Free Republic

Senator John McCain appeared on This Week today from Afghanistan, but before getting onto matters of foreign policy, he weighed in on the Republican contest going on in the United States and continued to speak out forcefully on an issue that has been part of his political identity for over a decade: campaign finance reform. McCain has not been the biggest fan of Super PACs, and McCain today blasted the Supreme Court for its decision in the Citizens United case two years ago. When Jake Tapper asked McCain about how the GOP’s divisive contest may end up handing the election...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a federal law that restored copyright protection to works that had entered the public domain. By a 6-to-2 vote, the justices rejected arguments based on the First Amendment and the Constitution’s copyright clause, saying that the public domain was not “a category of constitutional significance” and that copyright protections might be expanded even if they did not create incentives for new works to be created. The case, Golan v. Holder, No. 10-545, considered a 1994 law enacted to carry out an international convention. The law applied mainly to works first published abroad...

The U.S. Department of State and the governments of Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom are on opposite sides of the issue of corporate liability in the Supreme Court case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. The nations filed an ...

WASHINGTON – Justice Stephen Breyer was robbed last week by a machete-wielding intruder at his vacation home in the West Indies, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Monday. The 73-year-old Breyer, wife Joanna and guests were confronted by the robber around 9 p.m. EST Thursday in the home Breyer owns on the Caribbean island of Nevis, spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. The intruder took about $1,000 in cash and no one was hurt, Arberg said.

It took five days for the news to finally get out because the leftist media didn’t know how to spin it, but last Thursday gun control extremist Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer his wife and guests were robbed at machete point inside their own home. The irony of this incident is that despite having some of the toughest and most draconian gun control laws in the Western Hemisphere since 2008 St. Kitts/Nevis has been on The State Department’s travel advisory list warning Americans who must go there not to walk alone at night. St. Kitts/Nevis a nation, whose gun control...

<p>Mod update: SANTORUM VOTES IN SENATE FOR Sotomayor WHILE NOT A SENATOR!!!</p> <p>Santorum joined every Democrat in the Senate and 24 other Republicans in voting yes. Sotomayor was confirmed by a vote of 67 to 29. It does not appear that Santorum talked publicly about his decision to vote in favor of Sotomayor’s confirmation. As many conservatives predicted, she was eventually nominated to the Supreme Court — but not until a decade later.</p>

The Supreme Court (has) scheduled 5 ½ hours of (Obama Care) oral argument for the week of March 26. The Court released its argument calendar for April, the final argument cycle of the term. It was almost certainly a clear-the-decks move by the Court, aimed at giving the justices more time to write their opinions before the end of June on the multiple complex issues raised by the challenges to the Affordable Care Act...

WASHINGTON — A second term for President Barack Obama would allow him to expand his replacement of Republican-appointed majorities with Democratic ones on the nation's appeals courts, the final stop for almost all challenged federal court rulings.

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Tells Egyptians: Look To The Constitutions of South Africa or Canada, Not To The U.S. Constitution

Montana Supreme Court rejects the Global Warming petition by Our Children’s Trustby Ed Berry In a precedent-making decision, the Montana Supreme Court dismissed yesterday the Petition for Original Jurisdiction by Our Children�s Trust saying unsettled factual issues related to limiting emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) must first be addressed in a lower court.The Montana Supreme Court followed the recommendations of the Montana Attorney General, and rejected the claim made by Our Children’s Trust in its May 4, 2011, Petition, that a “scientific consensus exists that increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) are affecting the Earth’s climate.” The ruling forces those...

Since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC on January 11, 2012, there has been a lot of discussion regarding whether the court did the right thing when it upheld the ministerial exception and denied jurisdiction in a case involving the termination of a ministerial employee. For reasons outlined below, I believe the Court made the right, albeit difficult, decision. This was the case of the parochial school teacher who in addition to teaching on secular subjects also performed religious functions, Chery Perich, who was fired for threatening to file a lawsuit under the Americans...

