Free Republic

A federal appeals court on Sunday temporarily halted a six-day extension for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential election, a momentary victory for Republicans and President Donald Trump in the key presidential battleground state. As it stands, ballots will now be due by 8 p.m. on Election Day. A lower court judge had sided with Democrats and their allies to extend the deadline until Nov. 9. Democrats sought more time as a way to help deal with an expected historic high number of absentee ballots. The Democratic National Committee, the state Democratic Party and allied groups including the League of...

“Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program,” President Reagan once said. That adage certainly applies to the Temporary Protected Status program. TPS was intended to give only short-term permission for aliens to be in the U.S., but that permission has often gone on seemingly without end. Fortunately, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-to-1 decision, has just dissolved an injunction that prevented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending TPS for illegal aliens from Sudan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Haiti who have been in the U.S. for decades. As Judge Consuelo Callahan...

A federal judge on Friday ordered Texas officials to allow straight-ticket voting for the Nov. 3 election, ruling that a state law ending the practice would endanger voters by causing longer lines at polling places during the pandemic. The ruling, coming only 18 days before early voting was set to begin, will cause problems for election officials who must reprogram voting machine software and reconfigure ballots, U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo acknowledged in her ruling. “The substantial injury to (voters) is outweighed by the inconvenience,” the Laredo judge wrote.

A federal judge ruled earlier this week to extend the cutoff to count absentee ballots by six days after the election, but the decision is being appealed by the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature and is expected to make its way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. District Judge William Conley's decision came Monday after Democrats argued that an extension was needed to accommodate for the influx of voters requesting mail-in ballots, and allow them time to both receive and send back their votes just five weeks before the election. Republicans have said there is more than enough...

A ruling Monday by a federal judge in Wisconsin that would extend the counting of mail-in ballots six days beyond Election Day would also allow those ballots to be counted even if there is no “definitive” sign of a postmark. U.S. District Judge William Conley of the Western District of Wisconsin — an appointee of President Barack Obama — ruled that absentee ballots in the state can be counted until Nov. 9 as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3. That echoes last week’s ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that mailed-in ballots should be...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that absentee ballots in battleground Wisconsin can be counted up to six days after the Nov. 3 presidential election as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The highly anticipated ruling, unless overturned, means that the outcome of the presidential race in Wisconsin likely will not be known for days after polls close. Under current law, the deadline for returning an absentee ballot to have it counted is 8 p.m. on Election Day. Democrats and their allies sued to extend the deadline in the key swing state. U.S. District Judge...

Another day, another corrupt Obama judge. Judge Stanley Bastian in Eastern Washington’s US District Court, an Obama appointee on Thursday issued a nationwide injunction blocking Postmaster General Louis DeJoy from making operational changes to the United States Postal Service ahead of the general election. The post office is an establishment in the executive branch and controlled by presidential appointees, but this Obama judge believes he runs the post office and controls the executive branch. The Democrat-media complex exploded last month and accused President Trump of “destroying” the US Postal Service after the President’s newly appointed Postmaster General made structural changes.

A federal judge has issued a restraining order, temporarily barring Detroit police from using a range of response tactics—including tear gas, rubber bullets, and batons—against “peaceful protesters” after a group accused officers of excessive force, with the city’s police chief dismissing the decision, saying no such methods have been used on people protesting peacefully. U.S. District Court Judge Laurie Michelson partially granted a temporary restraining order filed on Aug. 31 by Detroit Will Breathe against the city of Detroit (pdf), accusing police of using brutal tactics to deter protesters from practicing their free speech rights. “Since May 29, 2020, Defendants...

A federal judge on Monday extended the deadline for absentee ballots to be returned in Georgia, ruling that they must be counted if postmarked by Election Day and delivered up to three days afterward. The decision will likely result in tens of thousands of ballots being counted after Nov. 3 that would have otherwise been rejected, enough to swing close elections. The ruling invalidates Georgia’s requirement that ballots had to be received at county election offices by 7 p.m. on Election Day. U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross wrote that voters must be protected during the coronavirus pandemic, when record numbers...

A man who raped and strangled a 10-year-old Kansas girl in 1999 was executed this week, becoming the fifth federal inmate put to death this year. Keith Nelson received a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, after a higher court tossed out a previous ruling that the government was required to obtain a prescription for phentobarbital, the drug used to kill him. Questions about whether the drug caused pain prior to death had been a focus of appeals for Nelson, 45. He was the second inmate to be executed this week after the Trump administration resumed...

