Free Republic

It's ironic that the more we describe our Constitution as a "living document," the more we turn it into a dead letter.  As to this terminal state, consider the current debate over healthcare reform.  How many politicians give the constitutionality of the mammoth bills spawned by the Houses even the slightest consideration? Why, Nancy Pelosi must not have, as she was so "shocked" when asked about it that the only reply she could muster was "Are you serious?  Are you serious?!"  When leftists do deign to consider the matter seriously, they may take a leaf out of esteemed intellectual Ruth...

Controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., is no stranger to hardball tactics, so he probably isn't fazed by being on the receiving end of rough politics. Still, that doesn't excuse the Obama administration's apparent ideological vendetta against him. By the (il)logic of the administration and its allies at the American Civil Liberties Union, Sheriff Arpaio should not set up a phone tip line to search for immigration violators, and he is not allowed to tell the public about federal immigration enforcement policies even if he is merely disputing demonstrable falsehoods told about him; yet the Justice Department can...

Faced with persistent questions from a leading Republican senator, Stephanie Villafuerte on Monday withdrew her name from consideration to become Colorado's next U.S. attorney...two days after Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked that consideration of her nomination be delayed because her record is "incomplete." The controversy has its roots in a 2002 plea deal extended by the office of then-Denver District Attorney Ritter. Walter Noel Ramo, a small- time heroin dealer and illegal immigrant with multiple aliases, was permitted to plead guilty to the manufactured charge of agricultural trespass, rather than a...

Politics, religion, and atheism in North Carolina are coming to a head. Cecil Bothwell, atheist, is soon to be seated as a City Council member in North Carolina. However, there is a problem: Under North Carolina's constitution politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office. Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are using that law to argue.... Federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution. While Article 6, section 8 of the North Carolina state constitution says: "The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny...

PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court refused late Wednesday to block enactment of a new state law that requires public employees to report illegal immigrants. Without ruling on the merits of the law, the justices said that the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, which had asked that the law be struck down as illegal, had not shown that the issue merited being taken directly to the state's high court. Ken Strobeck, executive director of the league, said he was "shocked and disappointed"' that the justices did not see fit to weigh in on the question, at least at this...

... Under the rules adopted by Philadelphia’s primary civil court, no owner-occupied house may be foreclosed on and sold by the sheriff’s office before a “conciliation conference,” a face-to-face meeting between the homeowner and the lender aimed at striking a workable compromise. Every homeowner facing a default filing is furnished with counseling, and sometimes legal representation. ... When homeowners in Philadelphia receive legal default notices from their mortgage companies, the court system schedules a conciliation hearing. Canvassers working for local nonprofit agencies visit foreclosed homeowners, distributing fliers that inform them of their rights to a conference, and urging them to...

The Obama administration on Monday plans to announce a campaign to pressure mortgage companies to reduce payments for many more troubled homeowners, as evidence mounts that a $75 billion taxpayer-financed effort aimed at stemming foreclosures is foundering. “The banks are not doing a good enough job,” Michael S. Barr, Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, said in an interview Friday. “Some of the firms ought to be embarrassed, and they will be.” ... Mr. Barr said the government would try to use shame as a corrective, publicly naming those institutions that move too slowly to permanently lower mortgage payments. The...

A Latino group is asking a judge to prevent state officials from canceling the registrations of more than 40,000 vehicles apparently driven by undocumented immigrants. The League of United Latin American Citizens filed the lawsuit against state officials in Franklin County Common Pleas Court this morning. The legal action comes two weeks before the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles plans to revoke the potentially fraudulently obtained license plates of those who cannot provide proof of legal U.S. residency. The lawsuit, which seeks a preliminary injunction to prevent the state from canceling registrations effective Dec. 8, claims the move is an...

Dobbs calls himself an independent with a strong populist streak, and many assume his departed because of politics. But perhaps something else influenced his decision: the fact that a bullet struck his home after threatening phone calls...

News that the state will cancel the car registrations of possibly thousands of undocumented immigrants has caused panic and created rumors among those living in central Ohio. Before Aug. 24, a loophole in the state Bureau of Motor Vehicle's policy allowed illegal immigrants to register cars in their names by using a power-of-attorney form, even if they didn't have a driver's license. The Ohio Department of Public Safety closed the loophole after delaying a crackdown on possibly fraudulent registrations for more than a year. After The Dispatch reported on the delay, the bureau sent letters at the beginning of October...

