Free Republic

Maria Teresa Kumar is a self-proclaimed Catholic and former member of the board of Planned Parenthood. She was also the Saturday guest host of MSNBC’s Velshi where she accused the Supreme Court of implementing Catholicism across the country after it struck down Roe v. Wade. During a discussion with Slate editor, podcaster, and NBC law and politics analyst Dahlia Lithwick, Kumar declared the U.S. is now going against global trends, “just last year we saw South American countries, heavily Catholic countries like Colombia, like Mexico, saying that abortion was the law of the land. We have a Supreme Court justice...

The jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has begun its deliberations. As we wait, it is worth acknowledging that this trial has come to stand for what may well be the future of criminal defense law in America. Put aside the tactical errors of the prosecutors and the trial antics of a flamboyant judge and even the radicalization of the vigilante right—what is left is a snapshot of what will happen every time jurors contemplate how guns, protests, and hair-trigger self-defense combine in public spaces. And it looks very much like passing judgment over a shootout at the O.K. Corral....

Laurence Tribe explains why Congress should aim to work at three speeds. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard, about some of the legal questions the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s behavior has brought up. A portion of that conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, is below. Dahlia Lithwick: We’ve had quite anxious listener mail this week saying, what does Congress do? What teeth can Congress put into a system where essentially the nihilist argument has been made—“I spit on your system, your system does not...

Omar Mateen claimed at various times to be aligned with terrorist groups including ISIS, Hezbollah, and the al-Nusra Front. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson does not consider any of those bloodthirsty outfits “the greatest threat to our homeland security today.” That description, Dickinson argues, best fits the National Rifle Association. “The NRA's unhinged gun advocacy,” he wrote in a Wednesday article, “has created a soft underbelly to our homeland security that radicals are exploiting to inflict mass murder.” Dickinson declared, “Make no mistake: The NRA paved the way for the Orlando attack,” given that -- “ The NRA's lobbyists and political...

For the first time in a decade, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke during oral arguments. Just last week, CNN wrote about the ten-year anniversary of Thomas's last question at oral arguments. That anniversary, February 22, came on the same day the Supreme Court first heard oral arguments after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who was Thomas's ideological soul mate and who had defended his lack of questions over the years. According to reporters in the courtroom Monday, Thomas asked a government attorney, Ilana H. Eisenstein, several questions during a case concerning gun ownership and domestic violence. The question...

Ever since George Zimmerman gunned down Trayvon Martin in his Sanford, Fla., gated community, it’s become an article of faith that the rash of lethal shootings in public places—from the Florida moviegoer who was killed after a texting and popcorn-throwing incident to Jordan Davis, shot in his car at a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station to last week’s lethal shooting in an Arizona Walmart—is attributable to the “stand your ground” laws enacted over the past decade in 26 states across the country. Aggressive human interaction, post-Trayvon, now follows a painfully familiar pattern: An altercation occurs. Someone says he feared for his...

Ever heard of Dahlia Lithwick? No? Don’t feel bad. I hadn’t either until I read her piece of … something or other … on Slate about the Supreme Court hearing this week on Obamacare. A quick Google search turned up her Wikipedia entry, which tells me she’s a Canadian and contributing editor at Newsweek and senior editor at Slate. In other words, a committed leftist. Lithwick writes: This morning in America’s highest court, freedom seems to be less about the absence of constraint than about the absence of shared responsibility, community, or real concern for those who don’t want...

After three days of arguments before the Supreme Court, the Obama administration and its supporters have been found in contempt. Not of the court, but of the Constitution. Twenty-six states and the National Federation of Independent Business challenged the constitutionality of President Obama's signature piece of domestic legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The sophistries on which the Obamaphiles relied to defend their health care power grab were perhaps best summarized by Slate legal columnist Dahlia Lithwick: "That the law is constitutional is best illustrated by the fact that -- until recently -- the Obama administration expended almost...