Free Republic

Jewsvote.org, whose purpose is to support Barack Obama's election, admits openly that Obama will appoint more Supreme Court Justices who will rewrite the Constitution without going to all the trouble of getting a supermajority vote in Congress and ratification by three quarters of the state. Squealer the Pig from George Orwell's Animal Farm comes to mind; he was the one who, while all the other animals were asleep, would get on a ladder and change the laws of Animal Farm. The Flash presentation at Jewsvote.org says openly, "Obama would appoint Supreme Court Justices like Breyer and Ginsberg." ...In the infamous...

THE former president Bill Clinton is to ride to Barack Obama’s rescue in the coming weeks by holding joint events with the Democratic presidential candidate. The Obama team hopes the “Bubba factor” - Clinton’s appeal to white, working-class voters - will revitalise its campaign and staunch defections to Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. A source close to the Obama campaign said: “Bill Clinton is on board. He’s making all the right moves and he and Barack Obama are going to campaign together.” The former president met Obama over lunch at his New York office last Thursday on the seventh...

<p>“Judges play an important role in deciding whether a chosen policy is consistent with our laws and the Constitution,” he said in remarks delivered before the American Enterprise Institute. “But it is our elected leaders who have the responsibility for making policy choices in the first instance.”</p>

I'd like some assistance understanding the Majority opinion in the Heller vs DC case, specifically how it will affect States, especially a state like NJ which doesn't have a RKBA provision in the State Constitution. Here is a relevant quote, but I don't know what it means without background:  On the question of the Second Amendment’s application to the States: “23 With respect to Cruikshank’s continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of...

In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court ruled that Capital Punishment for convicted child rapists was unconstitutional under the 8th Amendment tenant of Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Just Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority stating that the use of Capital Punishment was: “not proportional for the rape of a child.” My question to Justice Kennedy is then, what IS proportional punishment for the rape of an innocent child? A slap on the wrist? A short prison stay followed by your name in a database full of other like minded perverts? What is taken from these children can never be...

The Supreme Court is meeting to issue opinions and announce whether it has accepted any new cases. Major cases still undecided include the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., and whether people convicted of raping children can be given the death penalty. The court's term ends in late June.

Bearing Arms... Against Bears... Justice Kennedy thinks D.C. residents need protection — from grizzlies. Is the D.C. gun law constitutional? With all due respect to those who complain that the justices on the Supreme Court are too secretive, and for those who wish, perhaps, that David Souter was more like David "West Side Days Inn" Paterson, oral argument today in District of Columbia v. Heller offers up a bounty of alarming personal revelations. The least of which is that judges are completely political. But who knew that a case testing the scope of the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms"...

Riots inspired by the Newsweek report have broken out elsewhere in the region. But at least 17 people have died in Afghanistan, where the worst violence erupted in the town of Ghazni, south of Kabul.The magazine said that notes from Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemenis held at Guantánamo, blamed a guard stomping on a Koran for an incident in August 2003 when 23 detainees tried to kill themselves. One of the 13 told Mr. Falkoff, according to his notes, that another detainee had attempted suicide "after the guard took his Koran and threw it in the toilet." A...

The comment came during an interview with CNN this morning. I’m not going to rant about this. I will point out that Huckabee’s position doesn’t square up well with the Constitution’s amendment process — a process laid out precisely because it ought to be difficult to change the Constitution, but change is sometimes necessary, and it’s necessary because the Constitution isn’t a living, breathing document. If it were, as the proponents of that understanding tend to believe, you can find meanings in the penumbras of what’s actually written, meanings that might in fact be at odds with the plain understanding...

This morning I heard that one of the other candidates commented that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document.” Frankly, I assumed this came from Senator Clinton or Senator Obama. It is identical to what Al Gore said when he was running for President in 2000, when he said he would look for judges “who understand that our Constitution is a living, breathing document, that it was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.” Imagine my surprise when I learned that this statement actually came from my opponent,...

In March of this year, firearms owners everywhere celebrated the Parker decision, in which the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declared the D.C. gun law unconstitutional to the extent that the law prohibits all firearms possession. You can read our original analysis here: http://www.jpfo.org/alert20070312.htm . In May, the full D.C. Court refused to hear the case "en banc", paving the way for a Supreme Court decision. The Harvard Law Review recently published an article discussing the ramifications of the Parker decision, and what the Supreme Court might do if they hear the case. You...

