Free Republic

At 10:00 AM Wednesday, the Supreme Court will deliver its final decisions of this term. We can expect decisions on both same-sex marriage cases. California Proposition 8: Hollingsworth v. Perry In November 2008, 52.3 percent of California voters approved Proposition 8, which added language to the California Constitution that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In May 2009, a California District Court ruled that Proposition 8 violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and temporarily prohibited its enforcement, and the Ninth Circuit agreed, affirming the District Court’s ruling. The United...

<p>And we're off. With 21% of the precinct vote in, Republican Gomez leads Democrat Markey 52.7% to 46.9%.</p>

As the Supreme Court heads into its summer recess at the end of June, we're still awaiting decisions this week in four landmark cases. "In the court’s modern history, I don’t think there has ever been one week with so much at stake,” said Tom Goldstein, founder of the respected SCOTUSblog website. “We have four pending cases that may be cited for at least a century.” Affirmative Action: Fisher v. University of Texas Petitioner Abigail Fisher, a white Texan, was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin for the Fall 2008 entering class. Fisher sued the university, arguing...

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong government announced on Sunday afternoon that it had allowed the departure from its territory of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged disclosing classified documents about United States government surveillance of Internet and telephone communications around the world. The government statement said that Hong Kong had informed the United States of Mr. Snowden’s departure. A Moscow-based reservations agent at Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, said that Mr. Snowden was aboard flight SU213 to Moscow, traveling on a one-way ticket to Moscow. The Aeroflot flight landed in Moscow on Sunday afternoon....

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong government announced on Sunday afternoon that it had allowed the departure from its territory of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged disclosing classified documents about United States government surveillance of Internet and telephone communications around the world. snip The Aeroflot agent said that Mr. Snowden is traveling with one other person, with the surname Harrison, but the agent declined to release the other traveler’s first name, saying that she did not have the authorization to do so. The closest adviser to Julian Assange, who orchestrated the release of...

New scandal surrounding New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, sources tell DRUDGE.. Developing late from NY POST...

“In a major blow for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman case, a judge on Saturday barred the testimony of two audio experts who suggested that a taped 911 call indicated Trayvon Martin was crying out for help during the violent struggle that ended with a gunshot,”

The Emmy-winning star of The Sopranos suffered a possible heart attack while in Italy, where he was attending the Taormina Film Festival, HBO confirmed Wednesday.

Bestselling author Vince Flynn has died at 47-years-old after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer, local CBS affiliate WCCO reports. He died Wednesday morning at United Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, and leaves behind a wife and three children.

During a speech yesterday in Belfast, President Barack Obama criticized Catholic education, suggesting that it’s harmful to national unity. “If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” said the President, during his Northern Ireland Visit for the G8 summit. The Scottish Catholic Observer pointed out that Archbishop Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, recently praised Catholic education before a Scottish audience.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) says Speaker John Boehner should be ousted if he rams through an immigration bill without majority Republican support. “If Speaker Boehner moves forward and permits this to come to a vote even though the majority of the Republicans in the House—and that’s if they do—oppose whatever it is that’s coming to a vote, he should be removed as Speaker,” Rohrabacher said on World Net Daily radio on Monday. Rohrabacher was responding to Boehner’s assertion that immigration reform is at the top of his legislative agenda and his suggestion in an interview with ABC last week in...

<p>FBI agents are going to meet an incoming flight at a New Jersey airport after reports that a passenger claimed that everyone aboard had been poisoned.</p> <p>United Airlines Flight 116 from Hong Kong is scheduled to land at about 2 p.m. Eastern on Monday at Newark Liberty Airport, outside New York City.</p>

At 9:30 a.m. on June 10 we expect orders from the June 6 Conference. At 10 a.m. we expect opinions in argued cases. We also expect opinions at 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 13. We will begin live blogging shortly before 9:30 on Monday and shortly before 10 on Thursday.

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals. The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) "can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging". It says the government will "identify potential targets of...

For years, civil liberties groups have alleged that the United States was engaged in “dragnet” surveillance of Americans’ phone calls. But because U.S. surveillance activity is shrouded in secrecy, they haven’t had proof. Now they appear to. A major scoop from Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian appears to prove that the National Security Agency has been demanding that Verizon produce calling records of all phone calls made in the United States. The leaked legal order requires Verizon to produce, “on an ongoing daily basis,” records of calls “between the United States and abroad” as well as “wholly within the United...

Over the last several months, it has become pretty clear that when it comes to ratings, MSNBC struggles during breaking news events, while CNN and Fox both receive boosts. In an interview with the New York Times this morning, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin essentially conceded the “breaking news” mantle to the other networks, telling viewers that his network is not focused on that sort of coverage. In what seems like a stunning admission, Griffin said: “We’re not the place for that,” he said of breaking news. “Our brand is not that.” Instead, he explained, MSNBC’s bread and butter is progressive...

Dick Durbin: Are bloggers and tweeters entitled to constitutional protection? Share By Doug Powers • May 26, 2013 05:53 PM **Written by Doug Powers Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin has in the past had a very subjective and abstract view of the Constitution, and on Fox News Sunday he once again wondered which people might be “entitled” to constitutional protections and which people might not: “You’ve raised an important point and I heard Sen. Graham call for special counsel,” Durbin said. “I’m not ready to do this at this moment. I would like to know if Holder has any conflict in...

Husband Bill says, "Relax." Let his wife enjoy a bit of a private life for the first time in two decades. But as far as the pollsters are concerned, the 2016 race is underway. And Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is certainly acting like he's in the race. The latest poll out of Iowa has former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beating Florida Sen. Marco Rubio handily (48 vs. 37 percent), but could face a tougher race against Senator Paul (46 vs. 42 percent), according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University.

Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter, says that her personal and work computers have been compromised and are under investigation. "I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months but I'm not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I've been patient and methodical about this matter," Attkisson told POLITICO on Tuesday. "I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public."

It wasn’t enough that liberal comedian Lizz Winstead decided the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornadoes was a good time to blame conservatives for the death and destruction it caused. Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse blamed Republicans as well. While Americans were glued to their television sets to see pictures of the horrendous tornadoes and hear about children in storm shelters at their schools, Whitehouse was on the Senate floor attacking Republicans for denying so-called global warming. Whitehouse spent 15 minutes attacking Republicans and justified his comments by referring to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural...