Free Republic

n a 6-3 decision reflecting the sharp partisan divide on the nation’s highest court, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s century old gun law against conceal carry on Thursday. New Yorkers and residents of a handful of other states and Washington D.C.—which had more strictly regulated who can have a conceal-carry permit—must now accept the type of laws popular in Texas and other red states. The decision was hardly a surprise to court watchers, but the opinion is nonetheless troubling on many levels. The fact that this opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, an originalist so rigid in...

The U.S. Constitution is the sacred text of American government and civic life. But it's time to face facts: The document, written in 1787, isn't working. The signs are all around us. Just 38 percent of Americans in a recent Gallup poll expressed either a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the presidency, down from 48 percent in 2001. Congress, never high in the public's estimation to begin with, fell from 26 percent to a mere 12 percent. The Supreme Court has also taken a hit, down from 50 percent to 36 percent during the same period....

The movie is free at the link until June 2.

Conservative Legal Circles Buzz With Rumor that Justice Gorsuch Will Defect to the Liberals and Rule That Transgenders Are Women For Title VII Posted by: Ace at 05:04 PM The debate is whether Title VII's protections of discrimination "because of... sex" applies to sexual orientation and "gender" expression. Does a man who claims to be a transwoman actually get protections based on "sex" when his sex is male? The liberals are solid for answering "yes," of course. And chatter in conservative legal circles is that Justice Gorsuch will join the liberals. There is a rumor rapidly circulating in legal conservative circles that Gorsuch...

President Trump is nominating federal judges, and Supreme Court Justices such as Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who claim to be committed to “originalism.” This approach to constitutional law requires that the Constitution be interpreted to mean today what the text was intended or understood to mean at the time it was written. But originalism conflicts sharply with American reality and American ideals. Years ago, Frank Sinatra sang a song about what America meant to him. The last line was “But especially the people, that’s America to me.” If that’s what America is, then originalism is unamerican. Because there is no place...

Once again partisanship is rearing its disgusting head at the pre-confirmation debate over Brett Kavanaugh.  Long gone are the days when a judge’s qualifications were the only factors considered.  After all, Antonin Gregory Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 1986, and in 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg had only three dissenting votes. A play about Scalia, The Originalist, shows how Americans should be willing to accept a viewpoint other than their own, something the Senate is unwilling to do. It is now playing in New York, and is also available to stream.  With all the divisiveness going on...

Has any Freeper been to see "The Originalist?" If so, what is your recommendation? Is it fair to Scalia?

Calling 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch a man whose “qualifications are beyond dispute” with “an extraordinary resume as good as it gets,” President Donald Trump announced Gorsuch his pick Tuesday night to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.Gorsuch (shown) promised that, if confirmed, he would be a “faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country.” Calling the U.S. Constitution the “greatest charter of human liberties” ever conceived on Earth, he told a prime time national television audience that he saw the judge’s role to apply that Constitution to cases...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer expressed doubts Tuesday night about Judge Neil Gorsuch, saying President Donald Trump's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court will likely take an ideological approach to the job. "Judge Gorsuch has repeatedly sided with corporations over working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women's rights, and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong, independent Justice on the Court," Schumer said after Trump's announcement.

Now that the election has settled the question of who will appoint the next Supreme Court justice, we have spent a considerable amount of time analyzing who might get Donald Trump’s appointment. Perhaps a better way to look at that question will be to recall the context in which it gets made. Earlier this week, Justice Samuel Alito laid out the potential agenda for a court in which an originalist replaces the late Antonin Scalia — and reminded the Federalist Society of the bullet conservatives dodged in the election: Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday laid out a possible agenda for...

People are entitled to their own opinions about what the definition ought to be. But the kind of judge Cruz says he admires and would appoint to the Supreme Court is an "originalist," one who claims to be bound by the narrowly historical meaning of the Constitution's terms at the time of their adoption. To his kind of judge, Cruz ironically wouldn't be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and '90s required that someone actually be born on US soil to be a "natural born" citizen. Even having two US parents wouldn't suffice. And having just...