…and there was much (UNANIMOUS!) rejoicing: Justices say GPS tracker violated privacy rights: The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled that the police violated the Constitution when they placed a Global Positioning System tracking device on a suspect’s car and monitored its movements for 28 days. But the justices divided 5-to-4 on the rationale for the decision, with the majority saying that the problem was the placement of the device on private property. That ruling avoided many difficult questions, including how to treat information gathered from devices installed by the manufacturer and how to treat information held by third parties...

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a treaty did not exceed Congressional authority in the copyright clause of the Constitution. In a Jan. 18 ruling on Golan v. Holder, the court held 6-2 that a treaty seeking to equalize copyright protection on an international basis, called the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, did not exceed ...

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police violated the Constitution when they attached a Global Positioning System tracker to a suspect's vehicle without a valid search warrant, voting unanimously in one of the first major cases to test privacy rights in the digital era. The decision offered a glimpse of how the court may address the flood of privacy cases expected in coming years over issues such as cellphones, email and online documents. But the justices split 5-4 over the reasoning, suggesting that differences remain over how to apply age-old principles prohibiting "unreasonable searches." The minority pushed for a more...

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that police cannot put a GPS device on a suspect's car to track his movements without a warrant. The high court ruling was a defeat for the Obama administration. The high court ruled that placement of a device on a vehicle and using it to monitor the vehicle's movements was covered by U.S. constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of evidence. A majority of the court acknowledged that advancing technology, like cell phone tracking, gives the government unprecedented ability to collect, store, and analyze an enormous amount of information about our private lives....

Madison - State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman said Friday he would not step aside in three matters, including an attempt to reopen last year's decision that allowed a new law to take effect that curbed the power of public unions. Attorneys in the cases asked Gableman to remove himself because other parties in the cases were represented by Michael Best & Friedrich, which defended Gableman against an ethics allegation without billing him. Lawyers have said the legal work was likely worth tens of thousands of dollars. Now, the full court will have to decide whether to force Gableman from...

Much like one of his predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama has all but declared war on the United States Supreme Court. It will be remembered that in 1937 FDR was angry over the high court's refusal to put a stamp of approval on much of his New Deal agenda, and sought to bend the court to his will by adding new members to the existing court membership. Contemptuously calling the court's members a collection of "nine old men," FDR sought to "pack" the high court with up to six additional members more likely to do his bidding. The proposal...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 requires employers to report the cost of employer-sponsored group health plan coverage on Forms W-2. The Internal Revenue Service (the "IRS") issued interim guidance regarding this informational reporting requirement in Notice 2011-28. In response to comments on Notice 2011-28, the IRS, on January 3, 2012, released an advance copy of Notice 2012-9, which supersedes Notice 2011-28. In general, Notice 2012-9 retains much of the original guidance set forth in Notice 2011-28, but with certain notable changes and additions, including the following: • Clarifies that the requirement to report the cost of...

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is one of the most important Religion Clause cases of the last fifty years. ...There is a difference between a secular approach to governance and secularism, an ideology at odds with properly accommodating religious faith,churches,religious institutions and religious speakers. ...The Establishment Clause was intended to protect against the establishment of a National Church and a forced adherence to its doctrine by all citizens. It was more aptly understood as an Anti-Establishment Clause. Sadly, the interpretation of the Clause has devolved into an interpretation of a Church/State separation which is...

Wednesday the United States Supreme Court delivered a knockout blow to the White House in the cause of religious liberty. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a unanimous court swatted away the government’s claim that the Lutheran Church did not have the right to fire a “minister of religion” who, after six years of Lutheran religious training had been commissioned as a minister, upon election by her congregation. The fired minister -- who also taught secular subjects -- claimed discrimination in employment. The Obama administration, always looking for opportunities to undermine the bedrock of First Amendment religious liberty, eagerly agreed....

Embattled Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman has been hit with another ethics complaint — this time from the group that defended Milwaukee's mandatory sick leave ordinance. The group 9to5 Milwaukee alleges that Gableman violated state ethics laws when he accepted free legal services from Michael Best& Friedrich, a high-powered law firm with offices in Madison and Milwaukee. The group is asking the state Government Accountability Board to investigate the financial arrangement between Gableman and the firm. The complaint alleges the deal may violate state law prohibiting public officials from using their positions for financial gain or accepting anything of...

