Free Republic

In the Progressive utopia championed by Woodrow Wilson and his successors, government will iron out the imperfections in human affairs through the use of regulatory agencies run by non-political experts. Such people, being experts and completely non-political, would pose no reason for concern about abuse of power, because of course they would never seek go outside their proper regulatory portfolio to use their authority to stamp out the freedoms and speech of their political opponents on important topics of the day. In the real world government regulators since the creation of their agencies have inevitably used their powers to disadvantage...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected efforts by four Democratic-leaning U.S. states to overturn former Republican President Donald Trump's decision to limit federal deductions on state and local taxes. In a 3-0 decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the federal government had authority to impose a $10,000 cap on the state and local taxes that households' itemizing deductions could write off their federal returns. The decision is a defeat for New York, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey, which challenged the so-called SALT cap implemented as part of a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul in 2017....

In a ruling Monday morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied President Donald Trump’s request for a preliminary injunction protecting him from a grand jury subpoena for his tax returns. The court in an opinion written by Chief Judge Robert Katzmann rejected the notion that the president is immune from all state criminal processes...

A federal appellate court has ordered an army specialist and her attorney to show cause why they should not be sanctioned for bringing a frivolous suit accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. In Gallop v. Cheney, 10-1241, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit yesterday affirmed the dismissal of the case by Southern District Judge Denny Chin, and gave April Gallop and her attorney, William W. Veale, 30 days to...