After days of coyly raising questions about Ted Cruz's eligibility to be president, given that he was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father, Donald Trump let his audience weigh in at a rally Sunday afternoon. "Is he a natural-born citizen?" the Republican White House hopeful asked several thousand gathered in a Reno ballroom. Members of the crowd shouted back, "No!" "I don't know," Trump said. "Honestly, we don't know. Who the hell knows." Cruz was Trump's No. 1 target during the 65-minute event, revealing just how much of a threat the Republican senator from Texas...

MAY I HAVE YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION, PLEASE!!! In the absence of good material, I have opted to spend a few moments in unbridled rant… 1. Are you people really happy with the extreme lack of sincerity when it comes to political candidates? 2. Don’t tell me what “flavor” you are! I could care less if Republicrat or Demican or Greendipendent. 3. If there are no just plain-ol’ “Americans” left let’s just close the dang door and call it what it is… OVER! Today’s politicians stand there with their smug attitudes and silly self-righteous smirks on their faces and pontificate from...

A reader can make what she wants of any given text, but some interpretive methodologies better suit some kinds of texts than they do others. If I agree to go shopping for my neighbor, I will want to interpret the grocery list he gives me in accordance with what I believe he intends. If, for example, the list includes "half gallon milk," and I know that he is a vegan, I will read "milk" to refer to "soy milk," even though in common parlance "milk" means "whole milk from a cow." People read fiction for all sorts of different reasons....

WASHINGTON - There is something liberating about a lifetime appointment and a certainty in the correctness of one's ideas. Justice Antonin Scalia has both. He travels the world as a sought-after speaker, snags White House dinner invitations and packs one of the most powerful pens on Earth as a leading conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than once, he has looked over a crowd of Washington power-brokers and observed that there is no one in the group who can help him or hurt him. Yet while Scalia's influence and presence are undisputed, there have been significant frustrations as...

Here's what I believe to be true regarding some of the most important issues facing America today, and what most politicians apparently don't. IMMIGRATION LAW ENFORCEMENT I'm going to be as blunt as I can be with respect to the illegal alien problem in this country, while refraining from using the profane terms that routinely leap to my mind every time I think about our government's unrelenting failure to address this issue in any responsible way. To get right to the point, any person in this country who doesn't support (A) doing whatever is necessary to stop illegals from entering...

WASHINGTON - Rebounding from the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, President Bush is poised to select between two of the nation's leading conservative federal appeals court judges - both experienced jurists with deep backgrounds in constitutional law - for what promises to be a bruising Senate confirmation battle. With an announcement expected Sunday or Monday, administration officials have narrowed the focus to Judges Samuel Alito of New Jersey and Michael Luttig of Virginia, sources involved in the process said. Both have sterling legal qualifications and solid conservative credentials, and both would set off an explosive fight...

 THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS THE authority to stop Oregon physicians from using prescription drugs to implement that state's unique program of physician-assisted suicide. But the administration's effort to use an ambiguous federal drug statute to undermine Oregon's assisted suicide law is a betrayal of conservative legal principles. Gonzales v. Oregon, argued before the Supreme Court earlier this month, may give an early signal about the commitment of the emerging Roberts Court to those principles. And the Court's decision could have unexpected implications for a range of other issues, including future policies about abortion.Like the administration, I believe that the people...

A mock Supreme Court argument in a gay-rights case reminds us that liberals sometimes agree with the next chief justice WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- You won't see John Roberts among the head shots of Supreme Court justices posted at the William & Mary Law School, site of the 2005-06 Supreme Court Preview. Instead of Roberts' face in the space reserved for the chief justice there is a question mark, a reflection of Roberts-like caution on the part of the organizers of this annual conference on the new court term. After all, Roberts hasn't been confirmed yet. But if Roberts is missing...

I was listening to Mark Levin's show tonite, on the drive home. He had a liberal lawyer (Ari was his name) that wanted to debate the constitution with Mark. He (Ari) started with the issue of the "3/5ths of a person "(only Ari did not have the ratio correct) that was orginally used for counting slaves, for the population census used for apportioning seats in Congress. Mark had an idea where he was headed and cut him off, asking him if he knew why the 3/5ths was used - which Ari didn't. As Mark explained to everyone, the 3/5ths was...