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A Louisiana judge has ruled unconstitutional a new state law requiring priests to report sexual abuse that is mentioned in a sacramental confession. Judge Mike Caldwell made his ruling in a long-running and complicated case in which Father Jeff Bayhi had been directed to testify about what a young woman reportedly told him in a confession. The young woman has said that she told Father Bayhi about being molested by a member of his parish. Father Bayhi had refused to testify, citing the inviolability of the confessional seal. Judge Caldwell ruled that the state law making priests mandated reporters of...

(RNS) On Wednesday (March 2), the most important abortion case since 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Casey shifted away from Roe v. Wade’s focus on privacy and instead asked whether abortion restrictions were an “undue burden” on women.The court, however, has not been clear about what “undue burden” means.In 2007’s Gonzales v. Carhart, the last significant abortion case, swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the four conservatives in ruling that laws against partial-birth abortion were not an undue burden. Legal commentators, like CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, have worried that Kennedy may have signaled...

A New York judge will hear arguments on Tuesday in a lawsuit that challenges Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s ability to run for president given that he was born in Canada. State Supreme Court Justice David Weinstein will hear the claim of two men who contend that Cruz is not a citizen of the U.S. and is therefore ineligible to run for president, NBC has reported. Cruz was born in Alberta, Canada. Barry Korman and William Gallo will argue that despite Cruz’s mother being an American, the senator is not a citizen because such status cannot be passed from parent to...

Although Florida media reported that Senator Marco Rubio’s parents were not US citizens when he was born, national media has largely avoided the topic.   Senator Ted Cruz’s status as a natural born Canadian and a number of related eligibility lawsuits were underreported nationally, until news hit that an IL judge was hearing one of the cases.   Cruz’s lawsuits were filed in Florida, Vermont, Texas, Utah, Illinois, Arkansas, Alabama, New York, and Pennsylvania, and individuals who raised a ballot challenge in Indiana are weighing whether they’ll file suit.   Cruz has a new IL court date March 1st –...

A small town bakery owned by a Christian family is under siege after they declined to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Edie and David Delorme own the Kern's Bake Shop in Longview, Texas - known around town for their petit fours and sugar cookies - and also their custom-made wedding"> cakes. The Delormes are also devout Christians - faithful members of a nearby Baptist church - and they run their bakery according to the tenets of their religious beliefs. That became a problem on Feb. 17 when Ben Valencia and Luis Marmolejo requested the bakers make a...

A freshman senator whose endorsements included Sarah Palin is going after Donald Trump for talking about changing libel laws so he can more easily sue news organizations.At a rally today in Fort Worth, Texas, Trump railed against major newspapers and said if he wins the presidency he'll "open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.""We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post,...

Donald Trump is going after the media, threatening to sue publications for writing negatively about him. During a Friday rally in Texas, Trump launched into a monologue about how he felt that the media was treating him unfairly, alleging that the New York Times and Washington Post, in particular, were not covering him well. "The New York Times, which is losing a fortune, which is a failing newspaper, which probably won't be around much longer ... but I think the New York Times is one of the most dishonest media outlets I've ever seen in my life," the businessman said....

Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to change libel laws in the United States so that he can have an easier time suing news organizations. During a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, Trump began his usual tirade against newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, saying they're "losing money" and are "dishonest." The Republican presidential candidate then took a different turn, suggesting that when he's president they'll "have problems." "One of the things I'm going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we're certainly leading. I'm going to open up our...

A woman has filed a lawsuit against a Florida megachurch after it reportedly did not pay her the promised hush money to keep her alleged affair with a pastor a secret. Church member Arlene Miranda filed the suit against Orlando Baptist Church based in Orange County, saying the church failed to pay the agreed $3,000 so she would keep quiet about her alleged affair with Pastor David Janney, 61, married, and the church's president. "They threatened me. If I didn't sign it, they threatened me," Miranda told WFTV. Miranda denied she filed the lawsuit for the money, saying "I committed...

Six states filed a new lawsuit Wednesday against the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act. The complaint that Texas, Wisconsin, Kansas, Louisiana, Indiana and Nebraska filed in the Northern District of Texas takes issue with the Health Insurance Providers Fee assessed to health insurers to cover federal subsidies. The lawsuit says nothing in the Affordable Care Act's language provided clear notice that states would also have to pay the fee. ...

