Free Republic

A hallmark of democratic self-government is that the people should discuss, debate, and vote on important policy matters. And in America their votes should count, except when they clearly violate the people’s more settled will as expressed in the U.S. Constitution. Where the Constitution is silent, the task of a conscientious judge is to respect the constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials. That’s what’s at stake in the two marriage cases on which the Supreme Court is expected to rule within the next week or so.

As Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. was struggling with how to cast the decisive vote in a 1986 Supreme Court case that would end up devastating the gay rights movement, he told his fellow justices that he had never met a homosexual. In truth, one of his four law clerks that term was gay. The atmosphere at the court today is far different from 1986, with a pace of change that may have surpassed that in the rest of society. Openly gay law clerks are now common in the chambers of both liberal and conservative justices. In January, Chief Justice...

As LifeNews reported today, the judge in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial dropped three murder charges related to babies he killed in his horrific abortion-infanticide process. One of the three charges the judge dropped includes a 28-week unborn baby who was killed in an abortion-infanticide and eventually discovered in a freezer at Gosnell’s clinic. LifeNews has identified that another charge involved “Baby B,” about whom a Gosnell staffer testified was a newborn child who survived a failed abortion and was still breathing into a shoe box. Kareema Cross told the jury she saw at least 10 children who were breathing...

Summary: According to a new, comprehensive report by Lex Machina, more than half of all patent lawsuits in the US now come from patent trolls.Patent lawsuits are used as weapons in business wars between companies such as Oracle vs. Google and Apple vs. Samsung. Behind the intellectual property (IP) headlines, however, Lex Machina, a Silicon Valley startup, has found that patent troll lawsuits have increased from 24 percent of cases filed in 2007 to 56% in 2012. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a "patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming...

A federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, has ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make the morning-after birth control pill available to people of any age without a prescription. The order overturned a 2011 decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to require a prescription for girls under 17. The FDA said it couldn't comment because it is an ongoing legal mater. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended last year that oral contraceptives be sold over the counter in an effort to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in the United States. Opponents of...

Dear readers, The present gay "marriage" debate is an important one, but I am more worried about the broader, encompassing matter at hand, namely the dark forces trying to redefine social institutions essential to a free society. The family is traditionally the private institution commanding the most intense loyalty from its members, along with churches (at least in happier times). Leftist theorists are now working to drill down past the family, extending their hands into the crib to rob us of our God-given individual identities as males and females and the important roles and responsibilities which have always accompanied these...

So I just noticed today that a few of my "Facebook friends" more like 2 people I haven't spoken to in twenty years, had those stupid gay marriage red equality signs up. I defriended them all, anyone else have the same thing happen?

The list of amici contains several names that will be familiar to anyone whose has had the bad habit of following American politics. Beyond their political coloration, which in many instances seems quite changeable, they do present a typical Washington motley: underemployed lobbyists, society hostesses, TV gasbags, defenestrated politicians, and political hangers-on, most of them draping themselves in the phony-baloney job titles that only our preposterous political culture can pretend to endow with authority (“adviser,” “consultant,” “commentator,” “advocate”). In other cases there are references to real jobs—former special assistants, speechwriters, undersecretaries—that the amici once held and abandoned several administrations ago,...

AFP - With Thermos bottles, sleeping bags and a few good books, about a dozen people lined up Friday to be among the first to attend oral arguments at the US Supreme Court on gay marriage. Never mind that the hearings don't begin until next Tuesday. They said they were determined to have front-row seats at one of the year's most anticipated sessions of the highest court in the nation.

President Obama is for the fifth time trying to ram through the Senate confirmation of a radical pro-abortion, anti-gun rights activist to become a judge on the nation’s most important federal appellate court. Previously, the candidate, a renowned leftist attorney who advocates for the rights of terrorists, has been blocked by Senate Republicans, but Obama refuses to give up. For the firth time, Caitlin J. Halligan’s nomination is up for Senate approval to fill a vacancy on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Halligan is currently general counsel for the Manhattan District Aattorney’s office in New York. It’s hardly...

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MORRISTOWN (WATE) - A same-sex couple applied for a marriage license in Morristown Wednesday, despite a state law that won't recognize their union. It's part of an effort by a group called the Campaign for Southern Equality. In a procession surrounded by friends and family, Matt Griffin and Raymie Wolfe made their way to the county clerk's desk in a ceremonial request for a marriage license. "Based on Tennessee law, I will not be able to issue a marriage license," the clerk told the couple. It was the answer they expected, but it was still an important step for the...

In a landmark settlement, the Pentagon has agreed to give full back pay to U.S. service members who were discharged due to their sexual orientation under the military's “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The payouts will be granted to service members dismissed from the military under the now-repealed policy on or after November 2004. “This means so much to those of us who dedicated ourselves to the military, only to be forced out against our will for being who we are,” former Air Force Staff Sgt. Richard Collins said in a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought...

A judge described a graffiti gang who caused £150,000 ($242,000) worth of damage in planned attacks on trains as “talented artists”, as he locked them up for a combined total of almost four years. Keiron Cummings, 21, Alex Rowe, 22, and Billy McColl, 17, targeted train and tube carriages across London in a three-year campaign described as vandalism on “an industrial scale”. The trio, who called themselves “SMT”, caused huge disruption to train services by spraying their tag onto carriages under cover of darkness. But Judge Henry Blacksell said the defendants had “got talent”, and that he would pass the...

A federal judge has sided with the ACLU against the state of North Carolina and blocked the state from offering residents “choose life” license plates without providing plates with the opposing view. In his decision on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge James Fox, who last year issued an order temporarily blocking the state from producing the “choose life” plates, found the plates to be unconstitutional in the absence of other license plates that promoted a pro-choice position. …

A San Francisco couple is waiting to find out if the U.S. Supreme Court will take their case challenging the 1996 law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. Karen Golinski and Amy Cunninghis got married during the brief window in 2008 when gay and lesbian couples could tie the knot in California. Golinski immediately tried to add her wife to her employer-sponsored health care plan. But because she is married to another woman and works for the U.S. government, her otherwise routine request was denied...

Despite all the investigation, public outrage and scrutiny over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, at least one major piece of evidence has not yet been thoroughly analyzed: his cellphone. Police found it at the scene the night Trayvon was shot, its battery dead. Authorities tried but failed to download data from the phone, then asked his father, Tracy Martin, for the security code so they could unlock it. They didn't get the code and turned the phone over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. A crime-lab specialist there had only limited success accessing the messages, photos and other...

Original title: Romney's 'October surprise' WILL be released: Judge allows Mitt's secret evidence in bitter divorce of ex-Staples CEO to be made public --------------------------- Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred has won her battle to have Mitt Romney's sworn testimony in the bitter divorce of the ex-Staples CEO released to the public - in what is claimed could provide a damaging blow to his campaign. The Boston Globe filed the application to unseal the records and lift a gagging order on all parties involved after receiving a tip-off that there was 'juicy information about Romney' in the documents. On Wednesday, there were...

If Elena Kagan was not a woman, she may not be sitting on the country's highest judicial bench, the Supreme Court justice told an audience at the University of Tennessee on Friday. The candid statement came early in an hourlong conversation-style presentation Kagan held Friday in the Cox Auditorium in the Alumni Memorial Building, where she also discussed the strategy of deciding the country's top cases and her affinity for hunting with fellow Justice Antonin Scalia. While seated in padded armchairs on stage, Kagan told UT Law Dean Doug Blaze that being a woman in the courtroom comes with some...

A Massachusetts man who pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old in 2009 is now seeking visitation rights for the child he fathered — a sensitive case that could force the victim to maintain contact with her rapist. That possibility has left the teen mother in an emotional tailspin, according to Fox 25 Boston, and she doesn’t want to interact with the man — a then-20-year-old she had met through the same church. “She got raped at 14,” the victim’s mother told Fox 25. “She decided to keep her baby. And now she has to hand her baby over for a...

