Free Republic

SANFORD, Fla. — WFTV has learned charges against George Zimmerman could be getting more serious. State prosecutors said Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, profiled and stalked 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before killing him, so the FBI is now looking into charging him with a hate crime. Zimmerman admitted to killing Martin in February during a confrontation. However, he claims the shooting was in self-defense. He's facing a second-degree murder charge, which carries a maximum possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. In the meantime, FBI investigators are actively questioning witnesses in the retreat at the Twin Lakes neighborhood,...

In a strongly worded legal brief, the Obama administration has said the federal act that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman was motivated by hostility toward gays and lesbians and is unconstitutional. The brief was filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco in support of a lesbian federal employee's lawsuit claiming the government wrongly denied health coverage to her same-sex spouse. The Justice Department says Karen Golinski's suit should not be dismissed because the law under which her spouse was denied benefits — the Defense of Marriage Act — violates the constitution's guarantee of equal...

Want out of the new ObamaCare regulations? All you have to do is be a big business that offers mini med-plans and apply for a waiver from the Health and Human Services Department. Just simply indicate that it costs your business too much money and they will grant you an exemption. Click here for the rules. Wouldn’t it be nice if all Americans could back out of ObamaCare so easily? Over the past few weeks, headlines have been made nationwide regarding large companies amending their health care plans or announcing plans to discontinue their plans altogether in light of new...

Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC has suffered a legal setback, with the newest federal judge in Las Vegas ruling one of the Righthaven defendants may have a meritorious defense in arguing the Las Vegas Review-Journal provides an "implied license" for the online reposting of its stories. U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro on Friday granted a request by defendant Jan Klerks of Chicago that a clerk's default against him be set aside so he can fight the Righthaven lawsuit -- a motion Righthaven had opposed.

Here's the latest story of judicial abuse: SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge overturned California's same-sex marriage ban Wednesday in a landmark case that could eventually land before the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if gays have a constitutional right to marry in America. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights. Gay couples waving rainbow and American flags outside the courthouse cheered, hugged and kissed as word of the ruling spread. Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will...

'Hate' Crimes: The House has voted to make it a federal crime to assault people because of their sexual orientation. Aside from violating the Constitution's equal-protection clause, just what does this have to do with national defense? The House voted 281 to 146 Thursday to make it a crime to attack homosexuals and others. The measure was attached to a must-pass $680 billion defense bill. We think the amendment itself is a crime against common sense and the law. Saying "it's a very exciting day for us here in the Capitol," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the passage of the...

Note from the moderator and contributors: A notice has been received from Google and Blogspot that this blog may be deleted in 20 days based on complaints (probably phony spamming and TOS violation charges filed by the Obots or concerns being passed down from the top itself). If this blog is taken down or deleted in the next few weeks, please move to the parallel/mirror blog which has copies of the posts posted here. It is located at: http://puzo1.wordpress.com/ Please make a note of that URL. However, do not post any new comments there at that site until such time...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told a House committee Thursday that her proposal to slash prison time for older, nonviolent federal inmates was not intended to benefit child pornographers or white-collar criminals. "This is not a bill to give comfort to the Jack Abramoffs of the world," the Houston Democrat said Thursday at a hearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee. Abramoff, a former Washington lobbyist, pleaded guilty in January of 2006 to charges of conspiring to bribe members of Congress. Jackson Lee criticized the Houston Chronicle for its "interpretation" of her bill in an article on Thursday. The Chronicle...

St. Louis Election Board officials say they've discovered at least 1,492 "potentially fraudulent" voter registration cards - including three from dead people and one from a 16-year-old - among the thousands pouring in before today's voter registration deadline for the Nov. 7 election. City Republican elections director Scott Leiendecker said the board's staff expects to find even more bogus voter-registration applications among the thousands remaining to be processed. The board plans to turn all the questionable cards over to city Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce for investigation and possible prosecution, said board chairman Kimberley Mathis. The board says all the questionable...

