Free Republic

As LifeNews reported today, the judge in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial dropped three murder charges related to babies he killed in his horrific abortion-infanticide process. One of the three charges the judge dropped includes a 28-week unborn baby who was killed in an abortion-infanticide and eventually discovered in a freezer at Gosnell’s clinic. LifeNews has identified that another charge involved “Baby B,” about whom a Gosnell staffer testified was a newborn child who survived a failed abortion and was still breathing into a shoe box. Kareema Cross told the jury she saw at least 10 children who were breathing...

Hyping "growing support" for same-sex marriage, CNN's Carol Costello asked a supporter of California's Proposition 8 on Monday if he was "on the wrong side of history" for legally defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Her tone fits right with Friday's CNN panel where a traditional marriage supporter was disgustingly marginalized as a segregationist and compared to a slave owner. Costello cited GOP strategist Karl Rove admitting that he could see a Republican presidential candidate publicly support same-sex marriage in 2016. She then asked Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund, "Austin, you heard what Karl Rove...

AFP - With Thermos bottles, sleeping bags and a few good books, about a dozen people lined up Friday to be among the first to attend oral arguments at the US Supreme Court on gay marriage. Never mind that the hearings don't begin until next Tuesday. They said they were determined to have front-row seats at one of the year's most anticipated sessions of the highest court in the nation.

SACRAMENTO – ProtectMarriage.com, the official proponents of California’s voter-passed Proposition 8, petitioned the United States Supreme Court today to review the misguided decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declaring the initiative unconstitutional. Earlier this year in a 2-1 decision in the Perry v Brown case, the Ninth Circuit – the most frequently overturned federal appellate court in the nation – errantly upheld a federal district judge’s decision that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited California from enacting Prop 8 to restore the traditional definition of marriage between a man and a woman. “Marriage between a...

Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations. Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the...

President Obama, in his drive for a national healthcare overhaul, strove to provide a new guarantee that all Americans, no matter where they lived, would have basic protection against sickness and disease, ending decades of variations among states. ..... < snip > Under the court's ruling, states will be free to decide not to cover all their poor residents through their Medicaid programs.That may mean liberal states that have embraced the healthcare law such as California, Massachusetts and Maryland will in 2014 effectively offer all their residents health coverage, a key goal of the law Obama signed two years ago....

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court cited First Amendment rights to free speech in striking down a law that made it a federal crime to falsely claim to have been awarded military-honor medals. The 6-3 majority opinion upheld a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that had declared unconstitutional the Stolen Valor Act, a 2006 statute Congress passed "to protect the reputation and meaning" of military honors.

WASHINGTON — Justice Elena Kagan cast her first vote on the Supreme Court late Tuesday, joining the liberals in dissent when the high court cleared the way for the execution of an Arizona murderer. The 5-4 ruling overturned orders by a federal judge in Phoenix and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that had stopped the execution by lethal injection of Jeffrey Landrigan. His lawyers, in a last-ditch appeal, had raised questions about one of the drugs used in the execution. Since the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental had suspended production, Arizona officials said they...

The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a ballot initiative that sought to amend the state’s constitution to establish that Florida residents have a right to refuse to purchase mandatory health insurance – including under President Obama’s reform effort. The state high court voted 5 to 2 to exclude the referendum issue from the November ballot. The action is a victory for supporters of the Obama health reform program and a setback for opponents, including state lawyers leading an effort in federal court in the Florida panhandle to have the national health insurance program declared unconstitutional. Florida was slated to...

PersonhoodUSA 01/11/2010 Carson City, Nevada – A ballot initiative by human rights group Personhood Nevada has been thwarted by Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and local Judge James Russell. On Friday, January 8, Judge Russell ruled that the fourteen word amendment did not encompass a single subject, although it is comprised of merely a handful of words and one of the most succinct ever to be filed in that State. The proposed amendment reads, “In the great state of Nevada, the term ‘person’ applies to every human being.” The Judge’s decision declares that the people of Nevada are not entitled to...