Dear Immigrant, Welcome to the greatest nation the world has ever known, The United States of America, that is if you're here legally. If you're not here legally, go back across whatever border you crossed and try coming back the way you're supposed to, otherwise when you entered this country you are a criminal. To you who have done the honorable thing and taken the time and trouble to become a citizen of this great nation, welcome! We're all in the same boat, with the exception of the Indians who were here when we first came here, we all came...

The TERRY ANDERSON SHOW.. Articulating the Popular Rage! A warrior in the fight against illegal immigration and those who promote it for over a decade! No one has the passion and common sense of Terry Anderson...He is A MUST listen! The BEST one hour of radio you'll find anywhere. Sunday Nights- Listen on the radio! 12-1 AM EDT, 11-12 PM CDT, 10-11 PM MDT, 9-10 PM PDT KRLA - 870 AM - Los Angeles -- KDWN - 720 - Las Vegas -- KFNX - 1100 - Phoenix "Stupid People of America !!! If You Ain't Mad, You Ain't Payin' Attention!"...

The "straw-dog" that comes out of the liberal circles is that asking people if they are in the US Legally during the census is a horrible act of racism. In actuality it is simply an attempt to guarantee all US Citizens the right to equal representation in congress and equal access to congressional funds and programs. As set up by the constitution, the purpose of the US Census is to determine the amount of congressional representatives each state receives Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their...

MEXICO CITY — The United States should reinstate a Clinton-era ban on assault weapons to prevent such guns from reaching Mexican drug cartels, former officials from both countries said in a report released Tuesday. The group, which includes two former U.S. ambassadors to Mexico, also said the U.S. should do more to stop the smuggling of firearms and ammunition into Mexico by stepping up investigations of gun dealers and more strictly regulating gun shows. The Binational Task Force on the United States-Mexico Border listed the assault weapons ban as a step the U.S. should take immediately to improve security in...

PHOENIX | The man who likes to call himself "America's toughest sheriff," Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., is planning a Friday showdown with the feds. The sheriff has announced he will defy the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by doing a street sweep for illegal immigrants one day after the expiration of the agreement that has permitted him to conduct such operations for the past three years. The sheriff has said he expects the deal not to be extended, though federal officials have remained publicly noncommittal. Deputies, and Sheriff Arpaio, will stake out an intersection somewhere in the Phoenix...

My country is in an unusual position this week. Former president Manuel Zelaya has surreptitiously returned to Honduras, still claiming to be the country's legitimate leader, despite the fact that a constitutional succession took place on June 28. Amid all of the claims that are likely to be made in coming days, the former president will not mention that the people of Honduras have moved on since the events of that day or that our citizens are looking forward to free, fair and transparent elections on Nov. 29. The international community has wrongfully condemned the events of June 28 and...

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is concerned that the Obama administration’s efforts to placate Republican critics of its policy on Honduras were giving the impression that American support for the restoration of the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, had begun to weaken. Frederick Jones, spokesman for committee chairman, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Friday that the senator was worried that a State Department letter to Republican legislators “risks sending a confusing signal” about the United States’ support for negotiations aimed at restoring Mr. Zelaya to power. The State Department sent a letter this week...

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Saturday he ordered his deputies to tape conversations with federal officials after a dispute over who called for the release of illegal immigrants arrested in a crime sweep. Arpaio said a total of 13 illegal immigrants have been released — three on Thursday and 10 on Friday — after federal officials said their arrests didn’t fit new Department of Homeland Security policies and ordered the deputies to release them. The sheriff’s claim over the releases was initially contradicted by a Homeland Security official. In the recording, multiple tracks detail conversations between deputies and ICE...

Paradise lost: the downside of doing business with China For years Western bosses sung Beijing’s praises. Now they are learning the cost of dealing with a control-freak regime Carl Mortished We need a new primer on how to do business in China. Years ago, on a flight to Shanghai, you could spot an MBA graduate in every seat mouthing polite mantras — how to show “face”, how to behave at a banquet. Long on protocol, the books were short on useful information. What you really need to know is who’s in charge; which Communist Party official pulls the strings; what...

