Free Republic

I believe it is the duty of our electeds in congress to give the American people a full and prolonged trial in the Senate. It is our right to hear every witness the Trump defense team wishes to call testify under oath. Lindsey Graham's comments about needing a speedy resolution is another of his cowardly retreats in an effort to cover up the criminality in DC - he's channeling John McCain.

The Democrats have manifestly failed to build the national consensus necessary to remove a sitting president from office. The “impeachment inquiry” decreed by Nancy Pelosi in late September, combined with Adam Schiff’s inequitable conduct of the subsequent public hearings, have produced the reverse of their intended result. Several reliable voter surveys show that they weakened support for impeachment among Independent voters, particularly those in crucial swing states, while hardening support for the president among Republicans. When the Democrats pass their impeachment resolution, the sordid spectacle will move to the Senate, where Chief Justice John Roberts must preside over a trial...

The target of Democrat zealots in the House of Representatives led by Speaker Pelosi and Adam Schiff is to impeach and remove President Donald Trump. Sadly for him, the person they have a much higher probability of removing from his lofty perch is Chief Justice John Roberts. The famous cliché, the law of unintended consequences, is fast approaching. In an earlier American Thinker blog post, I asked a very simple question of Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts: Mr. Chief Justice, what did you do about the fraud on your Court? He and he alone "owns" the FISC, so he...

The target of Democrat zealots in the House of Representatives lead by Speaker Pelosi and Adam Schiff is to impeach and remove President Donald Trump. Sadly for him the person they have a much higher probability of removing from his lofty perch is Chief Justice John Roberts. The famous cliché; the law of unintended consequences is fast approaching. ... Since the Constitution definitely states it must be the “Chief Justice” by title that presides over a Senate trail it can easily be understood and fully accepted that provision (b) of serving in government employment is not an ABA ethical disqualification....

If you were to think of the most out-of-left-field actress to play Harriet Tubman in a movie, you still wouldn’t stumble upon the person one executive allegedly suggested. Harriet, the historical drama based on Tubman’s life released earlier this month, stars Cynthia Erivo. But the film’s screenwriter and producer, Gregory Allen Howard, says when he first started working on the movie in 1994 that one studio executive suggested Julia Roberts to portray the legendary slave turned abolitionist. Yes, that Julia Roberts. In a Q&A with Allen published earlier this month by Harriet studio Focus Features (and reiterated in an L.A....

WASHINGTON — A bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely Tuesday to let the Trump administration follow through on its plan to shut down DACA, the federal program that has allowed nearly 800,000 young people, known as dreamers, to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S. With hundreds of DACA supporters rallying outside — so many that police shut down the street in front of the Supreme Court — the justices heard nearly an hour and a half of oral arguments. Based on their questions, it appeared that the court's five conservatives were inclined to rule that the...

A 1986 federal law makes it a crime to “encourage” unauthorized immigrants to come to or stay in the United States. “The statute potentially criminalizes the simple words — spoken to a son, a wife, a parent, a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, a student, a client — ‘I encourage you to stay here,’” Judge A. Wallace Tashima wrote last year for a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, in striking down the law. The law applies to a grandmother urging a grandchild to overstay a visa or a lawyer...

ABC News, NPR and PBS journalist and political commentator Cokie Roberts has passed away at age 75, according to a network announcement. "Cokie Roberts will be dearly missed," said James Goldston, president of ABC News. "Cokie's kindness, generosity, sharp intellect and thoughtful take on the big issues of the day made ABC a better place and all of us better journalists." From 1996-2002, Roberts co-anchored ABC’s "This Week" with Sam Donaldson. She also served as a political commentator and chief congressional analyst for "This Week" during her tenure at ABC dating back to 1988. SNIP

Cokie Roberts, the veteran journalist, political commentator and author, died, ABC News announced Tuesday morning, citing her family. She was 75. "We will miss Cokie beyond measure, both for her contributions and for her love and kindness," her family said in a statement.

Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote against President Donald Trump's attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, but only after changing his position behind the scenes, sources familiar with the private Supreme Court deliberations tell CNN. The case was fraught with political consequences. Democrats and civil rights advocates claimed the query would discourage responses to the decennial questionnaire from new immigrants and minorities and affect the balance of power nationwide. Roberts' action recalled his dramatic switch in the 2012 case that saved President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. Once again, the chief, an appointee of President...

diGenova said Inspector General Michael Horowitz has determined all four FISA warrants against one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page were illegally obtained. ... DiGenova said if he were attorney general, any officials involved in obtaining the Page FISA warrants who are still in the department would be "gone." He singled out Dana Boente, who is the general counsel now under FBI Director Christopher Wray. The April 2017 FISA renewal was approved by Boente and former FBI Director James Comey, ... DiGenova also discussed the two people he wants to hear from after the FISA report is released. He said he...

he Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling on Department of Commerce v. New York is being characterized as nothing more serious than a temporary setback regarding President Trump’s wish to reinstate a citizenship question in the 2020 U.S. Census; the administration is expected to whip up a new rationale that the high court won’t consider “contrived” and get the question in. Unfortunately it is far worse than that, and Chief Justice John Roberts is giving further sign that he is yet another unpleasant surprise in GOP appointments to the highest level of the Judicial Branch, following in the footsteps of David Souter...

The ACLU asks SCOTUS to delay ruling in Department of Commerce v. New York. Sometime during the next two weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on whether the Census Bureau may include a question in the 2020 census asking if the person filling out the form is a U.S. citizen. If you think that’s a sensible question to ask in a nation whose population swells every year with immigrants from all over the planet, that means you’re in step with 60 percent of registered voters. It does, however, put you at odds with the Democrats,...

Remember, do not kill a mockingbird. When a whistleblower is singing for America’s protection, we embrace and celebrate him. Inventor and software designer Dennis Montgomery, a CIA/DOD/DHS/NSA/FBI contractor-turned-whistleblower, alerted FBI Director James Comey’s office in 2015 that President Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had turned the super-surveillance system that Montgomery designed for foreign surveillance, known as THE HAMMER, into a domestic surveillance system. Montgomery became alarmed when Obama and his intelligence chiefs Brennan and Clapper turned the super-surveillance system against the American people. Montgomery asserts that Obama, Brennan, and Clapper used THE...

One of the GOP senators from Kris Kobach’s home state said Tuesday that the Senate would not be able to confirm the Kansas Republican if President Donald Trump tapped him for a cabinet post. Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, has been mentioned as a potential candidate for an array of immigration-related positions after President Donald Trump pulled his nominee for the director of Immigration Customs Enforcement and announced the departure of his secretary of Homeland Security. But Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, doesn’t believe the Republican-controlled Senate could confirm his fellow Kansan, who has gained national notoriety for championing...

Chief Justice John Roberts arrived at the Valletta campus of the University of Malta on July 3, 2012, to teach a class on Supreme Court history. As he emerged from the back seat of a black sedan, he held his brown leather briefcase in front of him, almost as a shield. He wore a blue blazer, striped button-down shirt, and tan khakis. His clothes looked crisp, though his face was haggard. He was as exhausted and distressed as he had been in years. Roberts had left behind a storm in Washington over his opinion upholding President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul...

A new book on Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts offers new details of his negotiation with liberal justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer to save ObamaCare ahead of the court's landmark ruling in 2012, according to excerpts released on CNN. In Joan Biskupic's "The Chief" which is scheduled to release next Thursday, she writes that Roberts originally opposed upholding the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate that required people to buy insurance, and cast his initial vote to strike it down, but he did join the liberal justices in voting to uphold Medicaid expansion, according to the book. He later...

Chief Justice John Roberts' recent votes aligning with the Supreme Court’s liberal wing have raised questions about whether a widely anticipated "conservative revolution" on the nation's highest court will materialize anytime soon. On Wednesday, Roberts sided with a 5-3 majority decision to send a case concerning a death row inmate back to a lower court. In February, Roberts was the key vote in temporarily blocking a Louisiana law that would have placed restrictions on abortion clinics. And in December, Roberts voted to block President Trump from rejecting asylum to any immigrants who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

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.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Supreme Court's liberal wing on Thursday in temporarily blocking a Louisiana law that would have placed restrictions on abortion clinics, in the high court's first major ruling on abortion since the confirmation of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The ruling comes as Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, has increasingly and deliberately sought to present the federal judiciary as nonpartisan, amid a flurry of attacks from progressive groups arguing that the Supreme Court's new conservative majority imperils the country. Last year, in a highly unusual statement, Roberts rebuked President Trump for criticizing...