Europe’s highest court on human rights will decide if a lesbian can adopt her partner’s child, in this case stripping the father of his parental rights to his son. The case is very simple according to Gregor Puppinck of the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ). “The two female partners want to oust the father and, since the law does not allow them to do so, they claim it is discriminatory,” Gregor reported in Turtle Bay and Beyond, C-FAM’s blog. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights will hear the case X and others v. Austria...

Judge Vaughn Walker, the now-retired federal judge in San Francisco who nullified California’s Proposition 8 in 2010, said if judges really are umpires, they must sometimes “move the strike zone” in order to champion social issues like same-sex marriage. “Case by case, what judges do and must do is take account of the pitcher and the batter in the legal arena, watch the windup, the throw, the curve, and the delivery and then, where they believe appropriate, move the strike zone,” Walker wrote on Aug. 28 in the University of Illinois Law Review. But Walker, flouting Justice Antonin Scalia and...

Happy birthday, Constitution! Today marks the 225th anniversary of the signing of this unique and prescient document. Every American should take a moment to reflect on what a treasure we have in America. Our constitutional republic has survived for over two centuries. The Framers of the Constitution believed in a separation of powers, so that no government—and certainly no particular branch of government—would become so mighty, so imperial, as to threaten the God-given freedom of the People. And so they created a House of Representatives to represent the people in proportion to the population of a state. They created a...

September 4, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Nicaraguan Mennonites say that they have been persecuted by government authorities since they chose to shelter ex-lesbian Lisa Miller and her daughter Isabella following their escape from the United States, but add that they are willing to suffer and even die to protect Isabella from a court-ordered custody transfer to her non-biological lesbian “mother.� Lisa Miller and her daughter fled the country in late 2009 in order to avoid sharing custody of Isabella with Miller’s former homosexual partner, Janet Jenkins, with whom she had entered into a Vermont civil union. Jenkins is not biologically related...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal court ruled on Tuesday that a controversial Texas voter identification law discriminates against black and Hispanic voters, effectively killing the law before it could take effect for the November 6 presidential election. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling. ..

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal court rejects voting districts drawn by Texas Legislature, finds maps discriminatory.

Rep. Kerry Gauthier, D-Duluth, won't face charges for having oral sex with a minor at the Thompson Hill rest stop near Duluth, but at the least he's revealed himself to be a dishonest person, lying to the 17-year-old about his age and to police about what exactly happened in the woods that night. . . Gauthier, 56, was then a bit more forthcoming, telling the officer that he met the boy through an ad he posted on Craigslist. In the ad, Gauthier characterized himself as a 43-year-old looking for man-on-man sex with "no strings attached." His ad received a...

August 10, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Federal prosecutors are presenting their case in a trial against a Mennonite pastor who is accused of helping a single motherescape from the United States with her daughter to evade court-ordered visits with a lesbian whom the court declared to be the girl’s second “mother.” Ex-lesbian Lisa Miller fled the country after her efforts failed to keep former “civil union” partner Janet Jenkins from having access to her child, Isabella. Jenkins never adopted Isabella and has no biological relationship with the girl, who exhibited signs of emotional trauma following forced visits with Jenkins, according to...

[OFFICIAL CHARGES OF DISCRIMINATION FILED BY GAY RIGHTS REPRESENTATION AGAINST CHICK FIL A - IL] The Civil Rights Agenda, a local LGBT rights advocacy group, filed multiple complaints with the Illinois Department of Human Rights Thursday, alleging that the Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A restaurant chain’s “intolerant corporate culture” violates Illinois law and a provision in the state’s Human Rights Act. “In our current high speed media and social media environment, Chick-fil-A has announced and caused to be published, to hundreds of millions of people, that LGBT people are unacceptable and objectionable,” said Jacob Meister, Governing Board President of TCRA and the attorney...

SACRAMENTO – ProtectMarriage.com, the official proponents of California’s voter-passed Proposition 8, petitioned the United States Supreme Court today to review the misguided decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declaring the initiative unconstitutional. Earlier this year in a 2-1 decision in the Perry v Brown case, the Ninth Circuit – the most frequently overturned federal appellate court in the nation – errantly upheld a federal district judge’s decision that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited California from enacting Prop 8 to restore the traditional definition of marriage between a man and a woman. “Marriage between a...