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), then based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, vigorously lobbied for Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, the Cuban-style Marxist regime that shot its way to power in 1979. Today, WOLA pretends it is concerned about the rule of law in Honduras after the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court supported removing the leftist president for defying its constitution. WOLA and Jim Wallis' publication Sojourners have teamed up to spin Honduras' defense of its democracy as another example of a U.S.-supported, imperialist military coup. The constitutional coup in Honduras was...

...A notice from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shows the Obama administration is seeking to lift a rule that forbids those infected with HIV from entering the country. If the HIV travel ban is lifted, the virus that causes AIDS will be removed from the list of "a communicable disease of public health significance" that disqualifies foreigners from passing customs. In the late 1980s, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina was a proponent of the ban, leading the effort to get it codified into law. Since then, it's been of particular concern to the gay advocacy groups...

WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. government voiced concern on Wednesday over actions taken by Niger's President Mamadou Tandja to extend his rule in the West African country. "These decisions undermine Niger's efforts over the last ten years to advance good governance and the rule of law," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement. Tandja responded to the rejection by Niger's highest court of his plan to seek at least another three years in power by sacking the judges and naming a new Cabinet. ....U.S. concern about the situation in Niger comes at a time when Washington...

Chrysler Group LLC's restructuring is altering the bankruptcy landscape well beyond the auto industry. Within days of a bankruptcy-court judge's approval of the government's plan to sell Chrysler to Fiat SpA and leave creditors with big losses, a lawyer in the bankruptcy case of the National Hockey League's Phoenix Coyotes invoked Chrysler in trying to push through the speedy sale of the team. Should the judge approve that move and allow the Coyotes to be sold quickly, as Chrysler was, it could put some creditors out in the cold, leaving the NHL and other investors without the kind of input...

CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE BASRA, Iraq, June 12, 2009 – Thousands of years ago, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was the site where Hammurabi created one of the first written codes of law in recorded history, making plain the laws of the land to the people of the land. Army Capt. David Peterson, right, engages in a discussion with Iraqi judges and lawyers in a training session held by the Romanian judge advocate in Talil, Iraq. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Army Capt. David Peterson of the 34th Infantry Division is helping to restore...

Breaking on CNBC: USSC delays Chyrsler asset sale! Mourdock: USe of Tarp Funds in automotive industry was illegal Obama admin had urged USSC NOT to keep chrysler deal on hold

PHOENIX - Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his attorneys said in a press conference Monday that the U.S. Department of Justice and Homeland Security have an ulterior motive in their investigation into the sheriff's office. Arpaio and his attorneys outlined their reasons for demanding an investigation into the two agencies for unethical conduct and improper political influence during the course of their investigation of Arpaio's illegal immigration enforcement policies. "After serving with the DOJ for nearly 30 years as a ranking official with the DEA, it is almost painful to have to ask for this investigation," Arpaio says. "But...

Stating flatly that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is no racist, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) gave a clear indication that the first Hispanic nominee for the Court will have smooth sailing in the Senate, even from Republicans. According to The Hill, Graham provided this interesting exchange which depicts his clear-as-mud thinking on this issue:

[T]here is no escaping the long-term damage that has been inflicted on credit markets by the Obama administration’s attempts to reward the United Auto Workers, one of the president’s strongest supporters in the last election, while trampling decades of legal precedent regarding owners of corporate debt. The G.M. debacle is déjà vu all over again. In the Chrysler bankruptcy arranged by the government in April, bondholders also got short shrift, while the union, which might have received little or nothing in a normal bankruptcy, was awarded 55 percent of the company. ... [I]n its high-handed dealings with Chrysler and G.M.,...

Barring a sunrise at night, General Motors Corp. is headed for an orderly bankruptcy, and the Obama administration is about to be handed the keys to a venerable corporate institution. Again. And again, the administration seems to be rewriting the rules of capitalism to fashion a deal to its liking. Purists - and virtually every academic economist one happens to encounter - wonder what happened to the once inviolate principle of rewarding risk-takers. Unsecured creditors will get less of a stake in the new GM than its employees, and you can forget about poor unadorned stockholders. As in the deal...

Uncle Sam is not a rich relation. He’s an empty vessel, filled only by what Americans pay in. He can’t give to one without taking from the other. And if the other doesn’t want to give, Uncle Sam has to press his thumb on the scales of justice. That is not the rule of law, it is the rule of lawyers. It is the claim that something extraneous to the law, to the antecedent rules we all agree to live by, should be dispositive in a given case. And that something is the lawyer-turned-judge’s subjective sense of right and wrong,...

