Free Republic

Madison - A three-judge panel on Thursday told Republican lawmakers to turn over 84 documents to a group of Democrats in a blistering order that said Republicans had engaged in an "all but shameful" effort to keep its efforts hidden from the public. The court promptly released the documents that showed, among other things, that Republicans who drew new election maps last year largely orchestrated the public testimony given in support of them. The three federal judges - two of them appointed by Republicans - were unanimous in their decision. It came after a string of orders against the Republicans...

It is certainly no surprise for gun owners to see the New York Times run a story belittling the United States Constitution. After all, the Times has worked for decades to devalue our founding document. "[I]ts influence is waning," opines the Times. It is "terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights." The paper faults the Constitution for being difficult to amend and reflective of the times in which it was written. While the Times does not go so far as to claim the U.S. Constitution has been bad for America, it does lament that it is of "little...

US Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg tells Egyptians: Don’t look to the “OLD US Constitution” for guidance in drafting a new constitution. Justice Ginsburg holds in high esteem the constitution of South Africa and Canada.

Folks, we're not even being contrary when we point this out. For the 9th Circuit to rule Prop 8 unconstitutional, just as Gingrich is looking again for his footing -- just as Rick Santorum is about to steal his headlines -- is a Gingrichian dream. Look! He agrees: (TWEET FROM NEWT AT LINK) The link goes to the 9th (coincidentally) of Gingrich's solutions for fixing the judiciary, to prevent it from doing things that conservatives don't like -- abolishing courts that make "un-American decisions." He's been on the record wanting this treatment for the 9th circuit for a long, long...

Much has been reported in recent days regarding the Obamacare mandate that would require religious institutions to provide health insurance whose services include contraception. But few realize that a case with essentially the same underlying principle has been working its way through the federal court system for a couple years already. The L.A. Times reported in 2009 that "pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the 'morning after' contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. In a case that could affect policy across the western U.S., a supermarket...

PHILADELPHIA (Legal Newsline) - Pennsylvania is known as the Quaker State and Philadelphia as the Quaker City because both were founded by William Penn, who was a member of the Society of Friends - also called Quakers. Quakers hold to "a belief in the possibility of direct, unmediated communion with the Divine." Some would suggest, however, that Philadelphia's courts are anything but divinely inspired. The January edition ...

In a letter obtained by The Daily Caller, House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith warned Attorney General Eric Holder not to permit the transfer of funds from a recent $335 million Department of Justice settlement to organizations associated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, more commonly known as ACORN, or other advocacy groups allied with President Obama. Smith is concerned that flimsy language in the settlement agreement with Countrywide Financial — the mortgage arm of Bank of America — could be politically motivated. “I am concerned that the terms of the Justice Department’s recent settlement with...

Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) brother-in-law was quietly nominated by President Barack Obama to a federal judgeship in New Jersey, even though the state’s senior senator, Frank Lautenberg, was leaning toward other candidates, according to a report Monday. Kevin McNulty, who is married to Schumer’s sister, was nominated for the $174,000-a-year lifetime post in the U.S. District Court on Dec. 16, according to the New York Post.

When discussing his amazingness, Newt Gingrich sometimes exaggerates somewhat, as when, discussing Bosnia and Washington, D.C., street violence, he said, “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 16, 1994]. What primarily stands between us and misrule, however, is the Constitution, buttressed by an independent judiciary. But Gingrich’s hunger for distinction has surely been slaked by his full-throated attack on such a judiciary. He is the first presidential candidate to propose a thorough assault on the rule of law. That is the meaning of his vow to break courts to the saddle of politicians, particularly...

In Partial Defense of Newt Gingrich December 21, 2011 11:15 A.M. By Ed Whelan I’ve vigorously criticized Newt Gingrich’s proposal to abolish judgeships, and I also agree with Andy McCarthy’s critique of Gingrich’s idea that Congress should subpoena federal judges (and arrest them, if necessary) to explain their rulings to members of Congress. That said, I think that some of Gingrich’s other ideas have been subjected to unfair attack, and I’d like to sketch a brief defense of them here: 1. Gingrich is correct to contest the myth of “judicial supremacy.” As his “white paper” explains, he is not challenging...

