Free Republic

An Arlington General District Court judge declared Virginia's abusive-driver fees unconstitutional Tuesday, the first such ruling in Northern Virginia and the third in the state since the fees took effect. The fees, which range from $750 to $3,000 for such infractions as reckless driving, are levied in addition to fines and court costs. Oscar Reyes Hernandez was convicted of failing to obey a traffic signal and driving without a license and faced fees of up to $750. Instead he was fined $100 and must pay court costs of $140 for the July 7 incident. The attorney general's office will appeal...

:Dubya's last stand By Joseph Farah, Posted: March 8, 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Lame duck George W. Bush obviously has no care for how his party performs in the 2008 presidential election. But he has a little more time to consider his own fate in the 2006 mid-term congressional elections. Oh, it won't make any difference whether Republicans or Democrats are elected this fall to the rest of us. After all, with Republicans in charge of Congress and the White House for the last six years, spending has increased way beyond anything we imagined during President Clinton's eight years in office. Republicans...

WASHINGTON, DC—Steve Swanson, Chairman of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, announced today that the U.S. lumber industry is challenging the constitutionality of a dispute settlement system under the North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly referred to as Chapter 19. The Chapter 19 system allows bi-national panels of individuals to make binding decisions about application of U.S. law to U.S. unfair trade findings contrary to due process and other constitutional requirements. “The Constitution does not permit these panels to be the final arbiter of whether U.S. law provides for relief from unfair subsidies and dumping for U.S. producers and workers,”...

SEATTLE -- The state Supreme Court has ruled that the Privacy Act prohibits a parent from eavesdropping on a child's phone conversations. The case came to the Supreme Court because of a purse-snatching in Friday Harbor. A 17-year-old boy was convicted of second-degree robbery, based in part on testimony from his girlfriend's mom, who overhead him discussing the crime on the phone with her daughter. The daughter had taken a cordless phone into her bedroom and closed the door. In another room, the mom pressed the "speakerphone" button on the base of the phone, listened to the conversation and took...

I haven't read or heard anything about its status in the federal courts in a while. Has a suit been brought involving the CFR Act?ff

House votes to limit Federal court’s authority! (Implications?) http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/428894|top|09-23-2004::16:46|reuters.html An interesting discussion question for my Freeper friends. As I remember (I could be wrong, G*d knows I am quite often) the American Constitution states that the legislative branch has the authority to set the jurisdiction of the Court. And as I also remember, after the ratification of the Constitution, the Supreme Court (of it’s own volition) expanded it’s authority to allow it to declare whether any law is constitutional. Taken to the extreme that authority could allow the creation of an American judicial tyranny. (Or a 12 person oligarchy) But...

WELCOME TO SODOM AND GOMORRAH, U.S.A. by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher March 2, 2004 The homosexual lobby can say what they like, but the fact remains these so-called 'gay marriages' are neither legitimate nor lawful, despite what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom or New Paltz, New York Mayor Jason West may think. Newsom cites the equal protection under the laws clause of the California State Constitution as his justification for violating Proposition 22, the ballot initiative overwhelmingly passed by California voters in 2002 that specifically prohibits marriage between two persons of the same gender.I recently spoke with an attorney...

In the months following the September 11th terrorist attacks, questions arose about whether Congress could continue to function if many of its members were killed or injured in a future terrorist attack. These concerns resulted in the creation of a commission that advocated a first in American history, namely the appointment of individuals to the U.S. House. A constitutional amendment has been proposed that would provide the method for such appointments following a catastrophe that killed or disabled a majority of the people in Congress. I strongly oppose this constitutional amendment, because I believe an appointed Congress would become an...

CLEARWATER, Fla. - A judge on Friday rejected Gov. Jeb Bush's request that an independent guardian continue working in the interests of a severely brain-damaged woman at the center of a right-to-die case. Chief Judge David Demers ruled that he would not reappoint a guardian to the case, citing pending litigation over the constitutionality of the law that called for the guardian for Terri Schiavo. "Terri Schiavo yet again has been denied an independent voice in the proceedings that may very well determine the outcome of her life," the governor's office said in a statement. Florida courts repeatedly have said...

The United States Senate, often thought of as the world’s greatest deliberating body, has an interesting idiosyncrasy which can hold up the entire process of debating and passing legislation.  This potential clog in the plumbing of legislating is called the filibuster.  Basically, the filibuster is the ability of one or more senators to hold the floor and refuse to yield it to another senator from the opposing view.  The senator or group continuously talks until the bill is dropped, the senators get tired of talking, or a supermajority votes to stop them.  This paper will explore the filibuster, taking special...