Sexual Assaults Took Place In August 2005A gunman who sexually assaulted two transsexuals and a transvestite last summer was sentenced on Friday afternoon to 206 years to life in prison. In April, a judge found Joel Kuechmann guilty of multiple charges, including rape by a foreign object, forced oral copulation and possession of a firearm. He will also be sentenced for dissuading a witness from reporting a crime. Prosecutor Dwayne Moring said he was satistifed with the verdict. "I'm pleased with the verdict, because in this case, the defendant preyed upon individuals who he believed would be too frightened to...

MADAM DROPS NEW BOMBSHELL By LAURA ITALIANO, STEFANIE COHEN and LUKAS I. ALPERT June 29, 2006 -- The Brazilian bombshell charged with running an upscale brothel has told cops she has an ex-husband - and named a second hot-shot corporate executive as her sugar daddy. "I wouldn't have kept having sex with him or any of these guys if they weren't paying," Manhattan madam Andreia Schwartz, 31, confessed to police in a statement. And one reason for that is another shocker: She doesn't "really have sex with guys anymore, just girls," she said In the latest twist in the case,...

Does the Fourteenth Amendment make the entire Bill of Rights a restriction against the States? If so, which amendments or clauses? What did both "due process of the law" and "equal protection" mean to the Congress who produced the Amendment? Does the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee State paid education to aliens? [snip] I hope everyone reads this because for me it was the most important reading of the year. One of the most wonderful discoveries you will find from reading is where equal protection of the laws came from and how it was defined to mean by the author of the...

Matthew R. Limon had just turned 18 when he had consensual oral sex with a boy just shy of 15 at a Kansas school in 2000. He was convicted of criminal sodomy and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Had the sex been heterosexual, the maximum penalty would have been 15 months. Yesterday, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the starkly different penalties violated the federal Constitution's equal protection clause. It said the state's "Romeo and Juliet" statute, which limits the punishment that can be imposed on older teenagers who have sex with younger ones, but only if they are...

The battles in Congress over the appointment of even lower court federal judges reveal a recognition that federal judges are now, to a large extent, our real lawmakers. Proposals to amend the Constitution to remove lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices, or to require that rulings of unconstitutionality be by more than a majority (5-4) vote, do not address the source of the problem. The Constitution is very difficult to amend--probably the most difficult of any supposedly democratic government. If opponents of rule by judges secure the political power to obtain an amendment, it should be one that addresses the...

Theresa Marie Schindler: Memory eternal! Memory eternal! Memory eternal! That's what we say in the Christian East, asking God that the departed not be forgotten in Sheol. We say it of those soon to be glorified as saints, of poor sinners, of priests, of laymen. Memory eternal. As we mourn for Terri, let us not be too downcast by the poll results which suggest a majority of our countrymen approve this travesty of justice. The poll questions and the false impressions given by the MSM made this appear to be a right-to-die case. And yes, most Americans, answering for themselves...

A BILL   To restore equal protection under the law   Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,   SECTION 1. NO DEPRIVATION OF LIFE WITHOUT A TRIAL BY JURY   (a)   No court of the United States or of any state or jurisdiction thereof shall order or command actions that would result in the death of a United States citizen or other person present in the United States without the agreement of a jury composed of twelve citizens.   (b)  In all cases involving the provision...

Over the course of the past week, the Terri Schiavo case made headlines with its swift and unsuccessful journey through the federal courts. The string of court defeats might have left the impression that the case was doomed from the outset. Yet the litigation's failure may owe more to a poor tactical choice by the lawyers advising the Schindlers--Terri's parents--than to the case's underlying merits. The original Schindler complaint included a variety of federal constitutional and statutory claims. Each of them was weak at best, as was quickly reflected in federal district judge James Whittemore's ruling that the Schindlers had...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,52888,00.html You can read the story, some praying student for Israel were surrounded, assaulted, and threatened with death. The University and the Police (not UI but in California) did nothing. Liberalism is dying as a political force in this country. It's just that simple. And the more they begin to realize this, the more violent they will get. They can't accept election results when they lose, they will engage in outright vote fraud in order to win (see Washington State governor race), and they will threaten death very publicly to anyone who voices opposition while administrators stand by. Sure, conservatives...

