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An Iowa man was sentenced to 16 years in prison for setting an LGBTQ flag on fire. Adolfo Martinez, 30, stole a rainbow-colored pride banner that was hanging from the side of a church and lit it on fire in June of this year. The County Attorney said “hate crimes” were added to the charges because Martinez is suspected of criminal mischief against someone’s property because of “what it represents as far as sexual orientation.” This is outrageous! Murderers and rapists serve less time! The Des Moines Register reported: An Ames man was sentenced Wednesday to about 16 years in...

The Supreme Court is struggling with precedent — and that could have big implications for future cases, with liberals on the side of holding the line and conservatives on the other. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down its remaining decisions. Over the past two weeks alone, it will have decided some 24 major cases. Nina Totenberg, NPR's legal affairs correspondent, has been burning the midnight oil to cover all this. She joins us now. Welcome to the studio, Nina. NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Thanks. CORNISH: Let's just start with today. What did the court...

A federal judge in Honolulu has expanded the Trump administration’s list of family relationships needed by people seeking new visas from six mostly Muslim countries to avoid a travel ban. U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson ruled today that the travel ban exemptions should include grandparents, grandchildren, uncles, aunts and other relatives. President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which was partially allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court, did not include grandparents, grandchildren and other relations considered “bona-fide” family relationships to be granted an exemption to the ban. The administration said a bona fide relationship would be a parent, spouse, fiance, son,...

The Associated Press @AP BREAKING: Supreme Court rejects Kentucky gay marriage case, clerk must issue licenses despite religion

The Supreme Court has struck down state bans on gay marriage and has ruled 5-4 same sex marriage is a constitutional right. Same sex couples can now marry in all 50 states and states. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion and Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the dissent, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas. From the opinion: Held: The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State. (4) The...

muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard he went to an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless. Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law. ~snip~ After his arrest, he told a psychologist that he did not know having sex with a 13-year-old was against the law. The court heard he found it was illegal only when he was informed by...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-12/ginsburg-says-u-s-ready-to-accept-ruling-approving-gay-marriage-i61z6gq2

Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor flatly rejected on Monday the view that any U.S. Supreme Court justices practice judicial activism. Speaking Monday to a standing-room only event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., the 60-year-old justice was asked to give her reaction to those who complain about judicial activism on the one hand, yet want the Court to declare laws unconstitutional on the other. "I think most judges have a definition of judicial activism," Sotomayor said. "It’s a ruling you don’t like."Sotomayor’s assertion that no judicial activism exists — an article of faith...

In November of 1996 First Things hosted a symposium titled “The Judicial Usurpation of Politics” in which contributors discussed the threat to American democracy posed by the Supreme Court instated imposition of abortion on America. Nothing rivals the sheer volume of innocent human beings killed by abortion and yet First Things saw fit to focus not on the babies themselves or the mothers and fathers, but on the threat to democracy and the American experiment posed by the judicial over-reach that legalized abortion.The legalization of same-sex “marriage” does not bring with it the innocent blood which cries to heaven,...

A judge in South Dakota ruled the state constitution's definition of marriage is unconstitutional because it does not allow same-sex couples to marry. In a decision rendered Monday, district court judge Karen E. Schreier ruled the South Dakota's Amendment C unconstitutional, but put a stay on her decision pending appeal. Schreier drew a parallel to the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which declared interracial marriage bans unlawful. "In Loving, the Supreme Court addressed a traditionally accepted definition of marriage that prohibited Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving from marrying," wrote Schreier. "Plaintiffs have a fundamental right to marry. South Dakota...

EL PASO, Texas (AP) - Abortion-rights lawyers are predicting "a showdown" at the U.S. Supreme Court after federal appellate judges allowed full implementation of a law that has closed more than 80 percent of Texas' abortion clinics. As of Friday, abortion services for many Texas women required a round trip of more than 200 miles - or a border-crossing into Mexico or New Mexico. Operators of some of the affected clinics and their lawyers from the Center for Reproductive Rights vowed to appeal Thursday's decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that allows Texas to...

Editor's Note: Column was coauthored by Ken Klukowski. Justice John Paul Stevens doesn’t believe anyone has the right to own a gun, and admits that you would need to rewrite the Constitution to make his preference a legal reality. And that’s exactly what he thinks should happen. Throughout his 35-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens was a lion of the Legal Left. He was an unapologetic advocate of the “Living Constitution”— that judges should continually reinterpret the words of the Constitution in accordance with what they, and other elite members of society, decide is the evolving enlightenment of...

Link only: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/07/supreme-court-gay-lesbian-marriage-photographer/7304157/

Now that’s bad judgment. A Queens father-to-be is lucky to be alive after a judge allegedly ignored his pleas to be excused from a jury pool when he complained about searing pains in his chest, court documents reveal. Nyima Dorjee, 39, of Woodside was sitting in a jury pool on a gun possession trial last week when he told a prosecutor that he was having chest pains and difficulty breathing, according to a report filed by the officer. But when the court officer informed Justice Joel Blumenfeld of the emergency, the judge insisted to him and his supervisor that the...