Free Republic

DID YOU KNOW SOUTH AFRICA HAS A CONSTITUTION THAT'S FAR SUPERIOR TO OUR OWN? THAT'S WHAT ONE U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE, AS WELL AS SHADOWY ACTIVITIST GROUPS WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES TO EFFECT CHANGE, BELIEVE. “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa … a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights …” -Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jan. 30, 2012. That stunning disavowal—by an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court—of the Constitution she has sworn...

Senators James Alesi, Mark Grisanti, Roy McDonald and Stephen Saland Benefiting from Bloomberg-Hosted Fundraiser This Evening New York, NY---- The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) today announced it is running an online advertisement throughout New York state in response to a Bloomberg-held fundraiser this evening for the four GOP senators that betrayed the trust of New Yorkers last summer by exchanging a vote for same-sex marriage for campaign contributions. The advertisement, called "Money Dance," is modeled after the practice of some brides and grooms dancing for money with supporters at their wedding. In this case, the four Senators -- Roy...

Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.  Politicians predicted disaster. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned the day the court made its decision.  Chicago’s Mayor Daley predicted that we would "go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we'll settle it in the streets . . . ."  The New York Times even editorialized this month about the Supreme Court's "unwise" decision that...

Gay Marriage- A Milestone Though there was unnecessary secrecy in the negotiations, Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a determined effort to achieve marriage equality in New York. He shares credit with the four Republican state senators who bucked their party and threats from conservatives to do what they knew was right. State Senators James Alesi, Roy McDonald, Mark Grisanti and Stephen Saland, all from upstate districts, deserve the support of their communities. They showed the kind of strength that is extremely hard to find in today’s politics. In drafting a compromise, however, Senator Saland and other Republicans insisted on language that...

Seven or more Senate Republicans have signaled Gov. Cuomo that they're ready to legalize same-sex marriage, more than enough to put the controversial and historic measure over the top this week, The Post has learned. A highly knowledgeable Senate insider said yesterday that "far more of the [GOP] members are in play than anyone realizes, including some surprising names from conservative upstate areas." [Snip] Influences contributing to the changes of heart are secret Republican polls showing majority support for gay marriage in key swing districts and the strong possibility that the GOP could lose control of the Senate next year...

After the City of Chicago lost McDonald et al v. City of Chicago et al in the Supreme Court, they changed their gun ban ordinances. Because of this, they argued that the plaintiffs were not "prevailing parties" and thus weren't entitled to attorneys' fees. U.S. District Court Judge Milton Shadur agreed with them and denied Alan Gura and the attorneys for the National Rifle Association the attorneys' fees that should have been due them. Today, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision overturning Judge Shadur and ordering "reasonable attorneys' fees under §1988." This decision applied both to the...

Two dozen strong, Vibbins Williams' loved ones packed into a Broward County courtroom Friday to tell a judge that despite their grief, they agreed that a 30-year prison sentence would suffice for the teen who fatally stabbed the great grandmother more than 100 times and took $34 from her purse. Justin McDonald, 17, was Williams' Lauderdale Lakes neighbor. When she refused to give him $5 to buy marijuana, McDonald stabbed her 105 times and grabbed what money the 62-year-old woman had in her purse, prosecutor Maria Schneider said.

BELLEVUE, Wash., March 3, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Otis McDonald, the cornerstone plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court Second Amendment Case McDonald v. City of Chicago, will appear Friday in Chicago, Illinois at a special event featuring the rolling "Guns Save Lives" billboard sponsored by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Mr. McDonald will appear at a press conference at 3 p.m. at the Jewels Store parking lot at 87th Street and Lafayette on the west side of the expressway. Joining him will be Valinda Rowe, spokesperson for IllinoisCarry.com; Mike Weisman, vice president of the Illinois...

An assistant manager at McDonald's was fired after allowing Minnesota Vikings star Adrian Peterson to use the bathroom while the restaurant was closed. While working the late-night drive-thru shift at 3 a.m., a female employee encountered a man standing outside the window who asked to come inside and use the restroom. After a little while, she realized it was the popular Minnesota Vikings star and opened the door for him to come inside and use the facilities. (The seating area at the restaurant is normally closed during the late-night hours.)

BALTIMORE - Maryland's highest court has ruled the state's handgun laws are still constitutional despite a 2008 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that gutted gun statutes in D.C. In an opinion issued Wednesday, the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed a gun possession charge levied in Prince George's County against Charles F. Williams, Jr. Williams said the state's gun regulations violated his right to "keep and carry arms" under the Second Amendment, and based his argument in part on the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. The high court in that case said barring a person from...

