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BANTAM - Film and stage actor Rip Torn was arraigned Monday on drunken driving charges in Bantam Superior Court. Elmore “Rip” Torn, 77, a Salisbury resident, pleaded not guilty before Judge Cara Eschuk to charges of illegal operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence and failure to drive in the proper lane. Torn is represented by Torrington attorney A. Thomas Waterfall of the firm Smith, Keefe, Moraghan and Waterfall. Eschuk warned Torn not to drive if his license is suspended. He was scheduled to return to court Jan. 28. Despite two prior drunken driving arrests in New York,...

Many years ago (I won't give the exact number) I was a college student, and for a while worked in the college radio station which at that time concentrated on jazz and instrumental music (it was a religious college and many contemporary song lyrics were problematic). Each weekday morning there was an hour of what is conventionally called "new age" music. One of the new age albums was entitled New Age Songs and was by a duo named the Frugivores ("fruit eaters"). It appeared to be a man and a woman (though the pic on the front of the album...

More than two years after enraging right-wing groups by ordering Terry Schiavo's feeding tube removed, George Greer still peers over his shoulder nervously at times. In fact, the Florida judge told a rapt audience Friday at the American Bar Association's annual meeting, he even used an alias when he registered at his San Francisco hotel on this trip. Two years ago, he said, someone in the Bay Area threatened to kill him over his decision to end life support for the brain-damaged Schiavo. And even though that person was prosecuted and jailed, Greer said, he's taking no chances. "It is...

As we face greater threats than ever before the question "who's with me" comes to mind. Americans are being bombarded on all sides with rhetoric. There are troops who have done several tours of duty in the war on terror. We are by all accounts spread thin. The lunatics in North Korea and Iran are growing bolder. The totalitariarian regime of North Korea is the "blank slate" theory of behavior modification run amok. It is the nightmare scenario magnified exponentially. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) is truly an Orwellian horror story. The civilians of N. Korea live in...

Milagros Garcia is an alleged Alien and Human inter-species hybrid. The blood DNA from this Puerto Rican woman has yielded analyses so unusual and interesting that the physician involved is now interested in meeting the subject for further study. The DNA is possible in humans but is very rare. Ms. Garcia claims that she is the offspring of an alien encounter. The Doctor is not interested in the UFO/ alien phenomena he wants answers as to why her DNA has such rare qualities. A Case similar to this is being investigated in New Paris Ohio. A woman there has exceptional...

Serious movement in D.C. – and if I hadn't been there, I would not have believed it. For several months Joan Wire and her daughter have been trying to secure an appointment with a highly effective government official we'll simply call Mr. Washington. Joan Wire is the stalwart wife of Mike Wire. Mike is the storied "man on the bridge," the single most critical eyewitness in the saga of TWA Flight 800, the 747 that was inexplicably blown out of the sky on the night of July 17, 1996. The CIA built its notorious zoom-climb animation around Mike's position on...

Aaron Harber of the Aaron Harber show (harbertv.com) has an interview with Justices Breyer and O’Connor tomorrow afternoon, and he has solicited SCOTUSblog readers to help him formulate some questions for the two Honorable interviewees. So, if you have a query or two about the law or the Court that you think would be appropriate for either of the two Justices, post it as a comment on this post or e-mail jharrow [at] akingump.com by 1:00 PM Eastern Time tomorrow, Thursday, July 6. Hopefully, we can send Aaron a few good questions and he will report back to us with...

It is Time to EDUCATE Ourselves About the Courts and Take Back ALL Three of Our VOTES! I know, some of us are saying to ourselves, "3 VOTES? Sounds like a Dem Party Scandal where Fairy Tale Characters and the Dead vote." NOPE! We have 3 VOTES, but the Power hungry Government Thugs and the Judiciary Oligarchy Drummers don't want you to know about it! This post is PACKED with INFO, so you may want to bookmark some of the links. The Citizens Rule Book: JURY HANDBOOKI came across this when I was all in a tither about the...

WASHINGTON Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor have been the targets of death threats from the "irrational fringe" of society, people apparently spurred by Republican criticism of the high court. Ginsburg revealed in a speech in South Africa last month that she and O'Connor were threatened a year ago by someone who called on the Internet for the immediate "patriotic" killing of the justices. Security concerns among judges have been growing. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter joked earlier this year that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned. Over the past few months...

