Free Republic

We have often discussed how cities and universities will use the threat of protests to block or shutdown free speech, particularly of conservative speakers or groups. We now have a major decision out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that could prove an important precedent in resisting the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States. In Meinecke v. City of Seattle, the court ruled against Seattle in a case involving the arrest of a pro-life protester. Matthew Meinecke was harassed by Antifa and other counterprotesters, but police arrested Meineche when he refused to yield...

On December 20, 2023, US District Judge Cormac J. Carney issued an order granting a preliminary injunction against the defendants (the State of California government). The injunction stopped the state from enforcing the blatantly unconstitutional SB-2 law declaring most of California as “sensitive places” where even licensed concealed carriers were forbidden to carry arms in public. The state asked for an order to stop the injunction from going into effect on December 22, 2023. The stay was granted on December 30, 2023, by an administrative three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. The stay was appealed to the Ninth Circuit three-judge...

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a decision to throw out felony conspiracy and weapons charges against Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy, two of his sons and another man. Before U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro’s January 2018 dismissal, which the government appealed, she found that the federal government improperly withheld evidence. Prosecutors had willfully withheld video surveillance, maps and FBI interview information in violation of due process required by the U.S. Constitution, the judge found. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. “We can find no grounds for concluding that the district court abused its...

A federal appeals court on Thursday lifted several injunctions that were blocking the Trump administration’s rule restricting immigration eligibility for individuals deemed likely to become public charges. “Public charge” denotes immigrants who are likely to require government assistance, such as food stamps or Medicaid. The Trump administration had moved to restrict the number of new immigrants who would require such assistance, but several courts blocked the rule in October before it could take effect. In its 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed preliminary injunctions against the administration’s rule from federal courts in Washington and California. The rule...

SAN FRANCISCO — A divided U.S. appeals court late Friday refused to immediately allow the Trump administration to enforce a ban on asylum for any immigrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The ban is inconsistent with an existing U.S. law and an attempted end-run around Congress, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 decision. "Just as we may not, as we are often reminded, 'legislate from the bench,' neither may the Executive legislate from the Oval Office," 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, a nominee of Republican President George W. Bush, wrote for...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will hold a hearing Friday to examine a report that allowed two Bush administration officials to escape any formal punishment regarding their role in drafting the legal justification for the harsh interrogations of detainees. Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two former high-level Bush administration officials who drafted the legal basis for the Bush administration’s treatment of overseas terror suspects, escaped any formal punishment in a long-awaited Justice Department report released Friday evening. Leahy also called on federal appeals court judge Bybee to step down from the lifetime appointment over his role in the...

In an angry editorial published in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, the newspaper's editorial board called on president Barack Obama to “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses.” The list of offenders “in a credible investigation” is a long one, including former vice president Dick Cheney; his chief of staff, David Addington; former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the lawyers for the Office of Legal Counsel who helped draft the documents clearing the way for “enhanced interrogation“ of prisoners and enemy combatants. In addition, the editors called for charges to be brought against Jose...

We managed to repeal the 18th Amendment, which created Prohibition. It is time to repeal the 17th. What? You have no idea what the 17th Amendment is? Well, it is the one that effectively ended federalism by taking the power to appoint U.S. senators from state legislatures and having the citizens directly elect them, as they had always done with the House of Representatives. We may not get better senators, but it is likely they would not try dictating to the states what they should do — as they did when they set the national speed limit at 55 mph...

For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations. While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final...

Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts. Representatives for John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, subjects of the ethics probe, have encouraged former Justice Department and White House officials to contact new officials at the department to point out the troubling precedent of imposing sanctions on legal advisers, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process is not complete. The effort began in recent weeks, the...

Jay Bybee has been called the "forgotten man" in the mounting furor over the CIA's harsh interrogation of imprisoned terror suspects — but he's quickly assuming a leading role. Though the mild-mannered lawyer has ... as a top Justice Department official he approved an array of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" against alleged al-Qaeda members that many observers call torture. .... Now a federal judge, Bybee, 55, led the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel ... Bybee infamously claimed that interrogation practices aren't legally torture unless they inflict pain resembling that of "serious physical injury" such as organ failure or...

John Podesta, the head of a left-leaning think tank who ran the Obama transition team, is calling for the impeachment of Jay Bybee, a federal judge and former Bush administration official who wrote one of the “torture memos” made public last week. In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-Mich.), Podesta says that since he has "issued opinions that violate the Constitution and concealed relevant aspects of his legal views and professional conduct from the Senate, Bybee has neither the legal nor moral authority to sit in judgment of others."...