Free Republic

Distancing themselves from the majority on the Supreme Court, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion to Wednesday's Defense Against Marriage Act ruling, stating that “same-sex marriage presents a highly emotional and important question of public policy – but not a difficult question of constitutional law." "The Constitution does not guarantee the right to enter into a same-sex marriage,” the justices wrote. The landmark case was filed by Edith Windsor of New York, who was forced to pay taxes on an inheritance when Thea Spyer, the woman she married in Ontario, Canada, died in 2009. Windsor was...

The Supreme Court saved a law Thursday aimed at preventing housing discrimination, and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a scathing dissent calling out his liberal colleagues for their "audacity." In a 5-4 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court's majority found that the Fair Housing Act (FHA) prevents housing practices that unfairly impact minorities even if those practices are not intentionally discriminatory. Many cases brought under the FHA involve so-called disparate-impact claims, so a ruling against fair-housing advocates would have seriously hobbled the law. Thomas — the court's only African-American justice — wrote a separate dissent questioning the notion that the government...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a ruling that struck down anArizona law that denied bail to illegal immigrants charged with certain felonies. The justices rejected an appeal filed by Maricopa County and its controversial sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Three of the court's conservative justices, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said they would have heard the case. Four of the nine justices must agree to hear a case for the court to take it up. The court's action means the October 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the 2006 law is unconstitutional, is the final word in the...

Barron’s Educational Series, the maker of popular Advanced Placement study guides, has apologized for linking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to fascism and comparing him to the KKK. The Daily Caller reported Monday about the extreme comparison, found on page 168 of the 7th edition of Barron’s AP European History study guide. “It has been brought to our attention that Barron’s AP European History, 7th Edition by Seth Roberts and James Eder contains erroneous information that casts aspersions on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,” reads a statement released by the company on Tuesday. “In an attempt to draw a comparison...

The latest version of a top-selling study guide for the Advanced Placement European History exam explains the French Revolution with a chart which identifies Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a fascist and pairs him with the Ku Klux Klan.“Barron’s AP European History” (7th edition) makes the claim, intended for consumption by American high school students, on page 168. The chart attempts to compare modern American political affiliations with the various factions involved in the French Revolution. The chart moves politically from left to right.The far right of the chart is labeled “fascist.” The authors demonstrate modern-day “fascists” by pairing “Clarence...

In a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas excoriated his fellow justices for refusing to temporarily stop enforcement of a federal district judge's ruling that overturned the marriage laws of the state of Alabama and ordered Alabama to recognize as legal "marriages" unions between two people of the same sex. On Jan. 23, U.S. District Judge Callie Granade ruled that Alabama laws limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent the...

The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday not to delay same-sex marriage in Alabama offered the strongest signal yet that gay rights advocates are likely to prevail in coming months in their decades-long quest to establish a nationwide constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

In an interesting recent article, and a post at Prawfsblawg, legal scholar Mark Kende argues that Justice Clarence Thomas approves of Korematsu v. United States, the notorious 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. Here is the article abstract: The U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) has been in the news recently as some scholars and advocates, such as Peter Irons, have asked the Court to formally repudiate the decision. This essay breaks new ground by demonstrating that Justice Clarence Thomas’s jurisprudence on...

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia share a famous fondness for the opera, but they don't often find themselves on the same side of divided Supreme Court decisions. So it was noteworthy on Tuesday when, along with conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginsburg and Scalia teamed up to file a strongly-worded dissent in the court's decision to reject an appeal in a crack-cocaine sentencing case. The move to submit a signed dissent, noted first by Reason.com, was rare enough. The Supreme Court denies a vast majority of the petitions it receives, usually without any explanation or dissenting opinions. That's true...

Joshua Matz didn’t bother waiting to write about the Supreme Court until he went to work there. He teamed with a renowned Harvard law professor to finish a book about the court before he started his year as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy. Unlike Matz, Christopher Michel is not listed as an author of the book he worked on years before his clerkship with Chief Justice John Roberts. But former President George W. Bush offered warm praise for onetime presidential speechwriter Michel as his collaborator on his memoir, "Decision Points." Bush said in the book’s acknowledgements that Michel’s...

