common-sense solution that promotes states' rights and levels the playing field for our Main Street businesses." Legislation on the Amazon tax, named for the colossal Internet retailer, has languished for years. ..... <...

Freepers here is an opportunity to influence young minds in college. I am an adjunct professor of humanities. Later this month I will begin teaching two courses on the American Experience and Constitutional Change. Every semester I give a term paper assignment based on Wickard v. Filburn and the governmental abuse of the Commerce Clause. I am always gratified by the comments of the students afterwards who tell me they never had any idea of the vast power employed by the government in our daily lives. Well I will still use that case this semester because it is so insructive...

Descendants of Ernest Hemingway’s six-toed cat Snowball that live at his museum home are subject to federal regulation because they substantially affect interstate commerce, a federal appeals court has ruled. The cats roam the late author’s former Key West home at 907 Whitehead Street, now a museum that hosts daily tours and weddings, report the Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. On Friday, the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (PDF) that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has the authority to regulate the felines.

Today, November 9, is a pivotal date in American history. It was 70 years ago today where America began a slow but relentless transformation from a free society where the people are sovereign to one where we are tokens of the government. In 1941 Roscoe Filburn harvested wheat he had planted on his own land and he sold a portion but he kept the rest for his own use. This was a problem, because the government had passed a law in 1938 that said you could only grow so much wheat; it planned to prop up prices by limiting supply....

Legal challenges to New York City's ban on sodas larger than 16 ounces are unlikely to be successful, and the ban could spark similar moves in other cities around the country, according to experts. Thursday, after the city's board of health formally prohibited restaurants from selling sodas larger than 16 ounces after March 12, 2013, organizations around New York City said they would consider suing the city to get the ban overturned. Laura Palantone, a spokesperson for New York City Beverage Choices, a group against the ban, says the organization will "carefully review the regulation and explore our options now...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS/AP) – Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan tells a Colorado television station that the federal government shouldn’t interfere with states that have legalized medical marijuana. Ryan told KRDO-TV in Colorado Springs that he personally doesn’t approve of medical marijuana laws. But he said that states should have the right to choose whether to legalize the drug for medical purposes.

The city of Santa Cruz, usually at the forefront of environmental causes, became the latest, but probably not the last, local government to ban single-use plastic bags, with the 6-0 vote by the City Council Tuesday night. Santa Cruz banned foam products as well. Santa Cruz's new law on foam products, for instance, will outlaw foam coolers, toys, shipping containers and packing peanuts. The city of Capitola also bans foam ice chests and coolers, and the county bans foam food containers. The 48 and counting plastic bag and foam bans of some type in California offer a patchwork of regulations,...

Well, it’s official. It’s now constitutional for politicians to tell huge lies, and not only get away with it, but be rewarded for it. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare this week confirmed what most of us realized all along, that President Obama and congressional supporters of the “Affordable Care Act” lied to the nation, to all of us! They told us that it was not a tax increase, ardently, vehemently, and ad nauseam, yet that’s the very justification the Supreme Court used to rule it constitutional this week. While debating the Act in congress, proponents claimed constitutional authority for...

Well, it’s official. It’s now constitutional for politicians to tell huge lies, and not only get away with it, but be rewarded for it. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare this week confirmed what most of us realized all along, that President Obama and congressional supporters of the “Affordable Care Act” lied to the nation, to all of us! They told us that it was not a tax increase, ardently, vehemently, and ad nauseam, yet that’s the very justification the Supreme Court used to rule it constitutional this week. While debating the Act in congress, proponents claimed constitutional authority for...

Conservatives won a substantial victory on Thursday. The physics of American politics — actions provoking reactions — continues to move the crucial debate, about the nature of the American regime, toward conservatism. Chief Justice John Roberts has served this cause. The health care legislation’s expansion of the federal government’s purview has improved our civic health by rekindling interest in what this expansion threatens — the Framers’ design for limited government. Conservatives distraught about the survival of the individual mandate are missing the considerable consolation prize they won when the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional... --snip-- When Nancy Pelosi, asked where...

Oh, how far we’ve deviated from our Founders in just over 200 years. The entire country is pouring over an incoherent, internally contradictory, ill-conceived and politically motivated decision by Chief Justice Roberts, which grants Congress the power to regulate anything that moves and the power to tax anything that moves and anything that doesn’t move. Amidst the garrulous analysis from the conservative pundit class on the Roberts decision, there is a one-page dissent from Justice Thomas (in addition to his joint dissent with the other 3 conservatives) that has been overlooked. The joint dissent with Scalia, Alito, and Kennedy focuses...

CNN and Fox News aren’t the only ones doing a 180 on the Supreme Court ruling. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), the first attorney generalin the nation to file a lawsuit over President Obama’s health-care overhaul, said the sky was pretty much falling in a news release issued half an hour after the court upheld the law. “This is a dark day for the American people, the Constitution, and the rule of law,” Cuccinelli said in the release. “This is a dark day for American liberty.” By the time he held a news conference an hour and 45...

Conservatives won a substantial victory Thursday. The physics of American politics — actions provoking reactions — continues to move the crucial debate, about the nature of the American regime, toward conservatism. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has served this cause. The health-care legislation’s expansion of the federal government’s purview has improved our civic health by rekindling interest in what this expansion threatens — the Framers’ design for limited government. Conservatives distraught about the survival of the individual mandate are missing the considerable consolation prize they won when the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional rationale for the mandate — Congress’s...

The chief justice’s canny move to uphold the Affordable Care Act while gutting the Commerce Clause. The scholars expected to see the court gut existing Commerce Clause ... Roberts was smarter than that. By ruling that the individual mandate was permissible as a tax, he joined the Democratic appointees to uphold the law—while joining the Republican wing to gut the Commerce Clause (and push back against the necessary-and-proper clause as well). Here's the Chief Justice's opinion (italics in original): Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and...

-snip-Justice Scalia writes, for instance, that he has little use for a central precedent the Obama administration has cited to justify the health care law under the Constitution’s commerce clause, Wickard v. Filburn. In that 1942 decision, Justice Scalia writes, the Supreme Court “expanded the Commerce Clause beyond all reason” by ruling that “a farmer’s cultivation of wheat for his own consumption affected interstate commerce and thus could be regulated under the Commerce Clause.”… Justice Scalia’s treatment of the Wickard case had been far more respectful in his judicial writings. In the book’s preface, he explains (referring to himself in...

Candidate for Senate Dan Liljenquist (left) pledged to The New American that should he be elected to the U.S. Senate he will offer legislation explicitly repealing the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In a press conference held on April 24 at 2:00 p.m. (MDT), the former Utah State Senator and current GOP challenger to six-term Senator Orrin Hatch described the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA as “an overreach and a violation of the Bill of Rights.” He said that had he been in office when Congress voted to pass the NDAA he would have...