Free Republic

Majority Democrats on a Senate committee on Thursday abandoned their work, which was targeting conservatives on the Supreme Court, when GOP members suggested subpoenas for the staff of leftist Justice Sonia Sotomayor... Senate Judiciary Committee “punted” on votes scheduled regarding the issuance of subpoenas for GOP donors Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow. Sen Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has accused the two of “stonewalling” an investigation into the high court “that seeks to determine whether two Republican-appointed justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, acted with any impropriety,” the report said. The confrontation was launched when ProPublica said they helped facilitate trips for...

Mark Keam, a long-serving Democratic member of the House of Delegates from northern Virginia, has resigned his seat, a move that will set up a special election to fill the vacancy in the blue-leaning district. An attorney who was first elected to his Fairfax County-based seat in 2009, Keam said in an interview Tuesday that he had stepped down to take a job in the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Keam said he will serve as a deputy assistant secretary running the National Travel and Tourism Office, which is focused on bringing foreign travelers to the...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is demanding answers from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray regarding Monday’s raid of former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. On Thursday, the conservative titan and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Wray a list of questions concerning the unprecedented raid in Palm Beach, Florida, among other topics, including Hunter Biden. The FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago was reportedly about documents Trump may have taken with him when he left office last year. Grassley began by asking Wray about his knowledge of the raid before it happened, what...

When Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota began her 30-minute turn at questioning Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday afternoon, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii was not in the room. Hirono apparently was not that interested in what she anticipated Klobuchar would have to say. Or perhaps she preferred to watch it on C-SPAN -- just as Americans 3,000 miles away could. Hirono was not alone. When Klobuchar's 30 minutes started, only three other Democratic senators were there: Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chris Coons of...

Former FBI Director James Comey testified by video earlier this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where part of his testimony appeared to contradict what Andrew McCabe has previously told Congress. Perhaps the ex-deputy FBI director could help clear up any confusion caused by his former boss’s testimony, but he certainly doesn’t seem in any hurry to do so: Catherine Herridge @CBS_Herridge NEW #Russia #Durham: McCabe declines to testify next week @senjudiciary citing "manifest danger” of Covid-19 among Committee members + “McCabe is eager to testify voluntarily...at a future date when it is safe” McCabe conditions : in-person, not Zoom...

The leftist attacks on the faith, family, and character of Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett are — sadly — neither surprising nor new. The initial battle plan by establishment leftists to attack the faith, family, and character of Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett is neither surprising nor new. As a counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for more than five years, I gained a clear inside look at the tactics used by Senate Democrats to personally attack GOP judicial nominees.In 2003, I was working on the committee for Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, when Judge Janice...

[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

Months before a whistleblower complaint that would spark the Democrat effort for impeachment, a shadowy liberal group founded and staffed by Obama administration alums and former Democrat congressional staffers launched an outside investigation into whether President Trump’s allies were seeking “foreign interference” from Ukraine in the 2020 elections. The group, American Oversight, began investigating the issue in May — more than two months before the “whistleblower” filed a complaint alleging Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.” The group’s purpose is to...

Liberals are preparing for Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris’s possible expulsion from the Senate Judiciary Committee by highlighting she is a black woman. In the event that Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith wins the Mississippi runoff election on Nov. 27, the makeup of the Senate Judiciary Committee will shift in favor of the GOP, with a seat currently held by a Democrat flipping red. Consequently, Harris, the most junior Democratic member of the committee, will likely be squeezed out. “Not only would it be unconscionable to remove the only African American woman from the committee, but Senator Harris also is the most...

The Senate Judiciary Committee has released a lengthy report (full pdf below) containing the investigative material from the senate investigation of the Kavanaugh accusations. On page #27 of the report the senate committee notes their intent to continue investigating the role of retired FBI Agent Monica Lee McLean, who appears to have been ‘handling‘ accuser and best friend, Christine Blasey-Ford:

Capitol Police on October 3 arrested 27-year old congressional staffer Jackson Cosko for posting on Wikipedia the private addresses of three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee—what’s known as “doxxing” (a word derived from the shorthand for “document”). Cosko is facing serious charges that include illegally posting private information of public figures, witness tampering, threats, identity theft, and unlawful entry. In the mainstream media, Cosko is being portrayed as a hapless overzealous intern who didn’t even have the smarts to cover up his criminal act. His former boss— Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) has denied she knew anything about Cosko’s activities....

