Free Republic

Two days after the Supreme Court affirmed gay marriage as a fundamental right, New York City’s pride parade began, appropriately enough, with a wedding. Presiding over the same-sex ceremony, which took place in front of the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on Sunday afternoon, was New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, according to Newsday. Cuomo, who noted he was officiating his first wedding ceremony, wed Human Rights Campaign staffer David Contreras Turley, 36, and UBS financial analyst Peter Thiede, 35, while a crowd of onlookers cheered and The Beatles’ “Love Is All You Need” played, Newsday reported. The Stonewall...

RUSH: There wouldn't be social issues if there weren't angst and misery and unhappiness. And make no mistake: That's what's driving all this, folks. You may think this is all political, but it's angst and misery. It's unhappiness. It's people seeking a mysterious... You can read it in Kennedy Supreme Court ruling. You know that Supreme Court decision that Kennedy wrote is basically all about self-esteem and dignity. That's why Scalia openly wrote, he would be embarrassed to sign his name to a majority opinion such as that written by Anthony Kennedy on the gay marriage business. Esteem and dignity...

It is my deepest wish that none of the following should ever happen, but logic says it will. The Supreme Court has taken its place at the head of the charge to destroy the Roman Catholic Church in America. Under all the impassioned arguments about “love winning out” the leering minions of hate and lies have won a major victory. Now they can gather their forces to attack their real enemy, the one that has always been the unspoken target: The Roman Catholic Church in America. For all its faults and self-inflicted damage, the Catholic Church in America is still...

A divided Supreme Court on Monday dealt a significant blow to the Obama administration's environmental agenda, invalidating a rule that would limit the release of mercury and other pollutants from power plants. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency did not appropriately consider the costs to utility companies when handing down the rule under the Clean Air Act. "We hold that EPA interpreted unreasonably when it deemed cost irrelevant to the decision to regulate power plants," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the court's majority opinion. Scalia was joined by the four conservative justices in his...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia should resign.That's the thought I had while reading his acid dissents in the two headline-grabbing Supreme Court cases last week, one affirming the IRS's interpretation of the Affordable Care Act, and the other discovering a right to same-sex marriage in the 14th Amendment.Scalia's considered view is that the court has usurped power from Congress in the health care law, and from the American people themselves in the marriage case.Ultimately, on the health care case, John Roberts agreed with most of the claims of the plaintiffs, but decided to rewrite the disputed clause because, as he...

Lots of Republican candidates are really up in arms about the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling, and some are trying to fight back strongly against it. Mike Huckabee said states should outright reject it, while Ted Cruz proposed Supreme Court elections to push back against “judicial tyranny.” But on Face the Nation today, likely GOP candidate and Ohio Governor John Kasich told John Dickerson, “I believe in traditional marriage, but the Supreme Court has ruled, it’s the law of the land, and we’ll abide by it.” He implored people to just “take a deep breath,” and said there are plenty...

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday against three death row inmates who had sought to bar the use of an execution drug they said risked causing excruciating pain. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more conservative justices. The drug, the sedative midazolam, played a part in three long and apparently painful executions last year. It was used in an effort to render inmates unconscious before they were injected with other, severely painful drugs. Four condemned inmates in Oklahoma challenged the use of the drug, saying it...

AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Sunday told county clerks in the Lone Star State their religious beliefs could enable them to flout the U.S. Supreme Court's historic ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, while adding some may face litigation for refusing to issue licenses to gay couples. "It is important to note that any clerk who wishes to defend their religious objections and who chooses not to issue licenses may well face litigation and/or a fine," Paxton said in a statement accompanying an opinion released Sunday. "But, numerous lawyers stand ready to assist clerks defending their religious beliefs, in...

Like fascists, Communists, and boy-band producers, the American Left has always believed it could fine-tune human nature if it could only “get ’em while they’re young.” That’s why the Left works so hard to impose its will on schools and universities. As John Dewey, America’s high priest of educational progressivism, explained in 1897, the student must “emerge from his original narrowness” in order “to conceive of himself” as a cog in the larger social order. Last week’s gay-marriage ruling will yield a new wave of liberal efforts to ensure that schools do their part to combat wrong-headed “narrowness.” Justice Anthony...

In his recent podcast interview with comedian Marc Maron, President Obama reflected on the passing of time. His daughters are growing older and have less time to hang with their dad. “I’ve got to start thinking, well, what’s going to replace that fun,” he said. Good question, and it goes for the rest of Obama’s life as well. In eighteen months he will be an ex-president, term-limited and out of a job. Just fifty-five, the former leader of the free world will still be in the prime of life. Obama hasn’t said what he has in mind for his next...