1) If we allow jurists which believe they can make their decisions according to “empathy” rather than rule of law (applied equally) whether someone is a man or a woman, white or a persona of color, 2) Then the law becomes illegitimate when it is APPLIED unequally. 3) If the law is applied arbitrarily according to someone’s feelings, and “Justice is not blind”, then I can not expect a fair (blind) and just ruling when I am brought before the law (or I bring suit), The law becomes illegitimate 4) If the Law is illegitimate then our system of law/jurisprudence...

No except allowed, story here .

Beyond the immediate, investment in building productive capacity must occur if the U.S. is to prosper and if higher national debt levels are to be serviced. Three forces that have built up in recent months and that will interact ferociously now make this almost impossible. Let's be optimistic and assume that any new debt default problems (e.g. from commercial real estate) can be absorbed by the reformed and refinanced financial sector. Yet, the cards are now stacked against sustained recovery.

When President Barack Obama announced Chrysler's Chapter 11 filing on April 30, many auto analysts scoffed at the president's notion of a "speedy bankruptcy." But the fix was in. In an extraordinary abuse of government power, the Obama administration has run roughshod over bankruptcy law, bullied Chrysler investors, and orchestrated a takeover of the Auburn Hills-based automaker by the United Auto Workers union, a key Democratic party constituency that gave $5 million to the Obama campaign in 2008. As a result, Chrysler is poised "to emerge from the process as early as next month," reports the Wall Street Journal, on...

... Pulling a trick from the hedge-fund playbook, the government used its leverage as the sole willing lender to Chrysler, either in bankruptcy court or out, to extract deep concessions from some of the country's biggest banks. The results of these hardball tactics were on display Friday, as the last resisters of a deal to slash the value of Chrysler debt abandoned their effort to fight it in bankruptcy court. That raised the chances for a relatively swift transit through Chapter 11, producing a new Chrysler 55%-owned by a trust for union retirees, 35% by Fiat SpA -- which hasn't...

Recently anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders was in the USA trying to warn us what unchecked mass immigration, political correctness and multiculturalism will bring to the USA. Please watch this videos to see the numerous parallels as to what is happening here in America and what has already happened in the Netherlands. To the view the video....

Cliff Asness, whose firm manages some $20 billion of assets, has written an open letter blasting President Obama for his attack on the hedge fund industry in the wake of the Chrysler bankruptcy. As you'll recall, hedge funds, which hold approximately $1 billion in Chrysler bonds, refused the government's offer to take approximately thirty cents on the dollar. Obama accused hedge funds of holding out "for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout." These comments have enraged many in the industry but few have spoken out publicly. Asness, whose firm doesn't hold Chrysler bonds, says the industry is genuinely afraid...

So much for any hope that the government would uphold rules and abiding by contracts. Instead, we keep getting examples of something else – that when President Obama fails to persuade firms to follow his wishes, he does not hesitate to use threats of financial destruction. Cliff Asness, the co-founder of the $20 billion hedge fund AQR Capital Management, laid bare the latest attacks with an open letter on Wednesday: “The President screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large. Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out....

The breadth of President Obama's assault on capitalism is breathtaking: from seeking to regulate fine details like credit card fees, to exerting control over major banks, restructuring the auto industry from the Oval Office, seeking to nationalize the entire health care industry, and proposing a national cap on fossil fuel consumption and a thinly disguised system of energy rationing. But that kind of sweeping control over the economy is not compatible with a system of government designed to protect individual liberty. America's traditional legal system is all about laws and rights and contracts—a fine web of protections for the rights...

President Obama's vision of the future is, apparently, an economy guided, steered and — when the occasion demands — commanded by the federal government. Some of the companies will remain private. Washington will take others over. But all will look to the White House, as to an orchestra conductor, for signals as to how and when and where to proceed. This summary is the vision that emerges from the Chrysler bailout. Whether or not one believes the claims of attorney Thomas Lauria (I do) that the investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners was strong-armed by the administration, the fact remains that...

While President Barack Obama has, in one sense, tipped his hand by saying that he wants judges with "empathy" for certain groups, he has in a more fundamental sense concealed the real goal — getting judges who will ratify an ever-expanding scope of the power of the federal government and an ever-declining restraint by the Constitution of the United States. This is consistent with everything else that Obama has done in office and is consistent with his decades-long track record of alliances with people who reject the fundamentals of American society. Judicial expansion of federal power is not really new,...

