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Johann Breyer, 89, shuffled unsteadily into a federal courtroom here on Wednesday morning, using a cane for support as he sunk slowly into a chair at the defense table. The retired toolmaker from what was then Czechoslovakia, who immigrated to the United States in 1952, was thin and pale and dressed in a green jail uniform after a night spent in lockup following his arrest at his home in Philadelphia. He looked confused at times, too, but when the judge asked him if he understood why the German authorities wanted to put him on trial there, he answered simply, “Yes.”...

It is that time of year where the SCOTUS makes its decisions for the term. Who knows what decisions will be handed down this week. I do not expect any gay marriage decisions until the final days of the term.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was hospitalized after a bicycle accident on Friday, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said. Breyer had surgery at a Washington hospital after fracturing his collarbone when he fell off his bike, spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg said in a statement, according to ABC News. The accident occurred near the Korean War Memorial. The surgery was successful and Breyer is expected to make a full recovery, Arberg said. According to the Associated Press, this is not Breyer’s first bike-related injury. The 74-year-old justice broke his collarbone in a 2011 accident, and he broke his ribs and punctured his lung...

BERLIN – Germany has launched a war crimes investigation against an 87-year-old Philadelphia man it accuses of serving as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp, The Associated Press has learned, following years of failed U.S. Justice Department efforts to have the man stripped of his American citizenship and deported. Johann "Hans" Breyer, a retired toolmaker, admits he was a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, but told the AP he was stationed outside the facility and had nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of some 1.5 million Jews and others behind the gates. The special German...

USA --(Ammoland.com)- An early May robbery at the Washington, D.C. home of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was the second time the jurist has been victimized since February, The Washington Post reported Thursday. While no one was home in this latest incident, the earlier one involved the jurist and his wife being confronted by a machete-wielding home invader at their Caribbean vacation house. “The robbery comes a month after Congress allocated nearly $1 million to hire 12 new Supreme Court police officers, according to The Hill,” Fox News related in a follow-up report. “Breyer had been among the group pushing...

Less than three months after he was robbed at his vacation home in the Caribbean, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has been targeted again -- this time by burglars at his Washington, D.C., house. Breyer's property was raided May 4, The Washington Post reported Thursday, with cutlery and candlesticks worth about $3,500 take

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer should soon retire. That would be the responsible thing for them to do. Both have served with distinction on the Supreme Court for a substantial period of time; Ginsburg for almost 18 years, Breyer for 17. Both are unlikely to be able to outlast a two-term Republican presidential administration, should one supersede the Obama administration following the 2012 election. What's more, both are, well, old: Ginsburg is now 78, the senior sitting justice. Breyer is 72.

I was listening to the tape-delayed Obamacare oral arguments in the car Tuesday when I first heard Justice Breyer's Commerce Clause diatribe, and I meant to post something when I got home. But after making dinner and putting the kids to bed, I forgot.Until today, that is, when I read Jeffrey Anderson's account of "Breyer's Missteps." I think Jeffrey is far too generous to Breyer. Here is a fuller transcript of Breyer's outburst: I look back into history, and I think if we look back into history we see sometimes Congress can create commerce out of nothing. That's the...

Two Justices Suggest Citizens United Ruling Should Be Reconsidered In Montana Case Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, center, and Stephen G. Breyer, second from right, suggested Friday that the court reconsider its controversial 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. By Robert Barnes February 17 Two Supreme Court justices suggested Friday that the court reconsider its controversial 2010 decision that allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. The suggestion came as the court blocked a Montana Supreme Court decision upholding a century-old ban on corporate campaign spending in the state. The Montana ruling seems...

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.