Having turned Mitt Romney, an extraordinarily kind and decent man, into an imaginary ogre in the minds of a sufficient number of voters, Democrat opposition research propagandists can hardly believe their luck in potentially facing Donald Trump. Add to their pile of must-use issues the possibility that in the midst of a campaign, Trump may be called to testify under oath in a lawsuit in which he is alleged to have defrauded thousands of individuals who ponied up large amounts of money to attend now-defunct Trump University lectures at hotel ballrooms. Writing at Yahoo Politics, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff...

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that U.S. State Department officials and aides to Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about whether the former secretary of state's private email system was an effort to skirt open records laws. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered that the State Department and Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group suing the department for records about the employment of a senior Clinton aide, come up with a plan for the depositions and other discovery by April. Clinton is vying to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate ahead of the election this November. Her...

-Image from msnbcIn Connecticut, a cynical lawyer is attempting to destroy the Second Amendment for money.   Josh Koskoff, a medical malpractice and personal injury  specialist in Connecticut, is taking advantage of the grief of parents and staff from the Sandy Hook massacre to attempt to destroy innocent firearm manufacturers. He has filed suit against gun manufacturers who make the AR-15 rifle that was used in Sandy Hook, the wholesaler, and the retailer, Riverview sales.  It appears that the shooter, who I will not name, has claimed another innocent victim.  Riverview sales, who had done nothing illegal, is now defunct. ...

An Illinois judge on Friday said she would decide next month whether she had jurisdiction over a voter's complaint that Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz should not be on the state's primary ballot because he was born in Canada. Lawrence Joyce, a lawyer and pharmacist, filed a complaint in January with the Illinois State Board of Elections saying that under the U.S. Constitution, the Texas senator cannot run for president since he is not a "natural born" citizen. Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta of a Cuban father and an American mother. The Board rejected Joyce's complaint - saying Cruz...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court says a stun gun, under Iowa law, is a dangerous weapon. The court made the conclusion as it affirmed the conviction of a woman charged with carrying a dangerous weapon after police found a stun gun in her purse in 2013 during an arrest for theft at a Waterloo Walmart. Taquala Howse, who is 25, appealed saying her small hand-held stun gun isn’t dangerous. A district judge convicted Howse, finding the state had proven it was dangerous.

When Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin discovered a new Planned Parenthood clinic was doing abortions without a license in January, his administration moved quickly to shut down the abortion operation. On Thursday, Bevin announced his next step to hold the abortion clinic accountable. The state filed a lawsuit this week against Planned Parenthood after it allegedly performed 23 illegal abortions at its new Louisville facility without a license, according to the Courier Journal. The Louisville abortion clinic opened in December and applied for a license to do abortions from the state; however, in late January, Bevin’s office found out that the...

With the addition of Sean Hannity the lineup of “experts” on the right who know better and demand we support Ted Cruz is complete. He joins Mark Levin whose stepson works for Cruz, Rush Limbaugh who always believes he knows better than anyone else and the insane Glenn Beck who thinks God killed Justice Scalia to help elect Cruz. Ted Cruz, as the Republican Party’s nominee, would have a tough uphill fight from day one for a number of reasons not the least of which would be that he would have to buy virtually every second of coverage he received....

I was just wondering what he was waiting for?

Tim O'Brien did not set out to write a conclusive assessment of Donald Trump's wealth. But it was those three pages in a 275-page book that occasioned what is, even in the annals of frivolous Trump lawsuits, a special display of petty, thin-skinned litigiousness. In October 2005, O'Brien, then a business reporter for the New York Times, published a book about Donald Trump, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. The book was not a hatchet job. Not only did O'Brien interview friends and employees and business associates and political rivals and much of the rest of the Who's...

Two things about this. One: Cruz is entirely right that Trump's lawsuit would be frivolous. Watch the allegedly "defamatory" ad below. It's Politics 101: My opponent may say X now but he said Y before, so how can you possibly trust that X is his true opinion? Trump seems to think that using old footage of him stating his own position on abortion constitutes defamation unless the viewer is also told that he's since changed his mind. It would be like Rubio suing over an ad that showed him touting comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 because he no longer believes...