Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A judge is rejecting opponents’ latest attempt to stall California’s $64 billion high-speed rail project. But Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Raymond Cadei said Wednesday that he will consider their arguments before the state issues voter-approved bonds next month. He set a hearing for next month to consider their motion for a preliminary injunction.

U.S. District Court Judge Walter H. Rice In a recent article in Military.com, senior federal judge Walter H. Rice was quoted. The judge has been with the District Court since 1980.  His opinion about federal jurisdiction over legal carry on federal facilities is correct as to the state of current law, as far as I have determined. At the moment, federal officials can bar the carry of private arms at their facilities with proper signage. But it was the statement of the judge's personal opinion about the Second Amendment that was interesting. Judge Price said he supported the Second...

Desperate Measures For the sake of absurdity, suppose that I issue a nationwide injunction against all welfare payments because they violate fundamental American principles of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and limited government. Should our government immediately cease payments? Should it vow to appeal my ruling and to pass legislation limiting my authority? Of course not! A proper response is to laugh me out of the courtroom. Furthermore, if our government did appeal my “ruling” or pass legislation, then it would be validating my false authority and setting the precedent that some random citizen can override the duly elected Congress and president....

Thursday, March 16, 2017 The Leahy Rules for Supreme Court Confirmation Mean Gorsuch Must Be Confirmed In preparation for the Gorsuch hearing next week, we thought we would mention some of the Democrat Rules for confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice from their most senior member. The Leahy Rule (Part 1) on the President’s power to pick a Supreme Court Justice. And I think as members of the [Judiciary] Committee, we should respect the mandate the president has earned. The president had told us in 1980 and 1984 he would appoint judges of his philosophy. He was given a mandate...

A federal District Court judge in Maryland is considering whether he should order President Donald Trump to double the annual inflow of refugees up to 100,000 per year.

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye on Thursday told federal immigration officials to stop “stalking undocumented immigrants” at California courthouses. Cantil-Sakauye said she was “deeply concerned” that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are apparently seeking out undocumented immigrants for deportation at courthouses and courtrooms from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Casey Cooper is new to the bench, but he’s well-connected . Just three months into his tenure on the federal bench, and before his formal investiture ceremony later this week, newly minted — but well-connected — U.S. District Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper has been handed one of the most high-profile and politically sensitive American terrorism cases in recent years ... Cooper, 47, was part of the Obama administration’s transition team and is one of the more connected people in D.C. legal circles, Marimow notes. His wife, Amy Jeffress, worked at the Justice Department as a national security adviser to the...

BREAKING: Judge in Hawaii blocks Trump's new travel ban from taking effect nationwide tomorrow

ALBANY - Denying an inmate a motorized wheelchair is discriminatory under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, a federal judge has ruled. Northern District Judge Mae D'Agostino found that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision...failed to show that there were such safety risks in giving Nathaniel Wright the electric wheelchair that they outweighed his right to have the device.... Wright, 55, will complete a five-year sentence from Monroe County for first-degree sexual abuse next month.

The travel ban wars continue, but there’s an old saying about if at first you don’t succeed…Travel Ban 2.0 was launched this week to immediate protests from the usual list of suspects, but something seems to be different. The media was thrilled to announce fairly quickly that the revised order had been “dealt its first court setback,” but once you dug past the headline you found out that it really only applied to one specific family. (Reuters) A federal judge in Wisconsin dealt the first legal blow to President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban on Friday, barring enforcement of...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Latest on a Syrian man’s lawsuit alleging President Donald Trump’s new travel ban is blocking his efforts to bring his family to Wisconsin (all times local): 5:25 p.m. A federal judge in Madison has issued an order temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing his new travel ban against a Syrian family trying to reach Wisconsin. A Syrian man filed a complaint in federal court in Madison on Friday alleging the travel ban is unconstitutional and will prevent his family from leaving Aleppo and joining him in Wisconsin. The man had challenged Trump’s first...