For nearly a decade, 2012 contender Newt Gingrich has been floating some controversial ideas aimed at reining in the federal judiciary. He's called that branch of government "grotesquely dictatorial" and elitist. Should he become president, Gingrich says he'll ignore Supreme Court decisions if they don't square with his interpretation of the Constitution or what he believes the country's founders intended. Gingrich says federal judges should be called before Congress to explain their decisions, suggesting Sunday that he'd even approve of arresting them if they refused to show up. It's an issue raised Thursday in Fox News' GOP debate in Iowa,...

No ‘Newt-’ New Year Dragon of 2012- Gingrich, or ‘Axed Judiciary’ as Aquino’s Philippines by John P. Roco Sunday, 18 December 2011 19:51 Hawaii Standard Time What timing: December 12, 2012- Supreme Court Chief justice of the Philippines Renato Corona impeached at the bequest of President Aquino backers of the House of Representatives for eight Articles, the first saying: “he has consistently sided with the (arroyo) administration in politically-significant cases” (Article I also contests- as Aquino does- the constitutionality of the ‘midnight appointment’ of Corona by then President Arroyo on May 12, 2010). Three days later: December 15, 2012- Newt...

At his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, John Roberts, the nominee of President George W. Bush to become the 17th chief justice of the United States, promised to serve in the neutral fashion of a baseball umpire and lead the Supreme Court away from all manner of judicial activism. “[I]t’s my job to call balls and strikes,” he testified, “and not to pitch or bat.” Few, if any, observers took Roberts at his word, given his track record as a Republican warhorse, including stints as a clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist and as deputy solicitor general under the first President...

Evangelicals play a significant role in the Iowa electorate. In 2008 they overwhelmingly voted for Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is perceived by many as having won the vote by living and campaigning in Iowa exclusively and speaking to many churches and church groups prior to the caucuses. Many Iowans may also have voted for him because he was a Baptist minister. Iowans were impressed for sure. But it was not enough to propel him to the nomination. In fact by the time the process rolled around to Florida, the Huckabee share of voters was only 13%. For this election cycle, evangelicals...

Republican president hopeful Newt Gingrich doubled down on his criticism of federal judges and the Supreme Court on Sunday as chief rival Mitt Romney defended his record against likely Democratic attacks. With close to two weeks before GOP voters start choosing their nominee, Gingrich is courting the conservative primary voters he will need to win in Iowa and sustain his campaign against Romney, whose superior organization and pile of cash has him seeming ever more confident as he looks ahead to the general election. "There is steady encroachment of secularism through the courts to redefine America as a nonreligious country...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKX2zQbtEQcHere it for those who missed it last night. Newt gave the best possible answer. Obama knows zero American history except what he got off his favorite leftist professors at Harvard and Columbia. While Newt has taught American history and loves the American history of an exceptional nation

Elena Kagan Mania Elena Kagan: The Justice Who Knows Too Much (audio)Senate GOP Leaders To Holder: Your Kagan Testimony 'Belied By The Facts'Sessions Demands Written Testimony from Holder on Kagan and ObamacareSessions presses Holder on Justice Kagan's involvement with health law“A Pattern of Socialist Associations” – Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan (the Early Years)Kagan emails lead to calls for inquiry over her involvement in ObamacareFlashback: Elena Kagan's brother was a radical socialist (communist?)- and she thanks him Kagan to Tribe on Day Obamacare Passed: ‘I Hear They Have the Votes, Larry!! Simply Amazing.’Judge Blocks Release of Recusal-Related Emails Kagan...

So, Governor Rick Perry made a speech today where he proposed the following: * Ending the practice of giving lifetime appointments to federal judges (current judges would not be affected); * Cutting Congressional pay in half; * Cutting Congressional pay in half again if they don’t balance the budget by 2020; * Cutting Congressional office budgets in half; * Cutting the Congressional calendar by half; * Criminalizing insider trading by Congressmen (no, actually, it’s not currently illegal for them to do that); * Reducing spending to 18% of GDP; * Privatizing Fannie & Freddie; * Ending the funding of Planned...

div class="article_body"> The case for Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan recusing herself from voting on the upcoming decision regarding Obamacare would seem to be an open and shut one. Emails show that she harbored definite opinions about the law while serving as Obama's solicitor general.The Examiner: At her confirmation hearing in 2010, now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan that she "was not" asked at any time to give her opinion on the merits of the Obamacare legislaton. Newly released emails suggest that whether or not she was asked, Kagan was not shy about her enthusiasm for the bill that eventually...