HARTFORD, Conn.—Part of a federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman and denies tax, health and other benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional, a judge in Connecticut ruled Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant in Hartford issued a 104-page decision saying the provision in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act violates the Fifth Amendment right to equal protection. The provision "obligates the federal government to single out a certain category of marriages as excluded from federal recognition, thereby resulting in an inconsistent distribution of federal marital benefits," Bryant wrote. Bryant also noted that...

Judge Pezzetti This Soldier Served Our Country. Now He Needs Your Support By Eric Ross, PhD, Acting President of NCFM Greater NY Chapter, Investigative Reporter, National Writers’ Syndicate In 2011 Sgt. Casey Gray was called to Active Duty in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Unfortunately, he was already in the midst of a “battle” − his child custody case in Oakland County, Pontiac, Michigan. In February 2011, the Hon. Elizabeth Pezzetti, presiding over his case, said in court that she would never give custody to the father because he was a soldier in the US Army. While deployed, Sergeant Gray...

An ailing 83-year-old lesbian asked the Supreme Court on Monday to hear her legal challenge against a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and woman, attempting to place her case on a fast-track to the top court. The suit, filed by Edith Schlain Windsor in 2010, targets the Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 that denies federal benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples. Windsor's petition attempts to bypass the U.S. Court of Appeals, which is slated to hear the case in September. With Windsor's filing, there are three...

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Nev.) said Monday he “still has a very high opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts," despite Roberts opinion upholding the individual mandate in Obamacare as constitutional. Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been one of the earliest and most forceful voices in the Senate speaking out against the constitutionality of the individual mandate when it was first proposed in 2009. On Monday, however, Hatch told CNSNews.com that Roberts “certainly had the right” to rule that the mandate is constitutional as a tax. “Naturally, I...

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday accused the Justice Department of using data from an “agent of the Democratic Party” to bolster its case for blocking Texas' controversial voter ID law. Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, who represents Texas, said he’s "disappointed" and concerned by the "unacceptable" move, demanding an explanation in a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder. The letter notes that the Justice Department is using data compiled by a company whose client list has included President Obama’s own election campaign. "The Department of Justice has a responsibility to enforce and uphold the laws of...

Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations. Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the...

Has the SCOTUS EVER taken an unConstitutional law and changed the original premise to make it Constitutional? If the new 'wording' (TAX) had been in the original Bill, it NEVER would have passed!

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court cited First Amendment rights to free speech in striking down a law that made it a federal crime to falsely claim to have been awarded military-honor medals. The 6-3 majority opinion upheld a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that had declared unconstitutional the Stolen Valor Act, a 2006 statute Congress passed "to protect the reputation and meaning" of military honors.

May 31, 2012 (HLIWorldWatch.org) - Anyone who is concerned about the influence of the homosexual agenda on reshaping traditional values must become intimately familiar with the major tactics that homophiles commonly employ in order to anticipate them and respond in charity and truth. Homophile strategists are very adept at manipulating public opinion with an arsenal of six tactics that are based upon deceptions and half‑truths: Exploit the “victim” status; Use the sympathetic media; Confuse and neutralize the churches; Slander and stereotype Christians; Bait and switch (hide their true nature); and Intimidation. One reason these tactics have worked so well is...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider reinstating part of the conviction of the man who planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, case the government says will greatly affect terrorism prosecutions. Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2005 after being convicted on nine counts for plotting to bomb the airport around Jan. 1, 2000. Customs agents in Port Angeles caught him with explosives in the trunk of his rental car when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999. The ensuing scare prompted the cancellation of...