A county judge in Oregon is under fire for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant use her private entrance to avoid being captured by federal agents. The judge is not facing criminal charges at this time; however, the Department of Justice is looking into the matter. “I was troubled because, on the face of it, what I heard sounded like potential federal criminal law violations and/or ethical violations,” U.S. Attorney Billy Williams told Willamette Week reporters. “Generally, we’re talking about obstruction of justice.” The case took place in January at the Multnomah County Courthouse in Oregon, where 22-year-old Diddier Pacheco Salazar...

A Modest Proposal on What to do with the 9th Circuit Court. The 9th Circuit Court in it’s current embodiment is a disaster. The latest constitutional crisis is a perfect example. A rouge judge put a stay on the implementation of an emergency executive order without doing any of the necessary legal groundwork, foundations and augment. This was approved by a panel of three judges also without establishing the necessary legal foundations to support the stay. This is more than just angering, it goes against everything the Constitution stands for. The stay effectively takes power away from the Executive branch...

Per the Article: Most everyone assumes that impeachment is the only means of removing federal judges and that the Constitution’s grant of good-behavior tenure is an implicit reference to impeachment. This Article challenges that conventional wisdom. Using evidence from England, the colonies, and the revolutionary state constitutions, the Article demonstrates that at the Founding, good-behavior tenure and impeachment had only the most tenuous of relationships. The original Constitution did not render impeachment the only possible means of removing federal judges with good-behavior tenure. Given the long tradition of adjudicating misbehavior in the ordinary courts, Congress may enact necessary and proper...

In July 1902, confident that he had found a judge opposed to "big railroad men and other members of large corporations," Theodore Roosevelt named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as his first appointee to the Supreme Court, delighted with a choice that their fellow Republican, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, called "our kind right through." Twenty months (and many convivial dinners at the White House) later, in the middle of an election year, Justice Holmes voted against his progressive president in the biggest railroad trust-busting case of the time, United States v. Northern Securities. "I could carve out of a...

What is done is done, and there can be no going back. I do want to go over some points that are outstanding in President Trump’s “immigration ban.” Number one is that President Trump had the right to issue and Executive Order on National Security without being questioned. No other President in history has been treated as unfairly as Donald Trump. Number two Donald Trump had every right to criticize liberal Judge Robart, who used his power of the law to kill President Trump’s power of the law in placing an Executive Order to protect National Security. President Trump’s power...

Judge Michelle T. Friedland, who is on the three-judge panel that will rule on President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at stopping terrorists from traveling to the United States, won the ACLU of Southern California’s LGBT Award in 2009, according to the Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. {..snip..}

A Seward woman who served prison time for the botched castration and overdose death of her sixth husband was arrested Monday over allegations she threatened to shoot a Westmoreland County judge. Tammy L. Felbaum, 58, who is transgender, is being held in the Westmoreland County Prison on $100,000 bail in connection with an incident at the courthouse. County park police allege Felbaum claimed to have in her purse “guns and an Uzi ... also a rocket launcher” when she went through metal detectors prior to a scheduled civil court hearing before Judge Chris Scherer, according to an affidavit. She is...

Judge Robart took it upon himself to substitute his judgment for the president’s. The judge gave unwarranted deference to the speculative, vague interests asserted by the states of Washington and Minnesota, who claimed without any concrete evidence that the temporary suspension of entry of aliens from the seven countries “adversely affects” their own “States’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel.” This preposterous conclusory assertion overlooks the fact that the affected individuals temporarily barred from entering the country are not residents of these states and are not entitled to the states’ protection.

The “start of impeachment we’ve all been waiting for?” One must wonder if attorney Elura Nanos has a mouse in her pocket when, after just 17 days in office, she is cheering for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. “Impeachment seems a major potential, and the only question is whether we’ll have to wait until the midterm elections to see it happen,” she penned in an anti-Trump piece for LawNewz. Democrats who sat on their hands for the last eight years suddenly have a newfound “respect for the Constitution” with a Republican president and, in a real stretch, Nanos jumps...