Free Republic

Ignoring “militia,” “arms” and “shall not infringe” the court sounded more like Chief Justice Oprah Winfrey The most confusing dependent clause in the history of the nation, at least as far as personal liberty goes, is the one that begins the 2nd Amendment to the Bill of Rights. The full text of the amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. To understand what the Founders meant it helps to understand how much the former colonists disliked a standing...

A panel of federal judges has ordered the Wisconsin Legislature to redraw legislative boundaries by November, rejecting calls from those challenging the maps to have the judges do the work. The three-judge panel released its decision in the redistricting case Friday. The state is expected to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. State attorneys had asked for the Republican-controlled Legislature to be allowed to draw the maps if the Supreme Court orders them redone. Democrats who sued over the boundaries wanted the judges to do that. …

Donald Trump is set to inherit an uncommon number of vacancies in the federal courts in addition to the open Supreme Court seat, giving the president-elect a monumental opportunity to reshape the judiciary after taking office. The estimated 103 judicial vacancies that President Obama is expected to hand over to Trump in the Jan. 20 transition of power is nearly double the 54 openings Obama found eight years ago following George W. Bush’s presidency. Confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees slowed to a crawl after Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. Obama White House officials blame Senate Republicans for...

The University of North Texas Dallas College of Law, the city’s first public institution of legal study, may soon be denied its accreditation by the American Bar Association, signaling trouble for other struggling third tier institutions. Read More

Even known criminals... I guess it’s a good news/bad news story. Despite the determination of the president to never deport an illegal alien, since they’re all prospective Democrat voters, there are still some people in the Department of Homeland Security who take their jobs seriously and issue hundreds of thousands of deportation orders each year. That’s the good news. The bad news? Even if Obama doesn’t stop them from doing their jobs, apparently there are plenty of federal judges who will. Some excellent reporting from FoxNews.com shows that over the past who years, more than 200,000 would-be deportations were halted...

A federal judge in Texas has put President Obama’s deportation amnesty on hold, while another judge in the District of Columbia is poised to rule any day now on whether the House can sue to stop parts of the administration’s Obamacare spending. Meanwhile, no fewer than six federal judges in the District are refereeing Mr. Obama’s broad pledges of transparency and how they stack up against the way his State Department operated under Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary. Indeed, much of Mr. Obama’s agenda — and his legacy — sits in the hands of federal judges across the country, who...

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrant women and children streamed across the U.S. border last year seeking asylum and protected status, claiming a "credible fear" of going home to the violence in Central America. President Obama addressed the crisis through increased border enforcement, more detention beds, more immigration judges and pressure on political leaders in their home countries. But a year later, new data obtained exclusively by Fox News shows the policy isn't stopping the influx. Not only are illegal immigrant women and children continuing to cross the border in large numbers, but the majority charged with crimes aren't even...

Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill once said, "All politics is local." That may have been true in Tip O'Neill's day, but some elections are decisively on national issues — and the Congressional elections this year are overwhelmingly national, just as the elections of 1860 were dominated by one national issue, namely slavery. In 1860, some abolitionists split the anti-slavery vote by running their own candidate — who had no chance of winning — instead of supporting Abraham Lincoln, who was not pure enough for some abolitionists. Lincoln got just 40 percent of the vote, though that turned out to...

Matt Bevin condemned the unprecedented power play by Harry Reid in the U.S. Senate today. When the Administration’s D.C. Circuit Court packing was challenged, Harry Reid and liberals in the Senate didn’t just bypass the rules, they eliminated them. Further, Mitch McConnell failed as a leader in this fight to stop the blatant disregard for the rules. Perhaps it is because this DC insider has a long history of voting for the appointment of liberal judges, or because he’s been also had a history of “filibuster flip-floppery.” Whatever the excuse, he is in good company. Meanwhile, Democrat candidate Alison Lundergran...

......Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.), one of just three Democrats who opposed his colleagues’ naked power grab, read those words on the Senate floor Thursday after Reid invoked the nuclear option. The rumpled Levin is not known for his oratory. But he is retiring next year and free to speak his mind — and his words were potent. “We need to change the rules, but to change it in the way we changed it today means there are no rules except as the majority wants them,” Levin said. “This precedent is going to be used, I fear, to change the rules...

"...As Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the change in the rules governing executive nominations and lower-court appointments, his opponents cried tyranny, though they also promised that when they took power they would go further, applying the new standard to Supreme Court nominations. In other words, tyranny—but we promise we'll give you more of it. The new rules fit with that kind of Senate. ...Whoever is ultimately at fault for the rule change—the Democrats who forced it or the Republicans who blocked the nominations requiring the new rules—the result is that the minority will have less power. That means elections will...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/11/21/senate-filibuster-nuclear-option-republicans-editorials-debates/3670451/

Senate Democrats triggered the “nuclear option” Thursday, using a shortcut to undercut the chamber’s filibuster rules and giving President Obama a clear path to stack the federal judiciary with ideological allies. In a tense 52-48 vote, Democrats overturned decades of precedent and reduced the number of votes needed to cut off the filibuster of a nominee from 60 to a simple majority — and in the process tinkering with a tool that has made the Senate unique. Republicans were hinting at retaliation and said the move further poisoned the atmosphere on Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat,...

....Reid clinched support for changing the rules at the weekly Tuesday Senate Democratic caucus lunch. .....Reid, without mentioning the colleague’s name, told his caucus that one of its senior members who had long opposed filibuster reform, recently had a change of mind and privately urged him to trigger the controversial tactic. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) then rose before the room full of Democrats and identified herself as the recent convert. “She got up right afterward and said, ‘He was talking about me,’” said a Democratic senator..... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not know if he had the votes...

Ok, I did it. I flipped over to PMSNBC during a commerical. I caught Al Sharpton showing a clip of Rush talking about how Obama can be a dictator due to the Senate rule changes. Sharpton has no problems with the rule changes and yelled (he always yells on his program), "No, Obama is just doing what was elected to do, and elected again to do."

November 21, 2013 Nuclear Fallout The Editors What is the filibuster? It is “a time-honored Senate procedure that prevents a bare majority of senators from running roughshod,” according to our friends on the New York Times editorial page. But that was in 2005, when Republicans frustrated over Democratic filibusters of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominations were (with National Review’s support) considering the so-called nuclear option, the overblown name of which suggests that it is rather more than a change in the Senate’s procedural rules. The Times denounced the Republicans’ “rank hypocrisy” in 2005, as did any number of Democrats....

Mark Levin opened his show with another epic monologue explaining that what’s really going on with this so-called nuclear option is that Obama wants to run this nation out of the Oval Office. Listen:

<p>We should have known this was coming. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has warned he would do something along these lines. He has proven, in this instance, at least, that he can be trusted to do what he said he would do.</p>

US President Barack Obama has supported a motion passed by Senate Democrats which weakens Republicans' ability to block White House nominations. The measure, known as the "nuclear option", curbs the power of the upper chamber's minority party to use a blocking tactic known as a filibuster. Mr Obama said the practice had gone too far, and was "not normal". Republicans vowed they would use the new rule against Democrats if they won back the Senate in the next election. Correspondents said Thursday's motion, which passed 52-48, will make American politics even more acrimonious. 'Power grab' At the White House on...

Mitch McConnell offered a one-liner after Harry Reid’s decision to launch the nuclear option that jabbed at both Reid’s reversal on the issue as well as the controversy surrounding Obamacare. “He may just as well have said if you like the rules of the Senate, you can keep them!” he gibed, to laughter from the audience. He pointed to Reid’s comments from just a few months ago, in which he stated that he would not bring forward the nuclear option in regard to President Obama’s nominees for the D.C. Circuit, saying the reversal reflects the Democrats’ recent reputation for making...