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the controversial Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973, died Thursday at a Virginia hospital (...) President Clinton said Thursday he "saw up close Harry Blackmun's intense passion -- his passion for the welfare of the American people, for defending our liberties and our institutions, for moving us forward together." "In 24 years on the Supreme Court he served with compassion, distinction, and honor," Clinton said. "Every decision and every dissent was firmly grounded in the Constitution he revered and his uncanny feel for the human element that lies...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

Now you can spend your evenings with Mark Levin on 630 WMAL frm 6pm-8pm...Mark has been a frequent guest and substitute host on the Hannity show, and has also been an advisor to Limbaugh, who frequently refers to him on the air with the nickname "F. Lee Levin." He is perhaps more well known for his nickname “The Great One,” coined by his friend Hannity. Mark Levin is one of America's preeminent conservative commentators and constitutional lawyers. He's in great demand as a political and legal commentator, and has appeared on hundreds of television and radio programs. Levin is also...

Bush’s giant Right Wing Noise Machine (RWNM) loves to preach about the Bush economic miracle. In fact, the RWNM’s current thinking is Bush doesn’t spend enough time talking about his economic triumphs. If only he did, then everyone would fall in line and believe in the great Bush economic miracle. There is one problem with this argument: it’s a lie. Any way you look at the Bush economy, it comes up short. Today, I want to compare Bush’s job creation record with other economic recoveries. As usual, Bush comes up way short. The national Bureau of Economic Research has identified...

Why does anybody support George w Bush as President? He is clearly the worst President I have ever seen -- a complete disaster. And before you say anything, I have been a registered Republican for 25 years.

South Africa's highest court ruled today that same-sex marriages enjoy the same legal status as those between men and women, effectively making the nation one of just five worldwide that have removed legal barriers to gay and lesbian unions. But the Constitutional Court, as the high court is known, effectively stayed its ruling for one year to give the Parliament time to amend a 1961 marriage law to reflect its decision. Should the legislature balk, the court said, the law will be automatically changed to make its provisions gender-neutral. Few expect the Parliament to resist, even though African nations are...

It wasn't a sexual assault -- it was sleep sex. In an unusual case in a Scarborough, Ontario, courtroom, Jan Luedecke was acquitted of sexual assault after a judge ruled he was asleep during the attack -- a disorder known as "sexsomnia." "This is indeed a rare case ... His conduct was not voluntary," said Justice Russell Otter, as Luedecke's victim shook, sobbed and then left the courtroom. The judgment has outraged women's groups. "This is infuriating. It's another case of the courts not taking a woman seriously, adding yet another list to the list of excuses which men use...

Mark Levin will be on shortly. He is getting ready to go to battle with the libs. HEY YOU MORON, GET OFF THE PHONE! WABC RADIO ONLINE FEED I will be gone during part of the show. Please report.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is an excerpt from Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America. (Citations and other notes appear in the book, though not in this excerpt.) ”Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators — not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973.” — Ronald Reagan, 1983 Today, legalized abortion is the law of the land because the Supreme Court decided in 1973 that its recently created constitutional...

Supreme Court Strikes Fatal Blow to Rights June 30, 2005 To the Editor: On June 23, 2005, four liberal-socialist U.S. Supreme Court justices — John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — joined by Anthony Kennedy, struck what may be a fatal blow to one of the three fundamental human rights upon which our Republic is founded, that of private property. Enlightenment thinker John Locke’s three fundamental rights of every human being — to life, liberty and property — were adopted by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty and the pursuit of...

Congress lashed out at the Supreme Court yesterday for expanding government powers of eminent domain and vowed to ban any federal funds for state and local governments that employ the new authority. ***snip*** In response, a bipartisan group of senators and House members joined yesterday in introducing legislation that will withhold federal funding from any state or local government that tries to use those expanded powers. "The Supreme Court voted last week to undo private property rights and to empower governments to kick people out of their homes and give them to someone else because they feel like it," said...

