Free Republic

A Wisconsin judge has decided – in a fight over families' access to milk from cows they own – that Americans "do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow." The ruling comes from Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Fiedler in a court fight involving a number of families who owned their own cows, but boarded them on a single farm. The judge said that's a "dairy farm" and is subject to the rules and regulations of the state of Wisconsin. "It's always a surprise when a judge says you don't have the fundamental right...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday reaffirmed its earlier ruling in a controversial case involving unlawful police entry. The court granted a rehearing, then supplied a five-page opinion on its May 12 opinion that declared that Hoosiers no longer had a legal right to resist police officers who enter their home without a legal basis to do so.

As Ed Whelan has noted, today the Fourth Circuit handed down a decision against both Virginia and Liberty University in their cases challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. While this is a defeat for the particular plaintiffs and a boon for the government insofar as it eliminates two more fronts on which the law is being attacked, it’s hardly a victory for Obamacare itself. Both decisions rest on grounds that will not affect the other appellate decisions now en route to the Supreme Court.

New Yorkers do not have a constitutional right to carry a concealed handgun in public, a federal judge ruled yesterday. In a case brought by four New Yorkers challenging the denial of "concealed carry" gun permits by four state judges, Southern District Judge Cathy Seibel said she found persuasive the reasoning of the Illinois' Court of Appeals in People v. Marin, 795 N.E.2d 958 (2003), that the overriding purpose of gun statutes should be to prevent innocent people from being victimized by gun violence. As such, Judge Seibel ruled, that granting licenses to carry concealed firearms is a matter of...

Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn reports the disappointing news that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the State of Virginia lacks the standing to sue the federal government over the Obama health-care law. The decision was based on a procedural question over the right to sue, and therefore does not change the high likelihood that this issue will be decided by the Supreme Court. Fortunately, it also appears as if the decision will not help the Obama administration bolster its legal case against the individual mandate. As Haberkorn reports, “The legal victories might not provide the administration with much...

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has rejected two Obamacare constitutional challenges, on the creative premise that the individual mandate is a tax, and that the Anti-Injunction Act requires that a tax already be implemented in order for plaintiffs to have standing to sue on the basis that a tax is unconstitutional.

SANTA FE, New Mexico (Reuters) - A New Mexico judge on Wednesday blocked a move by the state's Republican governor to make it harder for illegal immigrants to keep driver's licenses in the state. Governor Susana Martinez's administration last month ordered the state to reverify the physical residency of foreign nationals who hold New Mexico driver's licenses in order to get or keep their licenses.But District Court Judge Sarah Singleton in Santa Fe issued a temporary restraining order blocking the program, arguing in a brief ruling that "irreparable injury" would occur from "constitutional deprivations to the applicants

A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of Alabama's new law cracking down on illegal immigration, ruling Monday that she needed more time to decide whether the law opposed by the Obama administration, church leaders and immigrant-rights groups is constitutional. The brief order by U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Blackburn means the law won't take effect as scheduled on Thursday. The ruling was cheered by opponents who have compared the law to old Jim Crow-era statutes against racial integration. But Blackburn didn't address whether the law is constitutional, and she could still let all or parts of the law take effect...

New York businessman James Lieto was an innocent bystander in a fraud investigation last year. Federal agents seized $392,000 of his cash anyway. An armored-car firm hired by Mr. Lieto to carry money for his check-cashing company got ensnared in the FBI probe. Agents seized about $19 million—including Mr. Lieto's money—from vaults belonging to the armored-car firm's parent company. He is one among thousands of Americans in recent decades who have had a jarring introduction to the federal system of asset seizure. Some 400 federal statutes—a near-doubling, by one count, since the 1990s—empower the government to take assets from convicted...

Manassas, VA --(Ammoland.com)- It can be argued that the only personal property specifically protected by the US Constitution is firearms. While the Fourth Amendment promises “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” and requires a sworn warrant “describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” it does specifically allow for such seizure if the “i’s” are properly dotted and the “t’s” correctly crossed. Similarly the Fifth Amendment guarantees against a person being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private...

As federal criminal statutes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past: Prosecutors don't necessarily need to show that the defendant had criminal intent.

Pastor Harris Himes sent me this letter following the shocking verdict in the Gladney beatdown case. Pastor Himes and his wife Sandra witnessed the local SEIU thugs attack Kenneth Gladney outside a Russ Carnahan town hall event in 2009. They were there when the SEIU beat an innocent black man. Harris was obviously upset with the verdict yesterday. After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating. Yesterday the two SEIU...

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week is a timely, cautionary reminder for Hoosiers who plan to consume alcohol over the holiday weekend. It is possible to be charged with public intoxication, even while in a vehicle with a designated driver. Police had arrested an Indiana woman who was drunk in the passenger seat of a car. The Supreme Court ruled that a public intoxication charge can stand against people in a car on a public street...

<p>ATLANTA — A federal judge on Monday blocked parts of Georgia's law cracking down on illegal immigration from taking effect until a legal challenge is resolved.</p> <p>Judge Thomas Thrash granted a request to block parts of the law that penalize people who knowingly and willingly transport or harbor illegal immigrants while committing another crime. He also blocked provisions that authorize officers to verify the immigration status of someone who can't provide proper identification.</p>

INDIANAPOLIS -- A federal judge on Friday blocked the parts of Indiana's tough new abortion law that cuts off most of Planned Parenthood's public funding in the state because the organization provides abortions. U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt granted Planned Parenthood's request for an injunction in striking down the law's defunding provision as unconstitutional, and siding with federal Medicaid officials who have said states cannot disqualify Medicaid providers merely because they also offer abortions. The U.S. Justice Department also had filed a brief siding with Planned Parenthood, with attorneys saying the law restricts Medicaid recipients' freedom to choose their...

Billionaire George Soros spends tens of millions each year supporting a range of liberal social and political causes, from drug legalization to immigration reform to gay marriage to abolishing the death penalty. But a less well-known Soros priority -- replacing elections for judges with selection-by-committee -- now has critics accusing him of trying to stack the courts. Most non-federal judges around the country are selected by voters in elections. But some states use a process called “merit selection” in which a committee – often made up of lawyers – appoints judges to the bench instead. Soros has spent several million...

How could Wisconsin Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi do otherwise than strike down Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining bill? Her son, remember, was a former field manager for both the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO. Of course, Sumi promised her son’s prior affiliations wouldn’t affect her in any way. “My kids are adults, they are independent and they lead their own lives. I do not consult my family about my decisions,” she said in a statement in March, after conservative bloggers at Big Government and elsewhere first called the conflict to light. Maybe Sumi wasn’t biased against...

A Wisconsin judge has struck down a law taking away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most state workers. Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled Thursday that Republican legislators violated Wisconsin's open meetings law during the run up to passage. She says that renders the law void.

The Fourth Amendment expressly imposes two requirements:All searches and seizures must be reasonable; and a warrant may notbe issued unless probable cause is properly established and the scope of the authorized search is set out with particularity. Although“ ‘searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are pre-sumptively unreasonable,’ ” Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. 398, 403, this presumption may be overcome when “ ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a]warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,”

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes. In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry. "We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David...