Supreme Court Rules Against Student Who Displayed 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' Banner. Just Breaking

Top court bars regular taxpayers from challenging faith-based initiative funds Just Breaking

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this morning, retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor continued her pet campaign of persuading Americans to stop chafing under the yoke of judicial supremacy. Convinced, for some odd reason, that "in many, if not most, high schools today, civics education is no longer required," Justice O'Connor plans to lend her name to a website that would instruct young people that they do not really govern themselves—judges do: Indeed, when we got a Bill of Rights giving every citizen the right to due process of law, to freedom of speech, and freedom...

In a pointed dissent from decisions overturning death sentences for two Texas inmates, Roberts accused Stevens of engaging in revisionist history......... Roberts concluded his 16-page dissent on a sarcastic note, at odds with his amiable image. "Still, perhaps there is no reason to be unduly glum," Roberts said, taking direct aim at Stevens. "After all, today the author of a dissent issued in 1988 writes two majority opinions concluding that the views established in that dissent actually represented 'clearly established' federal law at that time. So there is hope yet for the views expressed in this dissent." "Encouraged by the...

Justice Thomas's Life A Tangle of Poverty, Privilege and Race By Kevin Merida and Michael A. FletcherWashington Post Staff WritersSunday, April 22, 2007; A01 Adapted from the book "Supreme Discomfort:The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas" by Kevin Meridaand Michael A. Fletcher, Doubleday, New York, © 2007. Drugs have been a persistent problem in Pin Point, Ga., a tiny rural settlement best known as the birthplace of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Neighborhood leaders tried everything to chase the scourge away -- a march, a warning sign along the main drag, even a pilgrimage by the local church congregation, which prayed...

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from Guantanamo detainees who want to challenge their five-year-long confinement in court, a victory for the Bush administration's legal strategy in its fight against terrorism. The victory may be only temporary, however. The high court twice previously has extended legal protections to prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. These individuals were seized as potential terrorists following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and only 10 have been charged with a crime. Despite the earlier rulings, none of the roughly 385 detainees has yet had a hearing in a civilian court challenging his...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday rejected appeals by American Indians to step into a decade-old lawsuit accusing the government of mismanaging more than $100 billion in oil, gas, timber and other royalties from their lands. The justices declined to disturb an appeals court ruling that removed U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth from the case. The appeals court said Lamberth, who held successive Democratic and Republican Interior Department secretaries in contempt of court, had lost his objectivity in the case.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who had been scheduled to die Tuesday for killing a woman in 1991 and scattering her remains across two states. Inmate Kenneth Biros ? and the family of the victim, Tami Engstrom ? had waited for the decision more than six hours past his 10 a.m. scheduled execution time at Ohio's death house. The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with two lower courts that delayed the execution so he could continue arguing that Ohio's method of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court...

ST. LOUIS, March 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In March 1856, a black slave named Dred Scott was judged by the US Supreme Court to be less than a person. Today his great, great granddaughter, Lynne Jackson, is pointing to the case as a beacon of hope that full human rights will be extended to all citizens, regardless of their age, size or degree of dependency. The March 6, 1857 Dred Scott decision ruled that any person descended from black Africans, whether slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the U.S. Constitution. Blacks, the ruling...

Book Excerpt: Jan Crawford Greenburg's New Book Takes an Unprecedented Look Into the History of the Supreme Court Jan. 22, 2007 — In her new book, "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court," ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg was allowed an unprecedented look at the highest court in the land, starting with the Rehnquist court and extending through the nominations of Samuel Alito and John Roberts. She also covers the failed nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers, which she says Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez tried to hard to prevent....

A voter can discern honesty by examining what a candidate believes is a "winning issue." Rudy Giuliani has flipped on abortion several times. Does that mean he is too liberal or too dishonest for a conservative to vote for him? In 1989, he informed the Conservative Party of New York that he was pro-life. That stance was reported in local newspapers, and he lost to Mayor David Dinkins. In 1993, he dropped the pro-life plank, asserting that he believed women had the right to abortion. The decision was nakedly political, and the New York Times published the paper trail to...

Clarence Thomas has borne some of the most vitriolic personal attacks in Supreme Court history. But the persistent stereotypes about his views on the law and subordinate role on the court are equally offensive -- and demonstrably false. An extensive documentary record shows that Justice Thomas has been a significant force in shaping the direction and decisions of the court for the past 15 years. That's not the standard storyline. Immediately upon his arrival at the court, Justice Thomas was savaged by court-watchers as Antonin Scalia's dutiful apprentice, blindly following his mentor's lead. It's a grossly inaccurate portrayal, imbued with...

This article in the Philadelphia Bulletin criticizes Mark Levin's column calling for a change in the Supreme Court. The author - a former Philadelphia police officer - makes some good points. He says the rules don't need to be changed as much as there is a need for conservatives to play differently. If you cannot connect to the link cut and paste to your browser: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=17624417&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that legal immigrants cannot be deported when convicted of relatively minor drug-possession offenses, a decision likely to affect thousands of people. By an 8-1 vote, the high court handed a setback to the Bush administration and ruled the immigrants cannot be deported for drug offenses that are felony crimes under some state laws, but less serious misdemeanors under federal law. A number of civil rights, immigrant advocacy and criminal defense groups, along with former U.S. government immigration lawyers, had urged the Supreme Court to reject the administration's position --snip-- The case before the court...

Until June, the (Seattle) school district's Web site declared that "cultural racism'' includes "emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology,'' "having a future time orientation'' (planning ahead) and "defining one form of English as standard.'' The site also asserted that only whites can be racists, and disparaged assimilation as the "giving up'' of one's culture. After this propaganda provoked outrage, the district, saying it needed to "provide more context to readers'' about "institutional racism,'' put up a page saying that the district's intention is to avoid "unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.'' The Supreme...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Cookies mailed to the U.S. Supreme Court last year contained enough rat poison to kill all nine justices, retired member Sandra Day O'Connor said at a conference last week. Barbara Joan March, a 60-year-old Connecticut woman, was sentenced last month to 15 years in prison. She sent 14 threatening letters in April 2005 -- each with a baked good or piece of candy laced with rat poison -- to a variety of federal officials: the nine Supreme Court justices; FBI Director Robert Mueller; his deputy; the chief of naval operations; the Air Force chief of staff and...

Liberals have been clucking non-stop since election night at the prospects of what Democrat victory means to their radical causes. In first recruiting, then funding, faith-friendly, conservative, and in a couple of instances even born-again candidates -- the Democrat party captured needed numbers to swipe leadership posts. The strategy proved extremely effective. Nancy Pelosi will bring San Fran values to the Beltway debate, and Kennedy, Kerry, and Clinton will clamor to be first in line. But how did she get there? In many instances - by taking advantage of terrible Republicans - and their own criminal wrong doing. But the...

With the important exception of Arizona, 2006 was an excellent election for those who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Amendments defining marriage as a man-woman union passed in seven out of eight states (Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Colorado, South Dakota, and Idaho) by an average vote of 61 percent. The narrow loss in Arizona was not because voters favored gay marriage, but because of a successful campaign against the measure’s ban on domestic partner benefits. The Arizona result might seem to indicate that voters favor domestic partner benefits, yet even here the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal grand jury has again indicted the self-proclaimed "Guru of Ganja" on charges that he grew hundreds of marijuana plants for a dispensary. Ed Rosenthal was convicted in 2003 for cultivating the plants for a city of Oakland medical marijuana program. An appeals court overturned the conviction in April, citing jury misconduct, but it upheld federal powers to charge marijuana growers. An indictment unsealed Thursday charges Rosenthal with 14 felonies, including conspiracy to manufacture marijuana at his Oakland warehouse and distribute it to a San Francisco pot club. He also faces four counts of money laundering...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — If Year 1 was the transition for the new Roberts court, Year 2 is likely to be the test. During the first term under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the justices were able to find common ground with some regularity by agreeing not to decide much. By the time the term ended in late June, the extent to which the members of the newly configured court were prepared to confront either precedent or one another remained unclear. Chances are high that the new term, which begins on Monday, will be different. The...