Petitioner Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School is a member congregation of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. The Synod classifies its school teachers into two categories: “called”and “lay.” “Called” teachers are regarded as having been called totheir vocation by God. To be eligible to be considered “called,” ateacher must complete certain academic requirements, including acourse of theological study. Once called, a teacher receives the formal title “Minister of Religion, Commissioned.” “Lay” teachers, by contrast, are not required to be trained by the Synod or even to be Lutheran. Although lay and called teachers at Hosanna-Tabor generally performed the same duties, lay...

As the election for the presidency starts to heat up, the discussion if Barack Obama is a natural born citizen is also heating up. The Supreme Court case Minor v Happersett is being used as the main case to declare Obama not natural born in growing state ballot challenges to his candidacy. What I have noticed in the heated arguments on many political forum boards lately is that Obama supporters are countering Minor v Happersett with the Indiana case Ankeny v Daniels. That case declares this: "Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance...

The Obama administration defended its healthcare overhaul law before the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, rejecting arguments by critics who warned that if the government can require people to have health insurance, it might next make them eat broccoli. Administration attorneys, in court filings and at a briefing, said Congress was within its constitutional powers in requiring Americans to buy insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty, a centerpiece of the law known as the individual mandate. The law's opponents have argued that Congress overstepped its authority and have raised the hypothetical question of whether Congress next could require that...

Justice Clarence Thomas correctly wrote in his concurrence to the 2007 abortion case of Gonzalez v. Carhart, "I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court’s abortion jurisprudence, including [Planned Parenthood] v. Casey and Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution." The American people need to realize how absolutely clear this really is. In fact, they need to recognize that doing nothing more than just looking to Supreme Court precedent alone is enough in and of itself to demonstrate this point all to well. Gonazelez v. Carhart, and the line of abortion cases leading to it, proves...

In the face of a growing controversy over whether two Supreme Court justices should disqualify themselves from the challenge to the 2010 health care overhaul law, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Saturday defended the court’s ethical standards. The chief justice’s comments came in his annual report on the state of the federal judiciary. In it, he made what amounted to a vigorous defense of Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan, who are facing calls to disqualify themselves from hearing the health care case, which will be argued over three days in late March. He did not, however, mention...

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003) the Supreme Court invalidated Texas’s sodomy law as violating the United States Constitution. The case involved “two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle.” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for a majority of the Court that “there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence. Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty...

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles— Federal judges have blocked strict new immigration laws adopted by conservative legislatures in half a dozen states, including a ruling last week that said South Carolina may not set up a "street-level dragnet" to stop and arrest illegal immigrants. But immigrant rights advocates who have cheered those rulings may soon find their luck has run out as those rulings head for the Supreme Court. Legal experts believe the high court's conservative majority will take a sharply different approach. So far, lower-court judges have mostly sided with the Obama administration, ruling, as U.S. District Judge...

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...

Delivered House floor remarks this week about section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act: I rise in opposition to Section 1021 of the underlying Conference Report (H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act). This section specifically affirms that the President has the authority to deny due process to any American it charges with “substantially supporting al Qaeda, the Taliban or any ‘associated forces’” – whatever that means. Would “substantial support” of an “associated force,” mean linking a web-site to a web-site that links to a web-site affiliated with al-Qaeda? We don’t know. The question is, “do we really want...

A federal statute requires that any “justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Federal law also requires that a judge recuse herself if the judge previously served in governmental employment “and in that capacity participated as a ... counsel, adviser, or material witness concerning the proceeding or has expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.” It is clear that there is plenty of evidence that Elena Kagan deciding the Obamacare case is a violation of the federal statutes above....

