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Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara issued a 112-page opinion Thursday afternoon in which she claimed that the government's proposed judicial reforms would cause "serious damage to the system of checks and balances" between the three branches of government. Baharav-Miara submitted her position to Justice Minister Yariv Levin and the Knesset Constitution Committee. In her opinion, the attorney general wrote: "Each of the proposed reforms, and certainly their accumulation, will lead to serious damage to the system of checks and balances between the authorities. Each of the proposed reforms raises substantial difficulties, which go to the root of the principle of the...

Not satisfied with President Obama for appointing record numbers of gay, female and minority judges, liberal groups and labor unions are now pressuring the president to nominate more jurists who have backgrounds working for unions and public-interest organizations. The Alliance for Justice, a coalition of more than 100 liberal groups, is lobbying the White House to “broaden the bench” with more judicial nominees who represent what it calls “professional diversity” — judges who are more likely to be aligned with the coalition’s liberal agenda. “We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts...

Six South Florida couples who want to get married, but can't because they're gay, said Tuesday they're filing a lawsuit against the state seeking to overturn the Sunshine State's ban on same-sex marriage. Ten of the 12 plaintiffs, along with the gay rights group Equality Florida and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, announced the filing of their case at a news conference at the Lesbian and Gay Victor Center in Miami Beach.

A San Francisco couple is waiting to find out if the U.S. Supreme Court will take their case challenging the 1996 law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. Karen Golinski and Amy Cunninghis got married during the brief window in 2008 when gay and lesbian couples could tie the knot in California. Golinski immediately tried to add her wife to her employer-sponsored health care plan. But because she is married to another woman and works for the U.S. government, her otherwise routine request was denied...

A New Jersey court, Tuesday, took a step further in effectively tying Republican Governor Chris Christie’s hands on budget and education reform. Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne ruled that Christie’s budget cuts to school aid left public schools unable to provide a “thorough and efficient” education to New Jersey children. Now, the case goes to the state Supreme Court where those seven judges will decide whether to act on it or not. Doyne’s decision is based on a decades-old ruling in the case Abbott vs. Burke that says the New Jersey state government has to equalize funding for all public...

LOS ANGELES — A Mexico City man can proceed with a clergy abuse lawsuit filed in U.S. court against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, even though the alleged abuse occurred in Mexico and the priest and plaintiff are Mexican citizens, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton Tucker on Friday denied a motion from church attorneys who had sought dismissal of the case by arguing U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction. Michael Hennigan, an attorney for the archdiocese, said the case has no merit and would ultimately be dismissed. The unusual lawsuit was filed under...

The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday that illegal immigrants may continue to be eligible for in-state tuition rates at the state's colleges and universities rather than pay the higher rates charged to those who live out of state.In a ruling written by Justice Ming W. Chin, one of the panel's more conservative members, the state high court said a California law that guarantees the lower tuition for students who attend California high schools for at least three years and graduate does not conflict with a federal prohibition on giving illegal immigrants educational benefits based on residency.California is one of...

Jan Brewer is asking a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the federal lawsuit. | AP Photo Close By SCOTT WONG | 10/6/10 9:57 AM EDT Updated: 10/6/10 7:21 PM EDT In a new twist in the fight over Arizona’s immigration law, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday asked a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit to overturn the law. The move comes in response to a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling issued Monday, allowing nearly a dozen Latin American countries — Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador,...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court in San Francisco has reversed a judge's order that backers of Proposition 8, the state initiative that banned same-sex marriage, give their campaign strategy documents to opponents trying to overturn the measure. In a unanimous ruling today, the Ninth U.S. Circuit of Appeals tossed out the order that Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker issued in October against backers of Prop. 8, which state voters approved in November 2008. Walker had said lawyers for two same-sex couples and a gay-rights group were entitled to see internal memos and e-mails between Yes on 8...

Abstract: "The Irony of Populism: The Republican Shift and the Inevitability of American Aristocracy" analyzes the shift in the role of the Supreme Court following the movement towards a democratic Senate which culminated in the Seventeenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's shift is presented as the inevitable result of the system of mixed government that underlies the constitutional order, which orders American Government into democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical parts. While in the original conception of the constitution the Senate was the aristocratic part, the Senate would become part of the democratic part with the Seventeenth Amendment and prior procedural changes. Into...