WASHINGTON, September 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Supreme Court plans to hear a suit to reverse the landmark abortion US case, Doe v. Bolton, from the case’s original plaintiff, who claims the facts of the original case were fraudulent and she was misrepresented by attorneys. The Court plans to consider the case on October 6, which with its companion case Roe v. Wade remains the chief obstacle to national and state laws restricting or prohibiting abortion. Both Doe and Roe were decided by the Court the same day, thereby overturning the nation’s abortion laws. However, it is the “health exception”...

The era of the free-masons. Between 1937 and 1958, an amazing succession of publicly Masonic Supreme Court justices were appointed to the Supreme Court. Collectively, they radicalized American politics. Since their ascension, it can truly be said that every major socio-political change in America has been brought about by judicial, rather than legislative, means. They utterly dominated the Supreme Court during the Warren, Stone, and Vinson courts (1941-1969.) At times, as many as eight of the nine justice were Masonic. The following is a listing of Masonic US Supreme Court justices appointed in the last 70 years. This is no...

What is it about Michael Chertoff, President Bush's unqualified, unsuccessful, unrepentant and yet still unreplaced Homeland Security Secretary? After (1) bungling the federal response to Hurricane Katrina by treating FEMA as an unwanted step-child in a massive Homeland Security Department focused on the War on Terror and (2) hamstringing former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown by officially putting him in charge and then tethering him to Baton Rouge when he needed to be in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coat, it was Mr. Chertoff who should have resigned, but did not. For an encore, Mr. Chertoff ran Homeland Security...

Just heard about this case on FOX... Very interesting case to discuss. In essence Mohawk Industries, a carpet manufacturer is being sued under RICO as a result of thier efforts to hire illegals. for more background visit http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2006/04/todays_argument_9.html

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham may have a future as a fiction writer. He's being accused of fabricating a Senate debate and sending it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which didn't think much of the work. The high court dismissed it. At issue is an account of an exchange that Sens. Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote last year to be inserted into the Congressional Record. It details what the two lawmakers purported was part of the Senate's debate over why terror detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should not be tried in civilian U.S. courts. The actual discussion Graham...

A PRESIDENT responds to an unprecedented war with unprecedented measures that test the limits of his constitutional authority. He suffers setbacks from hostile Supreme Court justices, a critical media and a divided Congress, all of which challenge his war powers. Liberal pundits and editorial pages would have you believe this describes President Bush after the Supreme Court last week rejected military commissions for trying terrorists. But it just as easily fits Abraham Lincoln when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves or Franklin D. Roosevelt when he made the United States the great "arsenal of democracy" in the lead-up...

1861. 1941. 2001. Our big wars -- and the war on terrorism ranks with the big ones -- have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give the president until mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution in order to win the war.During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus -- trashing the Bill of Rights or exercising necessary emergency executive power, depending on your point of view. But...

In a 5-3 decision on June 29th reversing the Court of Appeals (D.C. Circuit) in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court upheld the Geneva Conventions of 1949 as enforceable U.S. law. A plurality of the justices also relied on international law to strengthen another key finding in the case. They restored the critical partnership that international law has with federal law. The Supreme Court justices demonstrated how fundamental tenets of international law amplify American values and are deeply embedded in U.S. law. No other decision of the Supreme Court in recent years has so forthrightly reaffirmed American obligations under international...

The Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, invalidating for now the use of military commissions to try al Qaeda and associated detainees, may be a setback for U.S. policy in the war on terror. But it is a setback with a sterling silver lining. All eight of the justices participating in this case agreed that military commissions are a legitimate part of the American legal tradition that can, in appropriate circumstances, be used to try and punish individuals captured in the war on terror. Moreover, nothing in the decision suggests that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay must, or...