Considering the debate around President Barack Obama's health care plan and the lawsuits filed against it, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan's written answers to some of the 13 written questions relating to Obamacare that Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans submitted to her during her Supreme Court confirmation process were remarkably simple and straightforward. "No," she said. That was how she answered question No. 2, which inquired if she had ever been asked her opinion about the merits or underlying legal issues in Florida's lawsuit against Obamacare. That was also the way she answered question No. 3, which asked: "Have you ever been...

The Supreme Court agreed Dec. 12 to hear a challenge by the state of Arizona against a lower court's decision to overturn most of its controversial immigration law, known as SB 1070. In an order (.pdf) listing cases granted certiorari, the Court says Justice Elena Kagan recused herself, presumably due to earlier work on the matter while serving as Solicitor General. The last court to rule on the case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, issued on April 11, 2011 an injunction against the most controversial sections of the law, including a clause that requires local law enforcement to check...

Internal Justice Department email communications made just days before the House of Representatives passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act show that then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan was brought into the loop as DOJ began preparing to respond to an anticipated legal complaint that Mark Levin and the Landmark Legal Foundation were planning to file against the act if the House used a procedural rule to “deem” the bill passed even if members never directly voted on it. In another internal DOJ email communication that same week, Kagan alerted the chief of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel to the constitutional...

I'm concerned. Rush didn't pick up on this like I thought he would today. When I saw the DrudgeReport headline, I smiled, but then when Rush DID say the SCOTUS "ties", i.e., "4" to "4" revert back to the next highest court ruling, I recalled the Arizona Immigration case last ruling was not favorable ***AND*** I recall the last Obamacare ruling also was split, but VERY much in favor of the commerce clause, which will destroy the nation as we know it if it stands. Then I suspected Kagan is doing this on purpose, meaning, she will I predict recuse...

Kagan recuses herself The Supreme Court announced Monday it will take the case of Arizona’s tough immigration crackdown law, adding yet another contentious clash between the Obama administration and the states to its docket. [ * * * ] In its notice, the court said Justice Elena Kagan had recused herself from the decision to take the case. She was the administration’s solicitor general before joining the court in August 2010.

The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee said Thursday that the Obama administration is fueling speculation about Supreme CourtJustice Elena Kagan’s impartiality because it won’t turn over documents detailing her role in crafting the legal strategy to defend the health care law while she was serving in the administration. Rep. Lamar Smith, the committee chairman, told Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that emails show Justice Kagan took an interest in the case in January 2010, when she was solicitor general, and he demanded to know what role she played between then and March 2010, when Mr. Obama tapped...

Police officers in Los Angeles stormed Augusta Millender’s home early one morning in 2003. They were looking for Ms. Millender’s foster son, Jerry Bowen, and for a shotgun he had used in a domestic assault. They found neither. But they did seize a gun owned by Ms. Millender, who was 73. The gun was legal, and she said she kept it for self-defense. Scalia, “If he’s so stupid that he executes a warrant that no reasonable officer could think was correct,” the justice said of a hypothetical officer, “he’s in the pot, right?” Both the National Rifle Association and the...

Our Dictator May Be In Deep Trouble...with Chief Justice John Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court. According to sources who watch the inner workings of the federal government, a smack-down of Barack Obama by the U.S. Supreme Court may be inevitable. Ever since Obama assumed the office of President, critics have hammered him on a number of Constitutional issues. Critics have complained that much, if not all of Obama's major initiatives run headlong into Constitutional roadblocks on the power of the federal government. Obama certainly did not help himself in the eyes of the Court when he used the venue of the...

Newt Gingrich has decided that the best way to battle the growing plague of left-wing judicial activism is to simply remove offending judges from the bench. He favors the passage of legislation which would allow Congress to eliminate federal judgeships thereby permitting the President to fill newly created voids with what in Gingrich’s view should be properly schooled jurists ready to make decisions based upon Constitutional content rather than agenda driven, personal preference. In Federalist Papers #78, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the judiciary would clearly represent the weakest branch of government with “…no influence over either the sword or the...

