Free Republic

Congratulations to Chief Justice Elena Kagan on her big win Monday at the Supreme Court on gay and transgender rights in Bostock v. Clayton County. Ok, she isn’t the Chief, but she might as well be as her redefining of Antonin Scalia’s jurisprudence prevailed in a startling 6-3 ruling that included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch. Justice Kagan didn’t write the majority opinion, but her views are all over Justice Gorsuch's opinion that essentially rewrites Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That law bars discrimination in employment on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex,...

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that defendants in criminal trials can only be convicted by a unanimous jury, striking down a scheme that has been rejected by every state except one. The court said in a divided opinion that the Constitution requires agreement among all members of a jury in order to impose a guilty verdict. "Wherever we might look to determine what the term 'trial by an impartial jury trial' meant at the time of the Sixth Amendment’s adoption—whether it’s the common law, state practices in the founding era, or opinions and treatises written soon afterward—the answer is...

Government watchdog Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation released new information Wednesday showing a senior State Department official worked with House Majority Leader (Minority Whip at the time) Steny Hoyer in 2016 on Russia documents provided by British spy Christopher Steele. "Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation today released 18 pages of documents revealing former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer coordinating with then-House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) national security advisor, Daniel Silverberg to work on Russia dossier materials provided by Christopher Steele," Judicial Watch released. The documents...

The Supreme Court sent a case concerning a death row inmate, who claims he can no longer remember his crimes because of several strokes he had while in prison, back down to the lower courts to take a second look. The court had already stayed the inmate Vernon Madison's execution last January. In a 5-3 vote, Chief Justice John Roberts sided Wednesday with the liberals on the court in favor of Madison. Only eight justices had heard the case because Justice Brett Kavanaugh had not been confirmed by the time the case was argued.

Former British spy Christopher Steele visited the State Department in October 2016 and briefed officials there about his work on the infamous anti-Trump dossier, it was revealed on Wednesday. “Based upon our review of the visitor logs at the State Department, Mr. Steele visited the State Department, briefing officials on the dossier in October 2016,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said during a hearing held to review the U.S. government’s response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Steele’s visit to Foggy Bottom in Washington, D.C., prior to the election has not been previously reported. Burr revealed...

Caption -- Donald Trump and PM Modi at the G-20 Summit, PTI The United States is not going to put pressure on India to buy F-16 fighter jets or any other defence system, a senior US diplomat has said here. United States Consul General in Mumbai Edgard Kagan said India has purchased more than USD 15 billion worth of American defence materials and the US is "very proud" of the expanding defence ties between the two countries. Asked if there was a threat of the US imposing trade sanctions on India after its multi-billion deal with Russia for the S-400...

It is very simple. If anyone fears ANY Supreme Court Justice, he or she should embrace the Liberty Amendments: ~~~ First off, supreme Court justices are term limited. -- secondly -- Chapter Four "empowers congress, upon three-fifths vote in the House and Senate, to override a majority opinion of the scotus. Likewise, so may the states, by three-fifths vote, override a majority opinion of the scotus. This power is ... limited to twenty-four months after the date of the opinion. Knowing that the states and a newly federalized congress stand ready to look over their shoulders, the wild social justice...

Associate Justices of the Supreme Court Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they are concerned the court’s legitimacy could be undermined if it is viewed as politically divided. What did they say? “We don’t have an army, we don’t have any money, the only way we get people to do what we say that they should do is because people respect us and respect our fairness,” Kagan said in an NJ.com report. “Part of the court’s legitimacy depends on people not seeing the court in the way that people see the rest of the governing structures of this country now....

The 64-year-old was agreeing with sentiments earlier expressed by Kagan suggesting that the exit of Kennedy could mean the reputation of the Supreme Court suffers. 'It's been an extremely important thing for the court that in the last 40 years, starting with Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor and continuing with Justice Kennedy, there has been a person who found the center, where people couldn't predict in that sort of way . . . 'That's enabled the court to look so it was not all by one side or another and it was indeed impartial and neutral and fair. And it's not...

Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said Friday she fears the high court may lack a justice going forward who would serve as a swing-vote on cases, speaking hours after President Trump's second nominee Brett Kavanaugh secured enough votes to be confirmed. Kagan said at a conference for women at Princeton University that over the past three decades, starting with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and continuing with Justice Anthony Kennedy, that there was a figure on the bench "who found the center or people couldn't predict in that sort of way." “It’s not so clear, that I think going forward,...

