Free Republic

A family court judge who ruled that a pregnant woman with schizophrenia should undergo an abortion and be sterilized sharply defended her decision yesterday, while denouncing Boston University for withdrawing what she said was a job offer amid the controversy. In a rare personal defense of the reasoning behind a court ruling, Christina Harms, who retired from the bench last month after 23 years, said she concluded that the woman, a 31-year-old who suffered from delusions, would choose to terminate her pregnancy if she were mentally competent, chiefly so that she could resume antipsychotic medication that would have harmed the...

Dear Loyal Supporters of Gov. Scott Walker, . You are not going to believe this one! . A Democratic appointed judge that was supported by AFL-CIO South Federation of Labor and the Madison Teachers Union has denied Gov. Scott Walker the time to verify the recall petitions submitted by the unions and liberal left that are trying to oust him. He essentially ruled that the Recall was inevitable and that we should not waste time actually verifying signatures. . . .. . We have been telling you that we are worried that this will not be a fair fight...

It is certainly no surprise for gun owners to see the New York Times run a story belittling the United States Constitution. After all, the Times has worked for decades to devalue our founding document. "[I]ts influence is waning," opines the Times. It is "terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights." The paper faults the Constitution for being difficult to amend and reflective of the times in which it was written. While the Times does not go so far as to claim the U.S. Constitution has been bad for America, it does lament that it is of "little...

When Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), spoke at CPAC on February 10th, he predicted that if Barack Obama wins a second term it will usher in an all-out attack on the Second Amendment. In so many words, he said the same people who brought us Fast and Furious, “a criminal enterprise” for which there has yet to be prosecutions, will use four more years to gut constitutional protections on the right to keep and bear arms. And anyone who wonders what this assault on the Second Amendment might look like need look no further...

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Tells Egyptians: Look To The Constitutions of South Africa or Canada, Not To The U.S. Constitution

Thinkstock/Comstock(WASHINGTON) -- A federal judge has upheld a rule proposed by the ATF to track multiple gun sales in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico in a lawsuit brought by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and two gun dealers in Arizona. Over the summer the ATF announced that it would seek information in those four states on gun purchasers who buy two or more weapons a week for semi-automatic long guns that have a caliber greater than .22 and a detachable magazine. The ATF would require gun dealers to report the sale of multiple rifles with what ATF was calling...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Federal Court Upholds Obama/Holder Gun Registration Scheme; Congressional Action Needed   Friday, January 13, 2012   Moments before this alert was to go out, a federal district court in Washington, D.C. issued a ruling upholding an Obama administration policy that requires federally licensed firearms retailers in states bordering Mexico to report multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles.  The case was brought by two NRA-backed firearms retailers and by the National Shooting Sports Foundation acting on behalf of its affected members.  Plaintiffs plan to appeal immediately—but in the meantime, your help is urgently...

OKLAHOMA CITY — An amendment that would ban Oklahoma courts from considering international or Islamic law discriminates against religions and a Muslim community leader has the right to challenge its constitutionality, a federal appeals court said Tuesday. The court in Denver upheld U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange’s order blocking implementation of the amendment shortly after it was approved by 70 percent of Oklahoma voters in November 2010. Muneer Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma, sued to block the law from taking effect, arguing that the Save Our State Amendment violated his First Amendment rights....

Should public school officials have the right to prevent students from wearing pro-American garb on Cinco de Mayo? This question has been at the heart of a California court battle between the Morgan Hill Unified School District and students who were told by a principal and assistant principal that they could not wear American flag t-shirts on the Mexican holiday back in 2010. Following the incident, a lawsuit against the district was launched by the students and their families. This week, the case came to a close, with a federal judge ruling against the students — a blow that is...

DC Appeals Court Rules Obamacare Constitutional.

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...