URGENT ACTION: Court Bans Commandments The Supreme Court has once again struck a blow to our freedoms -- undermining property rights and banning a Kentucky Ten Commandments display (McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky). Immediate action is needed to STOP JUDICIAL TYRANNY! Sign the Petition! The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ is rallying hundreds of thousands of citizens to sign this “Petition to Stop Judicial Tyranny” and break the ideological blockade. The petition has two goals. #1 --Support Supreme Court and lower court judicial nominees who will uphold the Constitution and thereby defend public faith and the unborn. #2...

Picture this: Ruth Bader Ginsberg wearing a snug, green outfit, complete with tights. Then picture four of her high-court compatriots, John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer doing the same. It's a tough visual, I admit, but given their property-rights ruling, we now know what those members of the U.S. Supreme Court must be wearing under their black robes. Think "jolly, old England" and the fellow in the green outfit who stole from the rich to give to the poor. He didn't do it alone. Robin Hood had his band of merry men to help. It wasn't...

Will President Bush show John McCain and the rest of the ‘Filibuster Five’ why it’s unwise to pick a fight with a Texas Cowboy? Or, like every moderate Republican (and the French they work so hard to emulate), will Mr. Bush, Senator Frist, and company simply surrender? In the battle for the judiciary—undoubtedly the most important non-terrorism related issue we face—the American people need to know which George W. Bush is going to show up at the shootout. Will it be the man that supported McCain’s campaign finance reform bill in an effort to set a new 'tone,' let Ted...

Tin SoldierAn American Vigilante In Afghanistan, Using the Press for Profit and Glory By Mariah Blake In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months conducting a series of raids with his team, which he called Task Force Saber 7. By late June, he claimed to have captured the...

Sorry I missed the start; Levin's lecture at the American Enterprise Institute on his book Men In Black started on C-Span 2 about 20 minutes ago.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is citing a controversial new book sharply critical of the Supreme Court's judicial activism as the basis for new Republican initiatives on court reform. "As a guide to his views on the subject, DeLay has been urging reporters to read "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America," reports the Washington Post. Written by former Reagan Justice Department official Mark Levin, "Men in Black" details the history of the high court going back to Marbury vs Madison - exposing more than a few members of the exclusive legal club as racists, anti-Semites and...

With conservative anger at the judiciary peaking, House Republican leaders plan to use budgetary, oversight and disciplinary authority to assert greater control over the federal courts before next year's elections. The Constitution specifies that Congress will set the jurisdiction and budgets of the courts, and Republican lawmakers began agitating to exercise that power after Schiavo's death. DeLay drew wide attention to the issue by declaring that the judges involved in that case would have to "answer for their behavior." As a guide to his views on the subject, DeLay has been urging reporters to read "Men in Black: How the...

An Indiana congressman plans to curb the ACLU's appetite for filing suits targeting religion in the public square by introducing a bill that denies plaintiff attorneys the right to collect attorneys fees in such cases. Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., is expected to file his measure next week to amend the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. Section 1988, to prohibit prevailing parties from being awarded attorneys fee in religious establishment cases, but not in other civil rights filings. "Every other civil right case, there is some injury to somebody," American Legion attorney Rees Lloyd of Banning, California,...

National Public Radio has been caught in an anti-conservative smear and forced to apologize. On Tuesday, NPR issued a correction and apology to Mark Levin, author of the New York Times bestseller Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America. According to Levin's publisher, Regnery, a recent broadcast of NPR's "Day to Day" program falsely accused Levin of advocating violence against judges. Yesterday's NPR apology stated: "We have a correction [that] concerns a conversation we aired on April 5 about denunciations of the judiciary by certain conservatives in the wake of the Terry Schiavo case. After noting that...

SPECIAL: Saving Terri SchiavoAlan Keyes on the G. Gordon Liddy Show March 30, 2005 >snip<...  the root of the problem is a misunderstanding of what ought to properly be called constitutional review. It's misnamed judicial review. >snip<Judicial review actually results from an argument--that is to say, a line of reasoning--that was first presented by Hamilton in Federalist 78, and then reiterated by Justice Marshall, Chief Justice Marshall, in Marbury vs. Madison , and it's very simple. Very simple line of reasoning. It goes like this: if I am a judge, I am sworn to uphold the Constitution. If a law...