As the Supreme Court wraps up its session, there has been so far fairly little attention paid to the fact that this is when U.S. Supreme Court retirements are typically announced. All of the last 14 retirements were announced between May 14th and October 1st of their respective years; the last to retire outside of those dates was Charles Whittaker, whose doctor ordered him to retire on account of a worsening disability making it impossible for him to sit at his bench. Of those 14, 9 announced their retirement between June 12 and August 3rd, a space of only seven...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court reaffirmed Monday that police can enter homes in emergencies without knocking or announcing their presence. Justices said four Brigham City, Utah, police officers were justified in going inside a home in 2000 after peeking through a window and seeing a fight between a teenager and adults. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the unanimous court, said that officers had a reasonable basis for going inside to stop violence. "The role of a peace officer includes preventing violence and restoring order, not simply rendering first aid to casualties; an officer is not like a boxing (or...

WASHINGTON For the second time, the Supreme Court on Monday shied away from getting involved in a child custody fight between a San Diego woman and her former lesbian partner. The birth mother, known as Sharon S., is trying to prevent her former partner from adopting one of the two children the women were raising together. Sharon S. and her partner Annette F. separated after an incident of domestic violence that Sharon blames on Annette. The California Supreme Court rejected the attempt by Sharon to prevent the adoption, which she consented to by signing an adoption petition in August 1999....

WASHINGTON, May 21 (AP) — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said Sunday that he was seeking greater consensus on the Supreme Court, adding that more consensus would be likely if controversial issues could be decided on the "narrowest possible grounds." In a 15-minute address to Georgetown University law graduates, Chief Justice Roberts, 51, sketched a vision for leading a court sharply divided on issues like abortion, the death penalty and gay rights. "If it is not necessary to decide more to a case, then in my view it is necessary not to decide more to a case," Chief Justice...

WASHINGTON, May 2 — This is the week that the Supreme Court, done with its regular argument sessions, enters the stretch run. While it is too soon for substantive appraisals of the first year of the Roberts court, it is not too soon for stylistic observations about what is clearly, in the view of lawyers who have appeared there this term, a different court. "The tone has changed," Prof. Richard J. Lazarus of the Georgetown University Law Center, where he runs the Supreme Court Institute and teaches a course on Supreme Court advocacy, said on Tuesday. In common with every...

 The stars must have been aligned that January morning in 1955 when John G. Roberts Jr. was born in Buffalo, N.Y., because almost everything thereafter led him straight to the Supreme Court of the U.S. He graduated from Harvard College, then excelled at Harvard Law School as well as in his work at the U.S. Attorney General's office. It was there that our paths first crossed, for he helped prepare briefing papers for my confirmation hearings to the Supreme Court in 1981. He was later a successful litigator and partner at the Washington firm of Hogan & Hartson. He argued...

Supreme Court Rejects Jose Padilla Case By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer A divided Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Jose Padilla, held as an enemy combatant without traditional legal rights for more than three years, sidestepping a challenge to Bush administration wartime detention powers. Padilla was moved in January to Miami to face criminal charges, and the government argued that the appeal over his indefinite detention was now pointless. Three justices said the court should have agreed to take up the case anyway: Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. And three other court...

At last week's oral argument in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, probably the term's most important case, the outcome was all but decided when Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke. He strongly suggested by his questions that he would join the four moderate justices in rejecting the Bush administration's position on a key aspect of its war-on-terror powers. That would be enough, because these days, the law is pretty much what Justice Kennedy says it is. With Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, there is a new swing justice in town. If the court's two newest members, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito...

PRESUMABLY, IT WAS NOT quite the debate Justice Ginsburg had in mind. But then, it's not clear that what she really wanted was a debate. Maybe we should have one, anyway.At the beginning of February, Ruth Bader Ginsburg traveled to South Africa, where she gave a public address on "The Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication." She defended the Supreme Court's recent practice of taking guidance from foreign law when interpreting the U.S. Constitution. She acknowledged that the practice has been criticized. She expressed concern at bills before Congress condemning the practice.Justice Ginsburg has given this sort of...

FEBRUARY'S COMMENTARY has one of the most frightening essays of recent years, in which James Q. Wilson makes the case that Americans are polarized to an unprecedented extent; bitterly divided. Responsible conservatives should confront this problem and show the country how to solve it. Not to solve it is to invite catastrophe. Why does the burden fall on conservatives? Because they are running the federal government and it is their duty to lead.Wilson lists several causes of today's profound polarization. He mentions the divided, politicized press, one-issue pressure groups, the polarizing effects of higher education, and the rise of ideological...