BETTENDORF, Iowa — Gov. Rick Perry is proposing to bring a little Texas to Washington — with a “part-time citizen Congress” that doesn’t meet so often, and whose members earn only half of what they make now. The Republican presidential hopeful will also call for an end to lifetime appointments for federal judges, including members of the U.S. Supreme Court. And, as he proposed in his famous debate-night flub last week, Perry will vow to shut down three agencies of government. This time he will remember all three: the U.S. Departments of Education, Commerce and Energy. “Washington doesn’t need a...

Silberman, Laurence Hirsch Born 1935 in York, PA Federal Judicial Service:Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia CircuitNominated by Ronald Reagan on September 11, 1985, to a new seat created by 98 Stat. 333; Confirmed by the Senate on October 25, 1985, and received commission on October 28, 1985. Assumed senior status on November 1, 2000. Education:Dartmouth College, A.B., 1957Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1961 Professional Career:U.S. Army Private, 1957-1958Private practice, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1961-1967Lecturer, University of Hawaii Law School, 1962-1963Attorney, Appellate Division, National Labor Relations Board, Washington, DC, 1967-1969Solicitor of Labor, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, DC,...

The Root-and-Branch CandidateGingrich doesn't want to beat just Obama, but statism, too. The question is simple but profound: Will the 2012 presidential-election campaign be about big ideas? Ideas like whether the American people are still masters of their own destiny or instead have resigned themselves to a rule of lawyers advertising itself as “the rule of law�?To push these fundamentals to the fore is the rationale of Newt Gingrich’s candidacy. If ever there were a big-ideas guy, it’s the former House speaker. Ideas seem to churn out of him faster than the Treasury churns out greenbacks for “green energy.� But...

A Wisconsin judge has decided – in a fight over families' access to milk from cows they own – that Americans "do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow." The ruling comes from Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Fiedler in a court fight involving a number of families who owned their own cows, but boarded them on a single farm. The judge said that's a "dairy farm" and is subject to the rules and regulations of the state of Wisconsin. "It's always a surprise when a judge says you don't have the fundamental right...

        In the case Richard L. Barnes v. State of Indiana, No. 82S05-1007-CR-343, the court issued the following: “we hold that Indiana [sic] the right to reasonably resist an unlawful police entry into a home is no longer recognized under Indiana law.”         Ignoring the misplaced word ‘Indiana,’ this statement is quite troubling in its implications. They are saying that nobody has the right to resist even an illegal police entry into ones own home... and there are no qualifying limitations on the statement whatsoever. This means that a police officer could break into you house and rape you, your wife,...

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) called on the Justice Department Monday to investigate a California solar firm that filed for bankruptcy in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration. Smith, in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, requested that the Justice Department appoint an examiner to probe the Solyndra bankruptcy case, citing an investigation by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The GOP investigation uncovered a series of emails that Republicans say show that the White House rushed a final decision on financing so that Vice President Biden could announce...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is moving at a historic pace to try to diversify the nation's federal judiciary: Nearly three of every four people he has gotten confirmed to the federal bench are women or minorities. He is the first president who hasn't selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships. More than 70 percent of Obama's confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were "non-traditional," or nominees who were not white males. That far exceeds the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent), according to Sheldon...

Manassas, VA --(Ammoland.com)- It can be argued that the only personal property specifically protected by the US Constitution is firearms. While the Fourth Amendment promises “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” and requires a sworn warrant “describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” it does specifically allow for such seizure if the “i’s” are properly dotted and the “t’s” correctly crossed. Similarly the Fifth Amendment guarantees against a person being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private...

The House Judiciary Committee is launching an investigation to probe the involvement that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had in “health care legislation or litigation” when she was serving as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general and was responsible for defending the administration’s position in federal court cases. The investigation will look at whether Kagan is required by law to recuse herself from judging cases challenging President Obama’s health-care law and whether her answers to questions posed by the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation process were accurate.

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week is a timely, cautionary reminder for Hoosiers who plan to consume alcohol over the holiday weekend. It is possible to be charged with public intoxication, even while in a vehicle with a designated driver. Police had arrested an Indiana woman who was drunk in the passenger seat of a car. The Supreme Court ruled that a public intoxication charge can stand against people in a car on a public street...

