Free Republic

This has been a week of surprises from Chief Justice John Roberts. Wednesday he joined the Court’s more liberal members in a 5-4 decision in a significant First Amendment case. Tuesday at the argument in Obergefell v. Hodges, the marriage equality cases, he suggested that a ban on same-sex marriage might present a “straightforward question of sexual discrimination.” These superficially surprising moves support Roberts’s oft-repeated claim that he believes the Justices should decide cases based on the law, not politics. But as Roberts’s tenth term as Chief Justice comes to a close, the biggest tests of that claim are still...

Islamist militants took almost full control of Mogadishu on Thursday, less than 24 hours after Ethiopian troops withdrew from Somalia's capital, a witness reported. The Ethiopian forces pulled out their last remaining bases in the city late Wednesday after two years propping up Somalia's transitional government. Forces from different Islamist groups -- including the hard-line al-Shabab, which the United States has designated a terror organization -- immediately seized every base the Ethiopians abandoned. "The city is almost under Islamist rule," said a local journalist who did not want his name revealed. "You can hear different names of the Islamist groups...