The biggest constitutional civil rights story of 2010, maybe of the decade, was based right here in Bellevue, yet as the on-line Seattle Post-Intelligencer is currently beginning its “Top Stories” reviews, should we expect to see a single word about the Second Amendment Foundation’s landmark gun rights victory before the U.S. Supreme Court? Don’t hold your breath. Local news agencies have less than 72 hours to prove this column wrong. Were this any other civil rights ruling by the High Court, the SAF victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago would have been big news. But this one involved gun...

IllinoisCarry.com IllinoisCarry.com Illinois --(Ammoland.com)- Supporters of the Second Amendment battle to defeat the Chicago handgun ban know and revere Mr. Otis McDonald, the lead plaintiff in the landmark case which is bringing about change in gun laws all across the nation. What many may not know is that this quiet, unassuming gentleman is a stalwart Democrat who has turned to Bill Brady, the Republican candidate for Illinois governor, in order to preserve and protect what he and the other three plaintiffs in the case fought so hard to win. When incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn pushed for a ban on all...

Md. (AP) - Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler told members of the state's top court Thursday that recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings prove state laws restricting people's right to carry guns in public are constitutional, despite the arguments of a man seeking to overturn the law. An attorney representing Charles F. Williams Jr., who was arrested in 2007 for carrying a handgun in public in Prince George's County, argued the same two recent rulings protect his client's right to bear arms. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a D.C. ban on handguns and a trigger lock requirement...

The Second Amendment finally applies to the states. Now the fight over gun rights really begins. It was the morning of June 26, 2008, and Alan Gura had just won the first case he’d ever argued in front of the Supreme Court. Before taking a media victory lap to celebrate his historic vindication of the Second Amendment in D.C. v. Heller, Gura headed to the Court’s public information office for a moment of privacy. He called an old buddy from law school, the Chicago attorney David Sigale. “File it,” Gura said. “It” became, almost exactly two years later, Gura’s second...

"What is the NRA thinking?" Tom Gresham asked on last Sunday's Gun Talk Radio Show. "You know, I've had some problems with NRA in the past," he explained, "but when you start taking credit for what other people are doing, that's over the line." Tom's guest was Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb, and they were discussing "Victory in Chicago" by NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox, a recapping of the McDonald v Chicago case that resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment applies not just to the national government, but also to state and local ones. So...

BELLEVUE, Wash., Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Second Amendment Foundation has filed an amicus curiae brief in the long-running Nordyke v. King case in California, arguing that Second Amendment issues must be decided on a "strict scrutiny" basis, and that an ordinance in Alameda County banning gun shows at the county fairgrounds is unconstitutional because it would not withstand that standard of review. This case was a catalyst for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear SAF's case challenging the handgun ban in Chicago, because in an earlier Nordyke ruling – subsequently set aside in favor of a full en banc...

Some gun control advocates have declared that the McDonald case (and the Heller case before it) will not affect most laws currently in place because they simply constitute “reasonable regulation” of the purchase and possession of guns. However, nowhere in either Heller or McDonald did the Supreme Court rule that so-called “reasonable” laws are valid under the Second Amendment. Accordingly, anyone who defends a law claiming that it is “reasonable” is not stating any legal standard or offering any basis upon which to judge whether such a law would survive a legal challenge. As it turns out, New Jersey gun...

One Month after McDonaldThe state of the Second Amendment.  One month ago, the Supreme Court held in McDonald v. City of Chicago that states, not just the federal government, are prevented from violating Americans’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The Supreme Court did not, however, define the full scope of the right, nor the standard of review by which challenged statutes will be judged. In other words: It ain’t over yet. A number of pending lawsuits across the country will further shape how the Second Amendment will be applied. The first lawsuit of note comes from Chicago....

The Ninth Circuit Panel in Nordyke v. King Seems Open to Reconsidering Its Earlier Decision About the Second Amendment and Gun Shows In 2009, a Ninth Circuit panel held (in Nordyke v. King) that the Second Amendment was incorporated against the states, but concluded that a ban on gun possession on county property was nonetheless constitutional. The Ninth Circuit then agreed to rehear the matter en banc, but then suspended its consideration of the case while it waited for the Supreme Court to resolve the incorporation question in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Following McDonald, the Ninth Circuit sent the...

Supreme Court Ruling Seen as Windfall for Firearms Manufacturers, Dealers After a Supreme Court decision affirming the right to bear arms was handed down in June, the owners of Midwest Sporting Goods, just outside of Chicago, started noticed something any retailer would find encouraging  an increasing number of customers. With Chicago's 28-year ban on handgun ownership rendered unconstitutional, more people were coming into Midwest, in Lyons, Illinois, to exercise their Second Amendment rights, according to Noel, the store's owner. He asked that his last name not be published. Lock and Load "It's not like sales suddenly went through the...