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. In the Oscar-winning film The Incredibles, the bad guys finally find a way to defeat the superheroes—not with exotic weapons or incredible powers, but with lawyers, judges, and compliant government officials. After Mister Incredible saves a man falling from a building, he is sued for interfering with the man’s right to successfully commit suicide. The plaintiff’s success triggers a explosion of similar lawsuits against superheroes across the country. Eventually, the government has to step in to stop the chaos emanating from the courts: In exchange for an end to...

Mark Levin (“Men in Black) was on CSPAN2 booknotes Sunday Morning. A sample(paraphrase):'In order to strike down the Connecticut law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives, Justice William O. Douglas wrote that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” Mark then asked rhetorically, 'What does this mean???’, he followed with ’ No one knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. It sounds like something from Carl Sagan.' I almost fell out of my chair laughing. It would be funny if was not so tragic...

townhall.comJudging Terri Jan M. LaRue April 1, 2005>snip<One of the most puzzling aspects of this distressing ordeal has been the repeated mantra, "People just don't want government involved in 'end-of-life' decisions. It should be left to the family.">snip< How could anyone miss the pervasive presence of government that Michael Schiavo set in motion against Terri?>snip< The Florida Legislature, like every other state legislature, has enacted laws that regulate end-of-life issues. >snip<Florida's definition of spouse allowed an adulterous Michael Schiavo to express Terri's "wishes." >snip<The issue under Florida law is whether Terri ever expressed a statement that she would not want...

RUSH: Here's Janet in Sacramento. Welcome to the program. Great to have you with us. CALLER: Hey, Rush. RUSH: Hey. CALLER: Major dittos from Sacramento. RUSH: My adopted hometown. It's great to have you with us. CALLER: Yeah. It was great to have you with us for a time. Listen, I want to go back to what you were saying about education because I think you're on to something. RUSH: I always am. CALLER: Yeah, you always are. I'm a private school teacher in California. I won't work in the California public school system because you can't teach in the...

Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America by Mark R. Levin Regnery Publishing, Inc.; ISBN: 0895260506 Hardcover - 256 pages (February 2005) The Supreme Court Endorses Terrorists’ Rights, Flag Burning, and Importing Foreign Law. Is that in the Constitution? You’re right: It’s not. But these days the Constitution is no restraint on our out-of-control Supreme Court. The Court imperiously strikes down laws and imposes new ones purely on its own arbitrary whims. Even though liberals like John Kerry are repeatedly defeated at the polls, the majority on the allegedly “conservative” Supreme Court reflects their views and wields...

Pinellas Park police Lt. Kevin Riley, standing upper right, prepares to arrest members of the Keys family as they were attempting to bring Terri Schiavo water Wednesday morning, March 23, 2005 outside the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla. The Keys family, of Burnet, Tex., kneeling, from left, Josie, 14, Gabriel, 10, Chris, the children's father, and Cameron 12, were all taken into custody. Galen Keys, upper left, the children's mother looks on, but was not arrested.The mother insists it was the children's idea: "I am proud of them," said the boys' mother Geilen Keys from Texas, who was not...

Press Conferences in Washington and Tallahassee on March 23 at noon. To: National Desk Contact: Joe Giganti, 703-928-9695, Joe@VeritasMediaGroup.com WASHINGTON, March 23 /Christian Wire Service/ -- The 11th Hour Coalition to Save Terri Schiavo's Life will hold simultaneous press conferences -- Wednesday, March 23 -- at 12 noon in Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee, Fla. This ad hoc partnership of religious and political organizations -- which will gather in front of the White House and the Florida governor's mansion -- will call on President George W. Bush and Gov. Jeb Bush to use their executive powers to protect Terri Schiavo from...

YOU ARE WRONG! I don't care if you do teach Con Law. Irwin [Chemerinsky] teaches Con Law. Nuff said. The threat of Executive Nullification of Judicial Edicts is an Essential part of the separation and balance of powers. If Executive enforcement is a mere arm of Judiciary legal fiat, you have the Executive, Legislative and Judicial power invested in one Judicial Oligarchy. That is anathema to anything American. The Court was envisioned to have the power of persuasion only. But if their pronouncements bind the Congress and President automatically, the need for persuasion is gone. PLEASE read Federalist #78. It...

