Free Republic

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) on Monday accused the Supreme Court of a constitutional power grab. In a nearly hour-long floor speech, Specter said the court had ignored congressional will and ceded federal power to the presidency. The outgoing senator, defeated in a Democratic primary last month, criticized Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito by name, saying both had paid “lip service” to Congress during their confirmation hearings. Specter also urged his committee colleagues to take an especially sharp look at Solicitor General Elena Kagan, whose confirmation hearings for the Court begin next Monday. Otherwise, he said Congress risks...

The Senate has rejected a bid to stop the Obama administration from imposing regulations on greenhouse gases, giving a boost to President Barack Obama as he pursues broader clean energy legislation. Senators turned back a resolution that would have rescinded the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Supporters of the measure, mostly Republicans, argued that the EPA had usurped the authority of Congress to set climate policy and that the EPA regulations would increase energy costs and kill jobs.

Now that the House Democrats have rammed ObamaCare down the throats of the nation by a vote of 219-212, the situation is indeed bleak. But Conservatives and Tea Partiers despondent over the fact that liberal Democrats just passed a massive encroachment on our liberties over their massive protests should take hope. James Madison saw this coming, and his forethought will give opponents of ObamaCare one last shot at killing it. In Federalist #10, Madison wrote "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." (Boy, did he ever get THAT right.) Knowing that the nation's future leaders would include usurpers...

We’re not sure it’s exactly newsworthy anymore when a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s election on the grounds that he wasn’t born in the U.S. gets dismissed. (Though rest assured, we’ll be all over it if and when one gains significant traction.) But an opinion issued on Thursday dismissing one of these suits (this one, like others, brought by Orange County lawyer/dentist Orly Taitz) caught our attention. The opinion issued on Thursday, by Santa Ana, Calif., federal judge David O. Carter (a Clinton appointee), delved deeply into standing problems he felt many plaintiffs in the suit suffered. But in the suit...

A new nonpartisan congressional report to be released Wednesday raises constitutional questions about whether state legislatures have the power to seek economic-stimulus funds that their governors reject. Such questions could imperil stimulus funds for South Carolina and Texas, whose governors have said that they'd reject some of their states' share of the money. The report by the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress, casts doubt on a key provision of the $787 billion stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed into law last month, according to people familiar with the report, who couldn't be named because they...

The White House has provided the use of a government airplane to a key Democratic senator in order to ensure the availability of what may prove to be the deciding 60th vote in favor of the $787 billion economic stimulus package. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has returned to his home state to attend a wake for his 88-year-old mother, who died February 2 from complications from leukemia. At the end of the wake, Brown will be flown from Mansfield, Ohio, to Andrews Air Force Base. After he casts his vote, he will return to Ohio for his mother's funeral early...

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch. In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.” While it's...

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch. In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

If we had it to do all over again, would we appoint Supreme Court justices for life? Allow the chief justice to keep the job forever? Let the court have the final word on which cases it hears and those it declines? A group of prominent law professors and jurists thinks not, and the group says in a letter to congressional leaders that there is no reason Congress should consider the operation of the high court sacrosanct. "We do not suggest, and would oppose, any interference with the substance of the court's work," says the letter, which was organized by...

A Senate committee approved a bill today that would give the District its first full seat in the House of Representatives, setting up a crucial vote by the full chamber sometime in coming months. The Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee passed the legislation 11 to 1 at its first business meeting in the new Congress. The lone "no" vote was cast by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. It's not clear when the legislation will reach the Senate floor for what is likely to be the key vote on the measure. In 2007, a similar bill...

Utah's congressional delegation is calling President Obama's decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told FOX News on Tuesday that he finds it hard to believe the Obama administration felt the need to place re-evaluation of the inner workings of the census so high on his to-do list, just three weeks into his presidency. "This is nothing more than a political land grab," Chaffetz said. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the move "shouldn't happen." He...

<p>When you buy a car, a blender, a hair dryer, etc., you also get an owner's manual. Many of us start using the device without reading about it, get ourselves into trouble, and fall back on the last alternative in computer programming. "When all else fails, RTFM," translated loosely as "Read the pea-pickin’ manual."</p>

PHILADELPHIA -- Sheriff John Green has spent 37 years in law enforcement. But these days he's best known around town for the law he won't enforce. With the economy soft and thousands of Philadelphians delinquent on their mortgages, Sheriff Green this spring refused to hold a court-ordered foreclosure auction. His move raised eyebrows on the bench and dropped jaws among lenders and their attorneys, who accuse him of shirking his duty to enforce legal contracts.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to step into a legal fight between the Justice Department and a member of Congress who has been indicted on bribery charges. The court declined to review an appeals court ruling that the FBI reviewed legislative documents in the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., in violation of the Constitution. Jefferson has pleaded not guilty to charges of soliciting more than $500,000 in bribes while using his office to broker business deals in Africa. His trial has been delayed indefinitely. While the Bush administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, Attorney General Michael Mukasey...

It is a title that would be sure to bring either fear or cheer to many Americans, depending on your political leanings: Supreme Court Justice Bill Clinton. That provocative possibility has long been whispered in legal and political circles ever since Sen. Hillary Clinton became a viable candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Now a respected conservative law professor has openly predicted a future President Clinton would name her husband to the high court if a vacancy occurred. Pepperdine Law School's Douglas Kmiec said, "The former president would be intrigued by court service and many would cheer him on." Kmiec...

 For those who hold the Constitution of the United States in high regard and who are concerned about the fate of its principles in our contemporary practice of government, the modern state ought to receive significant attention. The reason for this is that the ideas that gave rise to what is today called "the administrative state" are fundamentally at odds with those that gave rise to our Constitution. In fact, the original Progressive-Era architects of the administrative state understood this quite clearly, as they made advocacy of this new approach to government an important part of their direct, open, comprehensive...

Two days before Thanksgiving the Senate had a 22-second session, a fleeting moment in the life of an occasionally droning body but plenty of time for majority Democrats to keep President Bush from making "recess" appointments. Senators have been taking turns standing sentry duty this week — just to prevent Bush from circumventing the confirmation process by immediately installing people in federal posts while the chamber is in recess. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who carried out that less than glamorous task Tuesday, is a relative newcomer, a low-ranking freshman and a senator who lives just minutes from the Capitol; he...

If men were devils, the Founders argued, no good form of government could be devised because they would corrupt it. If they were angels, no government would be necessary to control them because they would always act virtuously. But in a government of real people ruling over real people, the Founders proposed that ambition must be made to check ambition by placing leaders into different power institutions that counteract each other’s dangerous ambitions. The preeminent way to limit ambition is to have the people control the rulers through elections. “A dependence upon the people is, no doubt, the primary control...

“it is now the Congress’ obligation and responsibility to intervene in the executive process”

Nancy Pelosi’s recent trip to Syria represents more than a partisan jab at the Bush Administration and its policies. It goes to the very heart of the constitutional foundation of our republic! While Harry Reid is waving the Constitution in our faces – citing the independent power of the legislative branch of government – he conveniently diminishes the constitutional authority of the Presidency with his statement that the Democrats represent the people, while the President DOES NOT! The Democrats, and particularly Pelosi and Reid, have apparently forgotten Constitution 101. The power to set Foreign Policy resides ONLY in the Presidency....