“I teach that the Constitution’s separation of powers protects individual liberty, and I remain grateful to the dean who hired me, Justice Elena Kagan,” Kavanaugh said, prompting an audible gasp or two in the East Room, according to one account. It turns out that Kagan, during her stint as dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009, made it part of her mission to seek out and hire more conservative faculty at the overwhelmingly liberal school. “She definitely made an effort to reach out to the conservative community, and made several conservative hires while she was there,” said Carrie...

During a courtesy call before her confirmation, Justice Elena Kagan responded to a remark by Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, about gun rights. Risch told Kagan she may not realize how important the issue was to most Americans... Kagan said she had never owned or fired a gun. "But I told the senator if I was fortunate enough to be confirmed, I would go hunting with Justice Scalia." Kagan lived up to her word. She has accompanied Scalia to a shooting range and on several hunting trips, she said. “It turns out, it's kind of fun," she added.

What is Justice Elena Kagan doing? So far this term, the liberal justice has crossed ideological lines at least three times to join the Supreme Court’s conservatives. Most recently, on Thursday, Kagan authored the majority opinion in Lucia v. SEC, a huge case that threatens to erode the political independence of multiple federal agencies. Tearing down the “administrative state” is supposed to be Justice Neil Gorsuch’s pet project. In Lucia, though, it was Kagan who took the lead in undermining the civil service, authoring an opinion that prompted a sharp dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who accused her colleague of...

The New York attorney general’s dark-side personal life was an open secret in Democratic Party circles. New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman has resigned, just hours after it was reported that he had been accused of violent assaults on women he had dated. These allegations, which include threats that Schneiderman made to stalk and kill the women if they told on him, came as a shock—except to anyone who has followed his career in politics. Schneiderman’s louche ethics have been well known. You didn’t need an “in” at Albany watering holes; just reading the newspapers would have told you...

A Democratic state senator in Colorado, who is a man, "frequently" enters the women's bathroom, contradicting his claim that he only accidentally used the ladies room once. A recording between the state senate secretary and the Colorado State Patrol, obtained through a records request by the conservative nonprofit Compass Colorado, revealed Sen. Daniel Kagan's visits made his female colleagues uncomfortable. Last month, Sen. Beth Martinez Humenik filed a workplace sexual harassment complaint against Kagan for using the women's bathroom "multiple times."

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said Monday the high court has adopted much of the late Justice Antonin Scalia's textualist judicial reasoning. Kagan was speaking to an audience at the Chicago-Kent College of Law when she said that Scalia's judicial reasoning has come to dominate the court, the Washington Examiner reported. Scalia, who sat on the Supreme Court for 30 years before his death in 2016, was a proponent of textualism, a theory in which the interpretation of law is based on the meaning of legal text as it would be commonly understood at the time of its passage, and...

Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson on Thursday tweeted an article that argued American Jews are pushing for war in the Middle East, specifically with Iran. The article, titled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” is featured in The Unz Review, an online magazine that bills itself as an “alternative” to the “mainstream media.” After several minutes of questions from Twitter users who were shocked by her tweet, Wilson doubled down, arguing critics should read the article and “put aside” any biases. “1) First of all, calm down. Re-tweets don't imply endorsement. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks...

No one could have known it at the time, but at the end of last summer, Justice Elena Kagan gave Neil Gorsuch a face-to-face tutorial on what it means to be the Supreme Court's newest justice. It starts in the kitchen. "I've been on the cafeteria committee for six years. (Justice) Steve Breyer was on the cafeteria committee for 13 years," Kagan said at a Colorado event where she was being interviewed by Gorsuch and Timothy Tymkovich, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Gorsuch and Tymkovich both were on President Donald Trump's list of...

MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on “The Kelly File” with substitute host Martha MacCallum to discuss new e-mails about Benghazi and Fox News coverage of Benghazi. The e-mails are between State Department PR operative Victoria Nuland and friendly Associated Press reporter Matt Lee, discussing the alleged “BS” on Fox during “The O’Reilly Factor” on September 13, 2012, two days after the consulate attacks. Bozell thought the Obama publicist and the AP reporter sounded way too much like each other. (Video, transcript below)

In the top echelons of political power, there is only one major party in American politics, and that is the globalist war party. In case Americans needed more evidence that party labels are largely meaningless to the bipartisan ruling establishment, influential members of the establishment wing of the GOP — neocons, warmongers, globalists, and so on — are abandoning the Republican Party and in many cases jumping on board the Democrat Hillary Clinton campaign. From Bush-era war hawks who misled Americans into war to pseudo-conservative operatives of the globalist-minded Council on Foreign Relations, Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) are showing...