<p>Tonight it is, March 23, 2005, over five days since Theresa Marie Schiavo commenced her ordeal of purposeful and legally sanctioned dehydration and starvation. We await a decision from the three judge panel from Eleventh Judicial Circuit as to her fate, as her family struggles with seeing Terri's physical health deteriorate.</p>

... The court says in so many words that what our people’s laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: ‘In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,’ he [Justice Kennedy]wrote. "The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation’s moral standards,"; Scalia wrote. And by allowing ";international opinion"; to color their rulings, the justices have thrown both the Constitution of the United States and our national sovereignty into the trash heap. [snip] As Mark Levin writes, "the idea has taken hold...

<p>In October 1998, Free Republic marched on Washington demanding the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Thanks to our efforts, Clinton was impeached less than two months later.</p> <p>Then, as now, our country stood at a Constitutional crossroad. This year we stand at the crossroad of what kind of judiciary we will have: One that is restrained by the Constitution, or one that abridges our rights by making it up as they go along.</p>

<p>Judicial tyranny must end! The filibuster must be broken! The full Senate must have an up or down vote on the president's judicial nominees! We must not allow the Democrat obstructionists the privilege of controlling the confirmation process!</p> <p>No more liberal activists on the bench!</p> <p>Enough is enough!!</p>

per Fox

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) -- Armed with a new law rushed through Congress over the weekend, the attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents pleaded with a judge Monday to order the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube reinserted. U.S. District Judge James Whittemore did not immediately make a ruling after the two-hour hearing, and he gave no indication on when he might act on the request. The hearing came three days after the feeding tube was removed. Doctors have said Schiavo could survive one to two weeks without the tube. During the hearing, David Gibbs, an attorney for the parents, said that forcing...

The right to live, or more specifically, the right not to be killed, is a fundamental right. And it's a right recognized in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. So ingrained in our society is the notion of life, that the 8th Amendment prohibits "cruel and usual punishment" (even short of death) and the 14th Amendment prohibits states from depriving any person of life without due process of law. This has nothing to do with federalism, unless you ignore the 8th and 14th Amendments. (Unlike the Left, that contorts the 14th Amendment, I'm recognizing its literal meaning.) What really...

Continuation of Terri Schiavo daily March threads. Due to overwhelming participation we reached over 5000 posts in three days time!

The proposed state constitutional ban on gay marriage that supporters say will keep the issue out of the hands of a judge is likely headed for a courtroom anyway. Critics say they will sue to stop plans to amend the Tennessee Constitution, a day after the state House overwhelmingly approved the issue with the idea of putting it in the hands of voters in 2006. The ACLU of Tennessee says it will pursue litigation to stop the gay marriage ban. Right now, bans in Georgia, Kentucky and Nebraska are being challenged in court. But so far no court has overturned...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Terri Schiavo case has been catapulted from a drawn-out medical and legal battle into a fast-paced political drama with Congress, the White House and the courts playing leading roles. Republicans see a vote for prolonging the life of the brain-damaged Florida woman as an opportunity to strengthen their support among religious conservatives, a vital constituency group, ahead of next year's congressional elections. For the most part, minority-party Democrats are asserting that congressional involvement in such a heart-wrenching private matter is unwarranted and unwise. But they are treading carefully, not wanting again to get clobbered on the...

CRAWFORD, Texas Mar 19, 2005 — President Bush is changing his schedule to return to the White House on Sunday to be in place to sign emergency legislation that would shift the case of a brain-damaged Florida woman to federal courts, the White House said Saturday. "Everyone recognizes that time is important here," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "This is about defending life." After Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed on Friday, members of Congress worked out a deal to pass legislation to allow federal courts to decide the 41- year-old woman's fate and in the hopes of...

The Supreme Court is not often the stuff of bestsellers, but in recent weeks a conservative lawyer's full-throated attack on the court has been flying off the shelves, reaching as high as third place on the New York Times bestseller list. The 288-page book, "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America," by Mark R. Levin, arrived amid expectations of a pitched battle in Washington over a replacement for ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. It argues that the court's decisions in favor of abortion rights, gay rights, economic regulation and affirmative action have created "de facto judicial...