MOBILE, Ala. — A former Alabama judge was cleared Monday of charges accusing him of paddling and sexually abusing male inmates. Former Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas was found not guilty on seven counts after more than a week of testimony. A judge threw out the remaining 14 charges. Defense attorneys had painted the 48-year-old as a prominent civic leader who became a victim of felons lying about him to manipulate the court system. Prosecutors said Thomas brought 11 young male inmates to a private courthouse office and severely paddled their bare bottoms for sexual gratification. Some of the...

Ruled teen's blog post created a created "foreseeable risk of substantial disruption" President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy has yet another tie to Connecticut. She sided against a student in the infamous “douche bag” case, and that has upset some free-speech advocates. In August 2007, Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled against an appeal in Doninger v. Niehoff. Avery Doninger was disqualified from running for school government at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington after she posted something on her blog, referring to the superintendent and other officials as "douche bags" because...

California Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage ban nears The clock is ticking down on the California Supreme Court's imminent decision on whether to uphold Proposition 8, the voter-approved ballot measure restoring the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Based on regulations that require the justices to rule within 90 days of oral arguments in a case, the Supreme Court's decision in the legal challenge to Proposition 8 now will fall on one of three remaining days: Tuesday or next Thursday, or June 1. The high court normally only rules on Mondays and Thursdays, but will issue rulings next Tuesday because...

HARTFORD - Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples have the right to marry, making the state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions. The divided court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution, and Connecticut's civil unions law does not provide those couples with the same rights as heterosexual couples. "I can't believe it. We're thrilled, we're absolutely overjoyed. We're finally going to be able, after 33 years, to get married," said Janet Peck of Colchester, who was a plaintiff with her partner, Carole...

Less than a week before its October term is set to begin, the US Supreme Court became a spectacle of sound and fury on Wednesday over a landmark decision handed down three months ago declaring that the death penalty for child rapists is cruel and unusual punishment. At issue was whether the high court would revisit the landmark 5-to-4 decision after revelations last summer that contradicted the majority justices' conclusion that a "national consensus" had emerged against the death penalty for the rape of a child. The June 25 decision said only six states had laws authorizing capital punishment for...

DURHAM -- Former Durham district attorney Mike Nifong is off the hook for the time being from any civil lawsuits. The judge overseeing the Duke Lacrosse lawsuit filed by three exonerated players has put their suit on hold.

A legal immigrant in Northern California who was 20 when he began a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl faces deportation to Mexico under a ruling Thursday that was described as unjust by a majority of the federal appeals court panel that issued it. Although Juan Estrada-Espinoza's relationship with his girlfriend was consensual, the crime he committed under state law - unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at least three years younger than he was - is considered sexual abuse of a minor under federal law and is grounds for mandatory deportation, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals...

Mention the name Charles Pickering to anyone but the most committed news junkie, and you’re apt to get a blank look or, at best, one of dim recognition. In the era of the 24-hour news cycle aimed at the ever-shortening attention span, the bitter Senate battles over the federal judiciary in which Pickering played so dramatic a part a few years back can seem like ancient history. But with the publication of A Price Too High, Pickering’s insider account of the nearly four years he spent in limbo as a nominee to the federal bench, as Democrats and their press...

Activist judges on the Supreme Court issued a major setback to workers who are discriminated against based on their sex Tuesday, effectively rewriting established law in order to give companies that practice discrimination a break. In a split 5-4 ruling, the court ruled against a woman who said she found out over time that she had been receiving smaller pay increases than her male counterparts at Goodyear. Tough, the justices said. In order for the claim to be valid, they said, the woman would have had to file a suit as soon as she got her first paycheck with the...

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes in to say "The last few times that I sued a spammer in Washington Small Claims Court, I filed a "booby-trapped" written legal brief with the judge, about four pages long, with the second and third pages stuck together in the middle. I made these by poking through those two pages with a thumbtack, then running a tiny sliver of paper through the holes and gluing it to either page with white-out. The idea was that after the judge made their decision, I could go to the courthouse and look at the file to see...