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb announced in a news conference Wednesday morning that she will resign her position in August. She is the only Democrat on the Alabama Supreme Court. "After tremendous amount of time and prayer and God's guidance to what is in the best interest of the Alabama Court System," Cobb said, " I have decided to step down." She cited the partisan way judges are selected and funding problems in her announcement. [Read Justice Cobb's official statement (.pdf)] With Cobb's departure, there will be only one statewide level Democrat holding...

Billionaire George Soros spends tens of millions each year supporting a range of liberal social and political causes, from drug legalization to immigration reform to gay marriage to abolishing the death penalty. But a less well-known Soros priority -- replacing elections for judges with selection-by-committee -- now has critics accusing him of trying to stack the courts. Most non-federal judges around the country are selected by voters in elections. But some states use a process called “merit selection” in which a committee – often made up of lawyers – appoints judges to the bench instead. Soros has spent several million...

A Texas woman was sentenced to five years probation after pleading guilty to the charge of Injury of a Child. What did this Corpus Christi mother of three do? She spanked her then nearly 2-year-old daughter. "You don't spank children today," said Judge Jose Longoria. "In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel. You don't spank children."

JOIN DR. RICHARD LEE (editor/author of "American Patriot's Bible) LIVE on Speak Out America tonight from 8-9 EST. How do you feel about judges that legislate from the bench? Call in and be heard across America! 855-877-3256.

Billionaire political financier George Soros is behind a $45 million campaign to strip American citizens of their right to select state court judges and thereby put the legal system in the hands of Left-wing jurists, according to Dan Pero, president of the American Justice Partnership. AJP produced a comprehensive report about the plan and Soros’ financial stake in it. AJP says the movement is using the reformist-sounding name “merit selection” for its plan and that it seeks to end the popular election of state judges and replace the decision of voters with a system that puts political insiders and lawyers...

President Obama on Tuesday announced that he is nominating four people to serve as U.S. District Court judges. His picks are: Margo Kitsy Brodie, for Eastern District of N.Y.; Jesse M. Furman, for Southern District of N.Y.; Susie Morgan, for Eastern District of Louisiana; and Mary Elizabeth Phillips, for the Western District of Missouri. Here’s background from the White House on the judges-in-waiting:

Activist Judges and the Homosexual Ideology: the "Opium of Intellectuals" Written by Luiz S. Solimeo    May 23, 2011 Share Tweet “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism,� begins The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels in 1848. Today, we could paraphrase this warning by saying: “A specter is haunting the world — the specter of homosexual ideology.� Homosexual Ideology, the New “Opium of Intellectuals� Indeed, just as communism back then exerted an almost magical attraction on Western intellectuals to the point of being called The Opium of the Intellectuals,1 the same now appears to be...

WASHINGTON -- A liberal legal scholar is withdrawing his nomination to an appeals court judgeship after Senate Republicans blocked a vote on his confirmation last week. Goodwin Liu, 40, said in a letter to President Barack Obama Wednesday that he and family need "to make plans for the future" now that there is little prospect of a Senate vote on his nomination.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The leaders of the Indiana House and Senate want the state Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling that found people don't have the right to resist police officers who enter their homes illegally. Senate President Pro Tem David Long, of Fort Wayne, and House Speaker Brian Bosma, of Indianapolis, said in a joint statement that they've heard from many constituents and legal scholars worried about the decision. The Republicans said the court's 3-2 ruling this month may have unintentionally erased hundreds of years of precedent allowing reasonable resistance. They suggested a narrower ruling addressing circumstances such as domestic...

Republican opposition is steadily growing against controversial University of California-Berkley law professor Goodwin Liu, President Obama's nominee for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, potentially imperiling a judicial appointment for the first time in his presidency. Senior Republicans launched an all-out push to quash the nomination, urging their conference colleagues to support a GOP-led filibuster. "(Liu's) record reflects a carefully honed and calculated philosophy that he developed and advanced over the course of his brief career in the ivory towers of academia and which threatens the American tradition of limited constitutional government," Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on...

How many oxymoron jokes can there be? A lot, I can assure you. One of the most common examples would be military intelligence , with the phrase amicable divorce close behind. My personal favorite has to be a phrase used over and over (and probably one of the first any of us ever heard): common sense . Rick Moran's AT blog entry on May 14 titled " IN Court Says No Right To Resist Illegal Police Entry To Your Home " does a great job illustrating the out-of-control nature of our judiciary. It seems that last Thursday, the Indiana...

