Free Republic

In the comments to yesterday's jury nullification piece (yes, I read your comments) Smitty was especially on-point when he said, "The real problem might be toleration, or more accurately, the lack of it. We wish our preferred freedoms to be respected, while applauding governmental crackdowns upon those freedoms we dislike or are indifferent to." Frankly that's been an ongoing hurdle in the effort to preserve and extend liberty. Until pot-smokers and gun owners and low-taxers and sexual minorities recognize that liberty is indivisible and that we're all in this together, we're going to be picked off piecemeal by government officials...

Amnesia and an abundance of hot air are the order of the day in the Senate. Liberals are screaming bloody murder because Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is seeking a way to derail unprecedented judicial filibusters by Democrats. But when Democrats were nominating the judges, they sang a different tune. Senator Frist is seriously considering a measure to allow confirmation of judges on an up-or-down vote by a simple majority. The Democrats, prodded by far-left-wing groups, are resisting. Currently it takes 60 votes (three fifths of the Senate) to break any filibuster. But for over 200 years, judicial filibusters were...

In Marbury vs Madison Jefferson Saw the Beginning of Judicial Tyranny Early in his career Jefferson was concerned for the independence of the judiciary in order that it be strong and to prevent injustice. However, when the federalists focused their efforts on the transfer to Washington of the power reserved in the Constitution to the States, using the power that they had obtained in the judiciary, he began to view with alarm the subversion of the judiciary and its independence of the nation. To the prevention of their objective Jefferson devoted the rest of his life. The following quotations may...

Dear Rush, I’ve been listening to you since the first month you went on the air in New Orleans. You are an inspiration and my whole family loves you. In the last half of your first hour on Tuesday you were discussing how far out in left field the Federal Judiciary has gone in the last several decades. You discussed parts of the Scalia v Breyer debate and were hitting on all cylinders in the way that only Maha Rushie can. Then you proceeded to explain the history of the “source” of much of the judicial tyranny we suffer under...

Do the Federal courts have a monopoly of the interpretation of the Constitution? Further, are the judges, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions . . ."?.1 There is little reason to doubt that the prevailing view in the country would give a resounding affirmative answer to the first question. There are dissenters, of course, but so far as they are numerous and widely influential, their dissents are to particular decisions or opinions of the courts, not to the propriety of the courts making some decision. The judges act as if they have a...