Free Republic

The five liberal judges on the Supreme Court, the same five who gave cities the right to confiscate the property of poor people in Kelo v. New London, just decided, against historical fact and scientific evidence, that the EPA should control CO2. Eventually, when the Democrats are in power, this might mean stringent controls on industrial plants, power plants and internal combustion engines – controls that will greatly increase costs and reduce efficiency – in order to limit a harmless substance that all plant life needs in order to grow.

A notice of appeal has been filed with the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals over actions by city officials in Philadephia who not only refused to protect the speech rights of 11 Christians at a public homosexual festival, but arrested them for quoting the Bible and speaking against the behavior. The Alliance Defense Fund said it is appealing a judge's Jan. 19 dismissal of the group's federal court lawsuit against the city officials. "Speech cannot be silenced simply because another person or group does not agree with it," said Ted Hoppe, an attorney allied with the ADF. "City officials must...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — The lawyers defending I. Lewis Libby Jr. against perjury charges rested their case today, but not before suffering a series of defeats in legal rulings by the presiding judge...... .........Judge Walton ruled against Mr. Wells on two motions seeking Mr. Russert’s recall. Mr. Russert, in his testimony, denied that he had told Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson as Mr. Libby had claimed.... .....But at the time Mr. Russert had already discussed his conversation with Mr. Libby with an F.B.I. agent and Mr. Wells asserted that Mr. Fitzgerald agreed not to raise that matter because it would...

Judge: Defense Misled Court About Libby Feb 14 2:13 PM US/Eastern By MATT APUZZO Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense attorneys misled the court into thinking that former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby would testify in his CIA leak trial, a federal judge said Wednesday, as he blocked Libby from using some classified evidence in the case. Libby is accused of lying and obstructing an investigation into the 2003 leak of a CIA operative's identity. His attorneys have said for months in court papers that Libby would testify that he had important national security issues on his...

CHICAGO - Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Thursday told students and faculty at the Northwestern University School of Law that he believes the high court functions best when justices focus narrowly on the case at hand. Justices run great risks when they go beyond the specifics of the case and attempt to set public policy, said Roberts, a strict constructionist confirmed in his post in September 2005. "Judges should act like judges, not like statesmen," Roberts said in response to a student question following a lecture at the university. The talk concluded the first of Roberts' two days...

HOUSTON -- Tyron Garner, one of two men whose 1998 arrests led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down bans on sodomy, has died, according to a spokesman for the legal firm that represented him. Garner, 39, died early Monday at a Houston hospital, said Mark Roy, a spokesman for Lambda Legal in New York City. Garner had been suffering from meningitis and had been in his brother's care for the past six months. "Over the last few months, he lost the use of his legs from meningitis," Roy told The Associated Press. Garner and John Lawrence were...

1967 TYRONE GARNER 2006 Defendant in landmark sodomy ruling was not motivated by politics The key civil liberties victory for gays was 'fight against all odds' Tyrone Garner, whose arrest in violation of Texas sodomy laws led to a challenge before the Supreme Court and an eventual victory that struck down such statutes across the country, died after a lengthy illness, friends said Wednesday. He was 39. Garner, who died Monday of meningitis in a Houston-area hospital, was openly gay but not politically active when he chose to fight his arrest in court, said his lawyer, Mitchell Katine. "He was...

Are there no limits to which activist judges won’t go to advance their political and policy agendas? Answer: No. I wrote an entire book about it. And U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, appointed in the twilight of the Carter administration, is the latest in a long list of disgraceful lawyers who abuse their power. There are four things that strike me most about Taylor’s opinion. First, she grants standing to such plaintiffs as the ACLU, CAIR, Greenpeace, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Christopher Hitchens, and others, without a shred of information showing any connection between the plaintiffs’ assertions...

Today: August 16, 2006 at 11:0:38 PDT Teens Sent to Jail Over Deer-Decoy Crash ASSOCIATED PRESS KENTON, Ohio (AP) - A judge decided two high school athletes can complete the football season this fall before they serve 60-day jail sentences for a car crash caused by a decoy deer placed in a country road. Two teens were injured. "I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm going to. I see positive things about participating in football," Judge Gary McKinley said Tuesday. Dailyn Campbell, a 16-year-old quarterback for Kenton High, and 17-year-old teammate Jesse Howard will serve their time in a juvenile...

Ex-teacher gets 15 to life for molesting students VISTA -- A former Escondido middle school teacher -- denounced by victims' families as a predator and praised by his family and friends as a decent man who would never harm children ---- was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years to life in state prison. Peter Thomas Ziskin, 44, of Solana Beach was convicted in May of 17 of the 26 child molestation charges prosecutors had filed against him. Ziskin was acquitted of six of the charges, and jurors were unable to reach a verdict on three counts. The charges involved allegations that...