To still the siren of the heart and defer to the head is to seldom be wrongly led. So many wrong things feel so right. "You know, I really told my mother-in-law off the other day and, boy, did it feel good." Of course, what has changed? Your mother-in-law is still the nag she always was. One change, though, is that now your family politics has descended into the abyss. This occurs to me when I hear my political soul mates talk of sitting on their hands this election cycle. I hear pundits and plebeians both make pronouncements about how...

Registered domestic partners will continue to get the same tax benefits as married couples who transfer property under a recent court ruling that upheld a 2003 decision granting that right. The ruling last week by the Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Jack Sapunor upheld the California Board of Equalization decision to extend to domestic partners a property tax exemption originally written for spouses. Under tax code dating back to 1979, people who inherit property after the death of their spouses are exempt from the category of "change in ownership," which would subject them to reassessment of the property's value. The...

For those interested, and following it, the printed version of, "The Stand at Klamath Falls", is now available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The subtitle reads, "How rural western farmers stood up against entrenched environmentalists and agencies of the Federal Government...and prevailed." You can find links to the Amazon and Barnes & Noble sites at the main site here: THE STAND AT KLAMATH FALLS I have also made the Adobe eBook version of the book available for free to all Freepers. Just go to the following site and download it direct...no cost, no obligation. FREE EBOOK DOWNLOAD I...

In 1972 Marylanders voted to adopt the state's Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which provides that "equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged or denied because of sex." Notably, the voters said "sex," not "sexual orientation." That distinction -- between gender and orientation -- was lost in Baltimore City Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock's 20-page opinion invalidating Maryland's law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman [front page, Jan. 21]. The ERA debates of the 1970s focused on ending legal distinctions between men and women, not on legal distinctions between heterosexuals and homosexuals....

When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered city officials to marry same-sex couples -- a defiant act two years ago that soon was emulated in Portland, Ore., and New Paltz, N.Y. -- gay rights supporters in Seattle demanded that their elected officials do the same. Instead, King County Executive Ron Sims placed an unusual phone call. "He said, 'I don't want to break the law. Will you please sue me to strike down the law?' " said Lisa M. Stone, executive director of the Northwest Women's Law Center. "That's not a call we get very often." The Washington State Supreme...

When California Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer ruled that California's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional on Monday the gay marriage supporters cheered. But their victory and good feelings will likely be short lived. This decision has fired up the political conservatives and the Evangelicals and they will organize and prepare for battle. The Massachusetts High Court and its four black robed tyrants probably believed they were doing supporters of gay marriage a favor when they allowed gay marriage in that state last year. They weren't.

Gay Homosexual 'marriage' opponents aim to recall judgeSACRAMENTO – Acknowledging that they hope to pressure the judiciary statewide, opponents of same-sex marriage are trying to recall a Sacramento Superior Court judge who upheld domestic partner laws this fall. California's attorney general, jurists across the state and gay rights activists have rushed to Judge Loren McMaster's defense. They are painting the campaign as an attack on an independent judiciary by disgruntled activists who have failed to slow the state trend toward expanding gay rights. The recall effort in Sacramento County comes as many California lawmakers attempt to gingerly balance public opposition...

BOSTON -- State Sen. Jarrett Barrios, who made an impassioned personal plea for gay marriage during last spring's legislative debate, has exchanged vows with his longtime partner, Doug Hattaway, a former spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. The couple of 10 years married Saturday at First Parish Church in Cambridge, in a wedding attended by an array of state and city officials. Gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts May 17 under a court decision issued last November. In February, during a marathon legislative debate about whether to seek a ban on gay marriage in Massachusetts, Barrios spoke of the barriers...

Again the anti-American culture mongers, the ACLU, have again intimidated another liberal city government into removing any sign of our heritage in Christianity. Complicit as well, is the city of Los Angeles, for bowing to the Marxist agenda of the ACLU, which they should have fought. Who is the ACLU to re-define the culture and heritage, of America, in any form??? Well, we know where they are getting their support, do we not?? If ever there was a case for MAJOR TORT REFORM, here is a shining example. The ability of a leftist fringe group like the ACLU, using the...

A basketball coach who admitted molesting one of his players could be out of prison by the end of this month under a state Court of Appeals decision released yesterday. Tony Giles, who coached girls basketball in the area for more than a decade, had been sentenced last August to nearly three-and-a-half years in prison, twice what prosecutors had requested. At sentencing, Judge Harry J. McCarthy said the lengthy, or "exceptional," sentence was justified because "It is clear that he groomed them for his own sexual desires ... and basically preyed upon [the victim] to satisfy his sexual appetite." But...