A three-judge federal appeals panel comprised of two Obama nominees and a Clinton nominee will hear arguments later this morning in two lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the national health care law. The makeup of the U.S. Fourth Circuit of Appeals panel is crucial, because in lower court rulings so far, Democratic judges have upheld the law while Republican judges have declared it unconstitutional. The judges on the panel will be Obama nominees James A. Wynn, Jr and Andre M. Davis, who will sit on the panel along with Clinton nominee Diana Gribbon Motz.

Elbridge Gerry said to his colleagues in the First Congress in 1789, "The people of America can never be safe, if...[the federal government has] a right to exercise the power of giving constructions to the constitution different from the original instrument." Interpreting the Constitution according to the original meaning of the provisions therein is today labeled as the philosophy of originalism. It is the only logical and legitimate method of Constitutional interpretation. Early American Constitutional scholar St. George Tucker wrote in 1803, "The advantages of a written constitution, considered as the original contract of society must immediately strike every reflecting...

It seems like only yesterday that progressives were warning us about “politicizing the judiciary.” That was after Iowa’s voters declined last November to retain three Supreme Court justices who had ruled to overturn the state’s marriage law. Today, after a feverish and expensive campaign by unions to remove conservative Wisconsin Supreme CourtJustice David Prosser, you’ll hear no such talk..... ....They reasoned, correctly, that flipping Justice Prosser’s seat to the liberal Ms. Kloppenburg could create a 4-3 liberal majority that could undo what Mr. Walker and the GOP legislature had wrought. The unions pulled out all stops,.....As with the unsavory behavior...

The federal judge who struck down California's gay marriage ban has confirmed longtime rumors that he's gay, but said his sexuality was irrelevant in deciding the landmark case. Speaking for the first time about the case since retiring from the bench in February, former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said he never considered recusing himself from deciding the constitutionality of Proposition 8 because of his sexual orientation, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Senate Judiciary Approves Pro-Abortion Goodwin Liu Nomination Washington, DC -- The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of a pro-abortion activists President Barack Obama nominated for a federal appeals court in the western United States. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/08/senate-judiciary-approves-pro-abortion-goodwin-liu-nomination/

In his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court case that invalidated Texas’s sodomy law, Justice Antonin Scalia cites the 11th Circuit case of William v. Pryor (2001) which upheld Alabama’s prohibition on the sale of sex toys on the ground that “[t]he crafting and safeguarding of public morality…indisputably is a legitimate government interest under rational basis scrutiny.” Scalia lists this ruling as one of “[c]ountless judicial decisions and legislative enactments” that “have relied on the ancient proposition that a governing majority’s belief that certain sexual behavior is ‘immoral and unacceptable’ constitutes a rational basis for regulation.” He...

Green Lake, Wis. — On the frozen lip of sprawling Big Green Lake, local Republicans gathered in a small hotel ballroom this afternoon for their annual Lincoln Day dinner. Mark Slate, a 39 year-old candidate for county judge, was decked in a stovepipe hat, but the real attraction was state supreme-court justice David Prosser, who gave a rousing speech, urging conservatives to support him on Tuesday, when he faces JoAnne Kloppenburg, an environmental lawyer, at the polls. In his remarks, Prosser noted that the race has gone national. Union-friendly groups are pouring millions into the contest, hoping to tilt the...

I think that the US Congress needs to have hearings on reforming the ENTIRE Judiciary. Put ALL Federal Judges out of office and put REAL Original Consitutionalists on thier place.

THIBODAUX — Larry Luther didn’t see the Facebook post by a Terrebonne Parish child-support hearing officer about a barroom bouncer appearing before him who has 23 children and “too much time on his hands.” But people who read a Courier and Daily Comet story containing questions about the posting’s propriety had little trouble determining who the posting was about and called Luther to tell him. Now the 41-year-old grandfather says he is preparing to file a Louisiana Judiciary Commission complaint against the hearing officer, William Dunckelman. “I am waiting on the papers in the mail,” Luther said Friday night. “I...

Admittedly, the Egyptian uprising, the nullification of Obamacare and the ongoing ramifications of "Snowpocolypse 2011" could render the controversy about an MTV original program insignificant by comparison. After all, MTV is only out to destroy an entire generation. No big deal. Every adult - not just parents - should take the time to learn about the MTV show "Skins," a new "teen drama" that the Parents Television Council (PTC) has deemed "the most dangerous show on TV." Be careful when you go hunting for information about "Skins" lest your spouse conclude you've developed an interest in child pornography. The publicity...