With the resolution of the Heller and McDonald cases the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms has been secured as a legal right for every citizen of the United States. Well, apparently not EVERY citizen. Stephen Dearth is a natural born citizen of the United States who chooses to make his primary residence in Canada, making him one of the millions of U.S. Citizens who do not have a permanent residence in the United States. That minor wrinkle means that under U.S. law he cannot purchase a firearm except for “sporting purposes” . . . As the Heller...

It is encouraging news that the Supreme Court has decided to consider the constitutionality of key provisions of Obamacare. By the end of next summer we’ll know if the federal government can force individuals to buy health insurance and if they can force states to comply with a newly expanded Medicaid program. Professor Walter Russell Mead blogs that in the debates to ratify the Constitution, it was considered a weakness “that important laws could be passed and would operate for some time before people knew whether they were legal…” He points out that there are more clever ways that forced...

The call for Congress to hold hearings on the need for Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from the ObamaCare case now on the docket of the Supreme Court has exploded.  The number of organizations signing on to a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith has more than tripled in just 48 hours since our original blog post calling for her to stand aside.  Following is a link to the final draft of the letter signed by the leaders of 85 citizens organizations and related other articles and documents. Leader's to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith Judicial Action Group's...

We live in a time when the American people’s contempt for the institution of the federal government is both broad and well-earned. But as bad as Congress, the federal bureaucracy and this administration are — all three are as out of touch as King George II and Lord North — there is one shining light: The Supreme Court. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has rolled up its sleeves and taken on the tough cases: Citizens United, Heller and now Obamacare. For all intents and purposes, the Heller case was the first Second Amendment case in American history...

This morning, as expected, the Supreme Court agreed to take up Obamacare. What was unexpected — and unprecedented in modern times — is that it set aside five-and-a-half hours for the argument. Here are the issues the Court will decide: 1.Whether Congress has the power to enact the individual mandate. – 2 hours 2.Whether the challenge to the individual mandate is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act. – 1 hour 3.Whether and to what extent the individual mandate, if unconstitutional, is severable from the rest of the Act. – 90 minutes 4.Whether the new conditions on all federal Medicaid funding (expanding...

Supreme Court to Hear Main Lawsuit Challenging Obamacare Washington, DC -- The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the main lawsuit seeking to challenge the Obamacare law that pro-life groups opposed because it allowed taxpayer funding of abortions, failed to protect conscience rights and sparks rationing concerns. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/11/14/supreme-court-to-hear-main-lawsuit-challenging-obamacare/

WASHINGTON – Citizens traveling public highways should have no expectation of privacy just because police are tracking their movements through GPS rather than in person, the U.S. government argued Tuesday in a case before the Supreme Court that pits the interest of law enforcement against individual privacy rights. The dispute springs from a situation in which police affixed a GPS tracking device to a suspect's car without a proper warrant. It monitored the suspect's movements for several weeks, noting where his vehicle went and how long it stayed at each location. While much of the data was ultimately excluded as...

The Justices of the Supreme Court will meet soon to offer preliminary votes in United States v. Jones, the GPS case. We don’t know what the voting alignment will look like: The votes are hard to predict. But it seems to me that there’s a substantial chance that the Court’s opinions might face a puzzling problem of figuring out which voting rule applies. I wanted to explain a bit about why I think that, and why it might matter. Here’s the problem, at least as I see it right now. There are two issues in the Jones case, and they...

FAIRFAX, Va. --(Ammoland.com)- In case any reader of our weekly Grassroots Alert has not decided how to vote in the 2012 presidential election, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and First Lady Michelle Obama have volunteered to help him make up his mind. Recently, Time magazine asked Stevens what he would fix about the American judicial system. Stevens’ response: “I would make all my dissents into majority opinions.” Fair enough, since he’s entitled to think he is right, even when a majority of his former colleagues and a larger majority of the American citizenry disagree. But then Time asked...

O'Connor pleased with exhibit of her lifeIt's been 30 years since Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. An exhibit about her life opens this week at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth. O'Connor is an El Paso native who spent summers on her family's Arizona ranch that initially didn't have electricity or water. She said Wednesday she was pleased with the exhibit. She said her time on the ranch taught her responsibility and how to solve problems on her