There is a reason why the statue of Justice wears a blindfold. There are things that courts are not supposed to see or recognize when making their decisions— the race you belong to, whether you are rich or poor, and other personal things that could bias decisions by judges and juries. It is an ideal that a society strives for, even if particular judges or juries fall short of that ideal. Now, however, President Barack Obama has repudiated that ideal itself by saying that he wants to appoint judges with "empathy" for particular groups. This was not an isolated slip...

The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is not the kind of justice who would have been appointed under President Barack Obama's criterion of "empathy" for certain groups. Like most people, Justice Holmes had empathy for some and antipathy for others, but his votes on the Supreme Court often went against those for whom he had empathy and for those for whom he had antipathy. As Holmes himself put it: "I loathed most of the things in favor of which I decided." After voting in favor of Benjamin Gitlow in the 1925 case of Gitlow v. People of New...

Justice David Souter's retirement from the Supreme Court presents President Barack Obama with his first opportunity to appoint someone to the High Court. People who are speculating about whether the next nominee will be a woman, a Hispanic or whatever, are missing the point. That we are discussing the next Supreme Court justice in terms of group "representation" is a sign of how far we have already strayed from the purpose of law and the weighty responsibility of appointing someone to sit for life on the highest court in the land. That President Obama has made "empathy" with certain groups...

So too in the national security realm we see the administration itching to disregard the law. The Obama team is on the verge of releasing Guantanamo detainees, and specifically the Uighurs who were trained in terror camps in Afghanistan. Federal law deems individuals who received terror training to be “inadmissible” to the U.S. Nevertheless, the administration seem bent on doing just this — perhaps on some theory that the president can do whatever he darn pleases. It is an approach that surely candidate Obama would have decried. But, that it seems, is now par for the course. Obama wants to...

President Barack Obama Blamed Chrysler's bankruptcy on "speculators," but the real problem was that the government's plan gave too much to the auto maker's unions and not enough to creditors. If the secured creditors holding $6.9 billion in claims had been offered anything close to what the administration wants to give the United Auto Workers, there would have been no bankruptcy filing by Chrysler. In the bizarre pecking order offered by the administration, the unions, which are at the bottom of Chrysler's capital structure, would get nearly full recovery value for their $10.6 billion retiree health-care claims, while the secured...

WASHINGTON - Congress should enact "badly needed" immigration reforms to bring in both unskilled and skilled foreign workers if it wants to maintain the nation's economic vitality, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Thursday. Greenspan called for both a temporary worker program for low-skilled jobs and for an increase in visas for highly skilled workers...in testimony at the first Senate hearing this year on the prospects of an immigration overhaul. Noting the "very large participation" of undocumented workers in both low- and high-skilled jobs, he said, "if you were to remove either of those groups, the economy would be...

The U.S. government's restructuring plan for Chrysler LLC is sounding alarm bells for those in the business of lending money who worry that the plan could subvert decades of standing legal precedent and investing principles. Banks, hedge funds and other investors that hold $6.9 billion in secured loans are being asked to release their contractual claims over Chrysler's assets in exchange for a fraction of what they are owed. Many lenders see that as a raw deal, because in the bankruptcy code's priority scheme, secured creditors are supposed to get paid before unsecured creditors such as employees. Investors worry the...

Obama’s first 100 days have occasioned a number of dispiriting moments, but yesterday’s attack on Chrysler’s bondholders represented a new low. In a speech announcing the company’s bankruptcy filing, President Obama blasted “a group of investment firms and hedge funds [that] decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.” That is nothing short of a lie. The consortium wasn’t holding out for a bailout. It was holding out for a bankruptcy. The administration tried desperately to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy court; in the process, it demonstrated exactly why that institution is so valuable. Obama’s auto...

Today’s confirmation hearing for Harold Koh, President Obama’s nominee as Legal Adviser for the State Department, is an important hurdle, but it’s not the last one. As a transnationalist, Koh is not normally respectful of the Senate’s “advice and consent” role in making treaties. The full Senate can therefore be expected to take a lively interest in his nomination...For example, according to Koh, the U.S. was wrong not to participate in the 2001 Durban Conference. The Conference, according to Koh, was fashioning the “emerging global agenda on race discrimination.” And a global agenda is exactly the kind of agenda that...