This video is supposed to be satire about the liberal reaction to the Hobby Lobby decision but it sounds almost like an accurate depiction.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is so angry over the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Hobby Lobby contraception case last week that he apparently forgot Justice Clarence Thomas is black. The Nevada Democrat lamented the court’s ruling which allows Hobby Lobby and other for-profit companies with religious objections to certain forms of contraception to avoid providing them to employees in health insurance plans mandated under Obamacare. Hobby Lobby approves of 16 out of 20 forms of contraception that have been approved by the FDA. “People are going to have to walk down here and vote, and if they vote...

Today, the Supreme Court ruled that people cannot be forced by the government to provide contraception if it specifically conflicted with their religious beliefs, and that unions cannot force non-members to give them money. Liberals showed their knowledge of current events by saying that the justices who ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby were "five white men," despite the fact that one of them, Clarence Thomas, is black. In case you are liberal and don't know who Clarence Thomas is, here is a picture of him: Despite the fact that Mr. Thomas is not white, uneducated liberals (who, I remind...

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who told a Nation of Islam radio show that Clarence Thomas was an "Uncle Tom," Mitch McConnell was a "racist," and all opposition to President Obama is based on the fact that he's black, refused to back down from those comments on CNN interview:

Calling his opinion legitimate and not racist because he is "black," Democrat Representative from Mississippi Bennie Thompson blasted Justice Clarence Thomas as an "Uncle Tom" during an appearance on a New Nation of Islam radio program. During a wide-ranging interview in which Thompson made numerous racially charged and ignorant comments, the Congressman also stated that people who do not support ObamaCare only do so because of their hatred for President Obama's race. Later, when talking about a recent Supreme Court decision in which the voters of Michigan were allowed to decide whether colleges could consider race when accepting students, the...

Clay Bennett, cartoonist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, is well known for being one of the worst political commentators in the entire country. The only reason you may not have heard of him is because he's not quite bad enough to be on MSNBC yet. On Wednesday, upset at the Supreme Court's decision to allow Michigan voters to decide whether their state's colleges could use race as a factor in admitting students, Bennett decided to put all semblance of common sense aside. Grabbing his pen and ink, he decided to do away with what the Left holds so dear:...

She does not subscribe to one of Commentary’s themes, which is that we are all reasonable people and that the left will eventually be persuaded by the force of our superior logic, so she understands the importance of determination and élan. We will see about the electoral future. Palin will do what she does, which is rally the forces of liberty and support good candidates. She will not triangulate or dissemble. The current wisdom of the political class is that this does not result in electoral victories, a conclusion borne out by Obama’s success. But political climates change, and honesty...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tim Graham. For its second season, the creators of the FX series "The Americans" have chosen a new source for insight into the Cold War during the Reagan years -- one Lt. Col. Oliver North. It's a dramatic reversal from the first season, and it has infuriated some hard leftists. The show began with the shocking promise from creator Joel Weisberg that the series' heroes would be KGB agents: "We're making them the sympathetic characters. I'd go so far as to say they're the heroes." It quickly became apparent that these characters could...

Alabama State Rep. Alvin Holmes (D) who said Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is an "Uncle Tom" for being married to a white woman believes men should be allowed to marry mules. As Yellowhammer News, a go-to site for Alabama politics, noted, Holmes has come under fire recently for making comments about Thomas, interracial adoptions, and black Republicans. And when asked about interracial marriage, he revealed he was in favor of men marrying animals. “Now, I’m for interracial marriage,” Holmes said on a local radio show, according to Yellowhammer News. He continued: I’m for same-sex marriage. I’m the one that...

MONTGOMERY, AL, April 10, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – More than 100 people rallied at the Alabama State House in Montgomery yesterday afternoon to disprove a Democrat's controversial remarks that whites do not adopt black children and prefer to see interracial babies aborted. In March, state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said during a debate over a fetal heartbeat bill that “99 percent of the whites who are sitting in here now, if their daughter got pregnant by a black man, they are going to make their daughter have an abortion. They ain't gonna let her have the baby.” In the same March...