Partially lifting the veil that usually guards their actions, two Supreme Court justices on Wednesday painted the court as a bulwark for the Constitution and said some of today’s cynicism about government stems from the public’s scanty understanding of the founding document. One of the two, Justice Antonin Scalia, said there are too many federal judges and they are too heavily taken from the ranks of lawyers, which he said has watered down the quality of judges. He and Justice Stephen G. Breyer appeared before the SenateJudiciary Committee in an unusual hearing. The branches of government usually strive to keep...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has broken his right collarbone in a bicycle accident near his home in Cambridge, Mass. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said the 72-year-old justice took a spill over the weekend. The mishap was not preventing Breyer from speaking in New York City Tuesday evening. Breyer was not in court Tuesday morning, but Arberg said the absence was unrelated to the accident. In 1993, Breyer suffered more serious injuries, a punctured lung and broken ribs, when he was hit by a car while riding his bike across Harvard Square.

A few days ago, Pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp were thrown in jail for refusing to pay a $1.00 bond ordered by a Michigan judge who upheld a jury verdict that they would "likely breach the peace" if they were allowed to carry out a planned protest at a mosque. The judge appeared unfazed by the fact that the ruling was both a violation of the Court's Brandenburg test (which prohibits political advocacy only "where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"), and that it amounted...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is an ideologue, a judicial activist who rules by his own political and personal philosophy, rather than the rule of law and what our founding fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights more than 200 years ago. The left-leaning justice recently made remarks that further the suspicion that has been held for years - he doesn’t rule in regard to the Constitution, but rather a far-left political philosophy. On Sunday, Breyer, a Bill Clinton appointee, said the founding fathers never intended guns to go unregulated. Breyer said history stands with the...

It’s not just the Constitution that is a “living document,” as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer proved yesterday when discussing the Second Amendment. Breyer argued that James Madison only included the right to bear arms reluctantly, and only because the states wouldn’t sign the Constitution for fear of creating an overmighty central government. That’s why he voted against the majority in the Heller decision that overturned the federal handgun ban in Washington DC: Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court’s decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case...

It’s not just the Constitution that is a “living document,” as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer proved yesterday when discussing the Second Amendment.  Breyer argued that James Madison only included the right to bear arms reluctantly, and only because the states wouldn’t sign the Constitution for fear of creating an overmighty central government.  That’s why he voted against the majority in theHeller decision that overturned the federal handgun ban in Washington DC: Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court’s decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case “D.C. v. Heller.”Breyer...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Don't expect a Facebook friend request from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer any time soon. The 72-year-old justice said in a speech at Vanderbilt Law School on Tuesday that he was perplexed when he recently saw the film "The Social Network" about the origins of Facebook. But Breyer said the film illustrates his argument that modern conditions — like the development of the social-networking site — should inform justices when interpreting a Constitution written in the 18th century. "If I'm applying the First Amendment, I have to apply it to a world where there's an Internet, and...

LUBBOCK, Texas -- One of the most conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and one of the most liberal ones sparred Friday over capital punishment, the direct election of senators and various other constitutional questions during a rare public debate that highlighted their philosophical differences. Antonin Scalia, 74, the longest-serving current justice, appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and Stephen Breyer, 72, appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton, shared the stage in front of a crowd of thousands during a West Texas event organized by Texas Tech University Law School. They particularly clashed on the question of capital punishment. Scalia...

Alive or dead? Today, the 213th anniversary of the United States Constitution, that question looms large. This is especially so as the document is wielded like a sword, cleaving libertarian from progressive philosophies. Understanding the nature of the Constitution — neither underestimating its genius nor overstating its authority as inerrant — is critical. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said, “The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead.” That view has been embraced by many in the tea party movement. These opponents of President Barack Obama’s agend, who thrust the federal government into many areas of...

A Florida pastor who canceled plans for his congregation to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks had the right to follow through with his intentions, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Wednesday. In an interview Wednesday on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” the associate justice compared the act of burning Islam’s holy book to setting the American on flag on fire when asked whether the Rev. Terry Jones had the right to carry out the controversial plan. “We protect expression that we hate,” he said. “When you have a country of 300 million different people who think...