Ballot checks vary widely across state By Christine Willmsen and Susan Kelleher Seattle Times staff reporters It never mattered much — until this election. But the fact that one county in Washington verifies ballot signatures differently than another county has taken on more significance as the gubernatorial election hangs on a handful of votes. A Seattle Times survey of counties shows that procedures for evaluating signatures are highly subjective and vary widely from county to county. More than 3,400 ballots in Washington were rejected in the November election because the signatures didn't match those on file with elections officials. And...

The Supremes, after all, waded into the 2000 election only with great reluctance, and only in the face of gross judicial overreach: ..."the problem in 2000 was not that the U.S. Supreme Court acted politically but that the Florida Supreme Court did so — not once but twice." Today, five of the seven Florida Supreme Court judges from 2000 remain on the bench. In Ohio.... Then there's the fiasco-waiting-to-happen in Colorado — a ballot initiative that would turn the state from a winner-take-all to a proportional split of electoral college votes. If that had been in effect in 2000, Al...

Listen to Rush… (...detail Kerry's plan to learn from Algore's attempt to steal the election and do it well) BEGIN TRANSCRIPT You know, we've talked about it, and you've heard about it: all of the lawyers that the Democrats have hired and you may not really know what that's about. You may just assume that they're going to be out there trying to cheat, but how and why? I want to spend some time on this today, because after the Bush vs. Gore U.S. Supreme Court decision in December of 2000, I called special attention to the problems that...

EPILOGUE: THE 9TH CIRCUIT RULING(IMPEACHED EX- PREZ STUMPS FOR DAVIS CLINTON PARADIGM PROVES INSTRUCTIVE FOR CALIFORNIA) by Mia T, 9.14.03 Hamilton (or Madison) discussed the importance of wisdom and virtue in Federalist 57. "The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." (Contrast this with clinton, who recklessly, reflexively and feloniously...

12/14/00 1:05 p.m. What We Have Wrought The costs of winning. By Mark R. Levin, president, Landmark Legal Foundation oday's Washington Post, in an article titled "Court May Have Mapped New Territory," reports that "The Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore could have implications well beyond this year's presidential election, expanding the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws in a way that — if the court sticks to its analysis — could significantly increase the federal role in state election law disputes. By holding that the equal-protection clause can be applied to the way votes are counted,...

Mark Levin is hammering the libs on how they have created two classes of society in America - check it out - he is excellent, as always!

NEWS RELEASE Second Amendment Foundation 12500 NE Tenth Place Bellevue, WA 98005 CALIFORNIA DOJ SPONSORS BILL TO MASK CORRUPTION AND RACISM, SAYS FOUNDATION For Immediate Release: BELLEVUE, WA - California Assembly Bill 1044 is part of a deliberate effort to conceal massive wrongdoing in the handling of Concealed Weapons (CCW) permit applications across California, including wrongful actions on the part of state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) said today. "SAF has received complaints from our members in California for years that the gun permit issuance system is being handled improperly," said SAF founder...

Ann Coulter is a favorite of ours. We've cited her for her wit and lucidity quite a few times, and we've published an appreciation of her. She has outdone herself in her column this week shredding the legal arguments underlying what the PC dissemblers dubbed "affirmative action" and have for thirty years tried to convince us was socially desirable and legally permissible because it was...well...affirmative, hence not negative. Miss Coulter correctly asks what the big deal is about the University of Michigan cases now before Supreme Court. Isn't it plain that favoring some races--blacks, Latinos chiefly--is not equal treatment? Doesn't...