Court nixes part of Texas political map By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld most of the Republican-boosting Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay but threw out part, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights. ADVERTISEMENT The fractured decision was a small victory for Democratic and minority groups who accused Republicans of an unconstitutional power grab in drawing boundaries that booted four Democratic incumbents from office. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060628/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_texas_redistricting Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Hispanics do not have...

SAN FRANCISCO – A suburban San Diego teenager who was barred from wearing a T-shirt with anti-gay rhetoric to class lost a bid to have his high school's dress code suspended Thursday after a federal appeals court ruled the school could restrict what students wear to prevent disruptions. The ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals addressed only the narrow issue of whether the dress code should be unenforced pending the outcome of the student's lawsuit. A majority of judges said, however, that Tyler Chase Harper was unlikely to prevail on claims that the Poway Unified...

CECILE RICHARDS, the new and instantly embattled president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, would like those retro "folks" — her word — intent on knocking her organization, and the entire abortion rights movement, off the map to know she takes after her maternal grandmother That would be the tall, whip-thin woman who, nine-months pregnant and bedridden, took a timeout from home-birthing a future governor of Texas — Ms. Richards's mother, Ann — to wring the neck of the chicken her family was having for dinner. Plucky. "I love the idea of that story, and I'm sure it's true,"...

Watching the Alito confirmation hearings is much like watching an old Matlock rerun, except with Barney Fife doing the questioning… If it weren’t so infuriating, it would be about as interesting as watching paint dry. Apparently, I need to point out a few things to my friends across the aisle, not the least of which is the fact that a seat on the Supreme Court is NOT an elected position, but rather a presidential appointed position based upon the judicial qualifications of the candidate, not their personal ideologies.

Maybe Ronnie Earle has the goods on Tom DeLay and maybe not. I'm perfectly content to let a jury consider the evidence and decide. But if a jury does convict DeLay, I'm proposing a new nickname for the man who was, until Wednesday, one of the most powerful figures in national politics. Forget "The Hammer." He will be "Scarface." As in Al Capone. The connection? Capone was a monumental tough guy who ran gambling, prostitution, protection, bootlegging and other rackets in Chicago — only to be brought down on lower level charges that he cheated on his income taxes. DeLay...

Unbelievable! I'm not even Catholic and my jaw dropped when I read this report by James Taranto in Best of the Web. Catholics Need Not Apply No one seriously argues anymore that Roe v. Wade was correctly decided. Rather, pro-Roe advocates rest their case on policy grounds (warnings about coat alleys and back hangers, etc.) or, when they must argue the law, on the power of precedent. Of the five Supreme Court justices who more or less upheld Roe in the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, three went out of their way to avoid endorsing the decision, emphasizing...

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said. Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said. The judge made the decision after he and government attorneys privately viewed a sampling of nine pictures resulting from an Army probe into abuse and torture at the prison. The pictures were given to...

BOSTON -- Opponents saw it as a huge blow to the American family. Supporters looked on it as a moment of liberation. The first legal gay marriages in Massachusetts were a pivotal moment in America's culture wars. A year later, the legacy is mixed -- they remain legal here, and civil unions have been legalized in neighboring Connecticut, but a dozen states were propelled to prohibit same-sex weddings. In the past year, more than 6,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot, many rushing to exchange vows in the days and weeks that followed the May 17 start to the weddings....

Virginia Court Strikes Down Law Against Sex By Singles POSTED: 4:20 pm EST January 14, 2005 RICHMOND, Va. -- The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down an archaic and rarely enforced state law prohibiting sex between unmarried people. The unanimous ruling strongly suggests that a separate anti-sodomy law in Virginia also is unconstitutional, although that statute is not directly affected. The justices based their ruling on a U.S. Supreme Court decision voiding an anti-sodomy law in Texas. "This case directly affects only the fornication law but makes it absolutely clear how the court would rule were the sodomy law...

DALLAS - The arrest of a 12-year-old boy on charges that he molested a 4-year-old girl at a fast-food restaurant playground may point to a growing problem of sexually aggressive children, child-abuse experts say. The boy was arrested Wednesday in suburban Houston on charges of indecency with a child and aggravated sexual assault. Police would not discuss in detail what happened to the girl, other than to say her mother said she'd been touched inappropriately. The arrest came a week after the Dallas Independent School District expelled two first-grade boys after one performed a sex act on another during class....