As usual, the Waynesville, Ohio public school had to back down against the powerful gay Lamda Legal organization which lawyered up for a gay student who wanted to wear a "Jesus Is Not A Homophobe" tee shirt in school. Well, the student, not knowing much about Jesus to begin with, should have understood that Jesus fears nothing, but he will judge many things, such as adultery, homosexuality, etc. if there is no repentance. I asked the Ohio judge, who made the decision, if a student could be allowed to wear a shirt saying, "God Judged Sodom and Gomorrah." The said...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has refused to take up a Boston University student's constitutional challenge to a $675,000 penalty for illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them on the Internet. The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., who was successfully sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally sharing music on peer-to-peer networks. In 2009, a jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000, or $22,500 for each song he illegally downloaded and shared.

RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) – Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring blasted state lawmakers who voted to reject openly-gay deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Tracy Thorne-Begland’s nomination to be a Richmond General District Court judge. “It is hard to think about what happened at the General Assembly and not conclude that it is a form of bigotry,” said Herring during a Tuesday morning news conference. “Anytime my elected officials exercise in behavior that is bigoted, it embarrasses me.” Earlier Tuesday morning, state delegates voted down Begland’s nomination. Thirty-three delegates voted for Begland, 31 voted against him. Ten delegates abstained from the vote, 26 delegates...

CBS/AP) BOSTON - President John F. Kennedy's only surviving child is celebrating what would have been his 95th birthday this month by honoring three Iowa judges who were ousted after the court unanimously decided to legalize same-sex marriages. . . . The three judges will receive a sterling silver ship's lantern symbolizing a beacon of hope. The award, which was designed by Kennedy's husband, Edwin Schlossberg, and crafted by Tiffany & Co., resembles one belonging to the U.S. Navy's oldest commissioned warship, the USS Constitution, or "Old Ironsides."

Since the Supreme Court's historic three-day ObamaCare hearings in late March, the president and his supporters have tried to pressure the Justices into upholding that law, asserting that any other decision would overstep the court's constitutional bounds. Ruling against ObamaCare would not be what the president called illegitimate "judicial activism," but an appropriate exercise of the Supreme Court's core constitutional role. "Judicial activism" is one of those agreeably ambiguous terms that can support almost any criticism of the courts. Under our constitutional system, judicial activism entails judges rewriting rather than interpreting the laws, exercising "will instead of judgment," in Alexander...

President Obama and his supporters have had a turbulent relationship with Supreme Court. It reached a low point when he said that striking down his massive health care overhaul—which he said “was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”—would be an act of illicit “judicial activism.” Though the president later backtracked, his allies continue to lament the prospect that the Supreme Court will do its job—most recently in a Chicago Tribune op-ed penned by House Minority Nancy Pelosi this week. The episode harkens back to a nasty chapter in legal history: the clash between the Court and...

A gut-wrenching example of the lengths to which men will go to silence the voices of conscience recently played out in an Ontario Court of Justice. There, Judge S. Ford Clements sentenced pro-life advocate Mary Wagner to 92 more days in jail, on top of the 88 days she’d already spent behind bars, all because she has been walking into the waiting rooms in Canadian abortion clinics and sharing hope with the women who are waiting to have their babies killed. And the story gets worse. Clements was so outraged by Wagner’s passion for life that he lashed out at...

...Fulford also ruled the mandatory pension payments represented an "unconstitutional taking of private property without full compensation" and a violation of collective bargaining rights of the public workers....

In the eight years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may not criminalize private homosexual conduct, courts and legislatures across the country have struggled to define gay rights. The debate changed for both sides after a watershed 2003 Supreme Court ruling in a case that originated in Houston. The court voted 6-3 to guarantee privacy rights for gay men and lesbians - reversing a 1986 decision that permitted states to outlaw homosexual acts, even in homes. The Houston man at the center of the groundbreaking decision died last month of a heart condition. John Geddes Lawrence was 68....

Republican president hopeful Newt Gingrich doubled down on his criticism of federal judges and the Supreme Court on Sunday as chief rival Mitt Romney defended his record against likely Democratic attacks. With close to two weeks before GOP voters start choosing their nominee, Gingrich is courting the conservative primary voters he will need to win in Iowa and sustain his campaign against Romney, whose superior organization and pile of cash has him seeming ever more confident as he looks ahead to the general election. "There is steady encroachment of secularism through the courts to redefine America as a nonreligious country...