".............................Between a rock and a hard place, Roberts argued that Congress surely never meant to cut out subsidies in states without their own exchanges, because “it would destabilize the individual insurance market in any State with a Federal Exchange, and likely create the very ‘death spirals’ that Congress designed the Act to avoid.”I sympathize, but Roberts has to know he’s wrong. Jonathan Gruber,an MIT economist who advised the White House, explained during a 2012 speech that the federal law limited subsidies to enrollees of state exchanges in order to “squeeze” states to act. Quoth Gruber,“If you’re a state and you...

Now that same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, religious conservatives are focusing on preserving their right to object. Their concerns are for the thousands of faith-based charities, colleges and hospitals that want to hire, fire, serve and set policy according to their religious beliefs, notably that gay relationships are morally wrong. The Republican Party’s 2016 presidential candidates are already campaigning on the issue. And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is urging President Barack Obama and the nation’s governors “to join me in reassuring millions of Americans that the government will not force them to participate in activities that violate their deeply held...

In controversial cases, is the role of jurist to inflame controversy, or quell it? In Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case which found race-based marriage bans unconstitutional, Chief Justice Earl Warren built a 9-0 consensus—just as he’d done years earlier in Brown vs. Board of Education. He knew that a country divided by race ought to be united, if possible, by a Supreme Court mindful of fundamental values—even if the Court was, as the constitution requires, overturning the will of the majority. The four dissents in the landmark case on same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges, one by each of the...

Texas’ conservative Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton calls the Supreme Court decision giving same-sex couples the right to marry a “lawless ruling” and says state workers can cite their religious objections in denying marriage licenses. He warned in a statement Sunday that any clerk, justice of the peace or other administrator who declines to issue a license to a same-sex couple could face litigation or a fine. But in the nonbinding legal opinion, Paxton says “numerous lawyers” stand ready to defend, free of charge, any public official refusing to grant one. …

With the high court’s latest ruling on same-sex marriages, some contend the decision could lead to increased gun rights, specifically national CCW reciprocity, by using the same argument. Friday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and recognize those sanctioned by other states. “No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the landmark decision that arguably made same sex marriage a reality in the 13 remaining states that continued to ban the practice. With similar...

Remember when Barney Frank insisted in 2003 that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in a crisis,” and “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing?”As chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, former Rep. Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, helped defeat Bush administration proposals to rein in the two federal loan giants. The housing market crashed in 2008 on thousands of bad subprime home loans, triggering the Great Recession, from which this nation still has not recovered.Well, it’s time to roll the dice again. According to the 5-4 majority opinion at...

The U.S. Supreme Court must think God asleep. In its most odious decision since Roe v. Wade, which over the past four decades has resulted in the slaughter of more than 57 million unborn children, the High Court on Friday declared homosexual marriage a Constitutional right. In a majority opinion at odds with his putative Catholic faith, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggests that those who oppose “marriage equality” just don’t get where lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders are coming from. “It would misunderstand these men and women,” wrote Kennedy, “to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that...

Well, that was predictable. On Friday, with its majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, five judicial imperialists perched high atop the U.S. Supreme Court bench called the Supreme Being a liar. They presumed to invent, out of thin air and through judicial fiat, a “constitutional right” to sin-based “gay marriage.” (Father God, as you exact Your perfect justice on America, please have mercy upon Your faithful.) The horrific nature of this illegitimate decision cannot be overstated. It makes a mockery of the institution of marriage, something of which God alone has the authority to design and define. It represents a...

Supreme Court cases, former cover boys for Wheaties’ cereal boxes, faux ethnic origins—have you noticed? We live in the day of the unreal. The misdirected. The re-channelled. We do it all based on emotion. As most of the social media denunciations of Christians this weekend chastised them for ignoring (in their words) the command of God to “love” people, the very same youthful, ignorant, and misinformed forgot all about the portions of the Bible that call us to sacrifice, obedience, and trust. The new hashtag that is being championed around the twitterverse, cybersphere, and interwebs is #LoveWins. The uninformed—including...

On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States declared: “I now pronounce same-sex couples free to marry.” In another tortured five-four ruling, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy (a wavering California Republican who has deliberately placed himself as a swing justice), the court invalidated same-sex marriage bans nationwide, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the states from discriminating against individuals who live out homosexual conduct, and want to culminate their behaviors with state-sponsored marriage. Civil unions were not good enough, apparently. At least, that’s what Ellen DeGeneres told US Senator (then Presidential candidate) John McCain. So, gay marriage has been...