Late Thursday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Leland Keyser, a friend of Dr. Fords, “felt pressured by Dr. Ford’s allies to revisit her initial statement that she knew nothing about an alleged sexual assault by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh, which she later updated to say that she believed but couldn’t corroborate Dr. Ford’s account, according to people familiar with the matter.” Monica McLean, a former FBI agent, and by some accounts, Dr. Ford’s “lifelong best friend” is the individual whom Ford allegedly coached prior to taking a polygraph test. During her testimony before the Judiciary Committee, Ford claimed...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) had some choice words for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on his efforts to unify Democrats against President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Manchin told Politico on Friday that Schumer has no power over support for Kavanaugh’s nomination. “I’ll be 71-years-old in August; you’re going to whip me? Kiss my you know what,” Manchin, referring to Schumer’s efforts to whip up the votes against Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, told Politico in an interview. Shortly after Trump announced Kavanaugh as his pick for the Supreme Court, Schumer released a...

resident Obama has nominated Federal Appeals Judge Merrick Garland to replace late Justice Antonin Scalia. Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is reconfirming the Committee's decision to deny any nominee confirmation hearings. “The president has full and complete power to nominate individuals to the Supreme Court, as he will reportedly do later today,” Lee said in a statement. “But the Constitution also gives the Senate the full and complete power to reject or confirm the nominee,” Lee continued. “It’s as simple as that. In light of the contentious presidential election already well underway, my...

<p>Exposing the true motivations of terrorist proxies and challenging their genocidal propaganda.</p> <p>Two weeks ago, a series of posters was placed anonymously on the campuses of George Washington University and American University in Washington, D.C. and those of UCLA, UC-Irvine and UC-San Diego in Southern California. The images were hashtagged #StopTheJihadOnCampus and pulled no punches in denouncing a pair of campus organizations for what they are: supporters of violent, Jew-hating jihad.</p>

Jerry Seinfeld is on the micro aggressive trail lately. Like when he lashed out at liberal, PC culture, or when he may the ludicrous claim that your race or gender isn't as important in comedy as whether you're funny or not. But his comments here about gay French kings have really crossed the line. They deserved a voice too. Even better is his jab at Late Night host, Seth Meyers. VIDEO AT LINK Seinfeld even called out Seth Myers for saying he would never make fun of Caitlyn Jenner, which Meyers specified that he only meant on that day... "As...

The state’s highest court ruled Monday that former House Speaker Thomas Finneran should be disbarred from the practice of law. Finneran, who pled guilty in 2007 to obstruction of justice, had sought a lesser punishment of suspension, but the court sided with the Board of Bar Overseers. "(Finneran’s)" misconduct implicates both the integrity of the judicial system and the honesty of a member of the bar," Justice Margot Botsford wrote for the court. "We have no reason to disagree with the finding that (Finneran’s) conduct during the voting rights lawsuit represented an aberrant event in his long career of serving...

FROM THE SENATE Dismissal of U.S. Attorneys Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) chairs a Judiciary Cmte. hearing on the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys. D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, appears and is expected to testify that he did nothing wrong in coordinating the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. THURS., C-SPAN3, 10AM ET - Click link to watch FIRING ATTYS. WEBPAGE

In an eagerly awaited landmark decision, the state's highest court ruled today that Governor Mitt Romney and Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly had the authority to invoke a 1913 state law that Massachusetts used to block out-of-state gay couples from marrying here when same-sex marriage became legal in 2004. The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the 1913 law when it was used to block same sex-couples from Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, because gay marriage is prohibited in those states. The court, however, did not rule on the claims of the couples from New York and Rhode Island because state...

In extreme gratitude to the single most influential person to defeat John Kerry, due attention must be accorded to the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who "interpreted" that Commonwealth's constitution to read that homosexuals can be married to each other, I have composed this little poem. ODE TO MARGARET MARSHALL (Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court) Here’s to you, Maggie darling and your counterculture Court. You diddled poor John Kerry, as you diddled us - for sport. The outcome was delightful and we have you to thank, And we beknighted Bushies cheered as John F....