Kolfage, a Purple Heart veteran who lost an arm and two legs in Iraq in 2004, was arrested at his home in Florida and is accused of being the main beneficiary of the scam, allegedly pocketing a staggering $350,000 of donor money while he and his wife flaunted their extravagant lifestyles on social media. Newly resurfaced footage of the pair taken on June 24, 2019 shows the two men openly laughing and joking about peddling money from the border wall scheme, more than a year before the feds swooped in. In the video, part of We Build The Wall's 'Wall-A-Thon'...

"Google was one of the three largest bundlers of contributions to President Obama. The year after the America Invents Act was passed, Google contributions were almost $1 million. Google spent $18 million on lobbyists. What did Google get for its money? A new, weaker patent system that allows challenges to patents outside of court, without a jury, without presumption of validity, using a low standard of proof. Google and friends killed the presumption that makes patents valuable. The expectations of patent owners that their rights would be enforceable against infringers.... "As the U.S. weakens its patent system, other countries are...

FBI Attorney Admits Altering Email Used for FISA Application During "Crossfire Hurricane" Investigation Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, 38, pleaded guilty today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to a false statement offense stemming from his altering of an email in connection with the submission of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) application, announced John H. Durham, Special Attorney to the Attorney General. Pursuant to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), the guilty plea proceeding occurred via videoconference before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg. According to court documents and statements made...

Maybe Judge Luttig was right all along. I had the misgivings you’d expect back in late May, when I disagreed with J. Michael Luttig, the stellar scholar and former federal appeals court judge, regarding how the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should handle the Flynn case. At the time, that court’s three-judge panel had not yet heard oral argument on Michael Flynn’s mandamus petition — i.e., Flynn’s request that the panel find that federal district judge Emmet Sullivan was acting lawlessly. Sullivan had not only failed to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn; he...

(Reuters) - A U.S. judge late on Monday ordered all local boards of election in New York state to count “thousands” of absentee ballots received the day after a congressional primary held last June 23 but previously disqualified because of postmark problems. According to the ruling by Judge Analisa Torres of Federal District Court in Manhattan, the absentee ballots are to be counted “without regard to whether such ballots are postmarked by June 23.” Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic Party incumbent, got 40.29% of votes previously counted, while challenger Suraj Patel received 38.43%. The ruling also ordered ballots received on June...

A federal judge has ordered the New York Elections Board to count more than one thousand disqualified absentee ballots in the primary race between House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and challenger Suraj Patel. It appears that the limited ruling will not be enough to impact the outcome of the race. The New York Times estimates the ruling will affect 1,200 ballots. Maloney leads Patel by about 3,700 votes. Maloney declared victory in a statement and called on Patel to concede. “Weeks ago I called for all of these ballots to be counted," Maloney said. “Although the...

A man who lost his leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing ripped the decision of an appellate court Friday to toss the the death sentence and overturn three of the convictions of terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. “It’s ridiculous,” Marc Fucarile said when asked about the ruling on the local Boston WEEI radio show “Ordway, Merloni and Fauria.” Fucarile — who lost his right leg during the second of two finish-line explosions that killed three and left more than 260 wounded in April 2013 — said the case should be clear cut. “The guy did this. Put him to rest,” Fucarile...

BOSTON (CBS/AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston issued the decision more than six months after arguments were heard in the case. The April 15, 2013, attack killed three people and injured more than 260 others.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is the major means used to transport oil produced in the Bakken region of North Dakota to an existing pipeline in Illinois which can take the oil to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier this month a judge ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline to cease operating so that a new environmental review, which could take a year or more, could be conducted. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appears for the District of Columbia has issued a stay of that ruling, at least while the appeals court reviews it.

The Dakota Access Pipeline, an oil route from North Dakota to Illinois that has inspired intense protests and legal battles, must shut down pending an environmental review and be emptied of oil by Aug. 5, a district court ruled on Monday. It essentially vacates a federal permit that had allowed the pipeline to operate while the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which had granted the permits for the pipeline, conducted an extensive environmental impact review. The decision, which could be subject to appeal, is a victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Native American and environmental groups...