Free Republic

President Obama always knew his plan to shield millions of immigrants from deportation would enrage Republicans on Capitol Hill who oppose most of what he does.. But by claiming the power to forge ahead based on his executive authority, the president may well lose the one conservative he still really needs: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Two years ago, the chief justice surprised many by joining liberals on the court to uphold the constitutionality of Obama's Affordable Care Act. And he probably holds the deciding vote in a second legal challenge to the healthcare law — one that seeks...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was admitted to hospital on Wednesday where she underwent heart surgery to address a blockage in her right coronary artery. “The coronary blockage was discovered after Justice Ginsburg experienced discomfort during routine exercise last night and was taken to the hospital,” read a statement on her condition. “She is resting comfortably and is expected to be discharged in the next 48 hours.”Now, health scares like these are nothing to joke about, and all our readers surely wish “The Notorious R.B.G.” well. That having been said, it would be dishonest to not note the...

Ann Coulter: Would It Kill You To Hire More Black Cops? (Yes) Ann Coulter August 27, 2014 As the story of Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown begins to look less clear-cut than we were led to believe by Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, the “voices of oppression” on MSNBC now say the real issue is that there aren’t enough blacks on the Ferguson police force. As Brown may or may not have said seconds before his death: I give up. If the Ferguson police are forced to hire more minorities and women for the sake of...

The Supreme Court's surprising decision to hear a new challenge to the Affordable Care Act once again has focused attention on Chief Justice John Roberts, who cast the deciding vote in a 2012 decision that saved ObamaCare from being declared unconstitutional. Many court watchers expect that he will once again be the swing vote in deciding a case crucial to the health-care law, this one involving questions about who qualifies for subsidies under the law. But Roberts' vote in a recent voting rights case suggests he might not step in to save the health law this time. At issue in...

Mickey Kaus makes an interesting argument that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court may act on the lawsuit John Boehner is planning to file, and reverse President Obama’s planned executive action on amnesty: With Obama’s executive amnesty imminent, anonymous White House aides are cockily dismissing John Boehner’s threatened lawsuit against it as a stunt. Even among opponents of executive amnesty — and I’m with them — there’s a tendency to pooh pooh the suit. It’s a loser, it will take forever to decide, it’s an attempt to ‘redirect Republican rage’ away from budgetary remedies like denying funding, etc. Not so fast. I’m...

At the time of this writing, six “Gruber videos” have been released and “gone viral,” as they say in YouTube land. These are the videos of course, in which “Obamacare architect” Jonathan Gruber lets the cat out of the bag on the process of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, aka The Greatest Consumer Fraud Perpetrated on the American People, Ever. Of the many Gruber quotes burning up the internet, I was especially struck by this one, to which Charles Krauthammer refers in a recent article: Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget...

Written by: Kirk Strohman Researched by: Casey E. Sanders Edited by: Daniel Kwak Executive orders can be as socially important as integrating the armed forces or simply a means of calming public anxiety in the face of the “Y2K problem.” They can be White House effective tools to block financing to terrorist organizations or authorize controversial (and later found to be illegal) means for treating detainees.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling has cleared the way for a wave of bail hearings for immigrants across Arizona. Hundreds of immigrants who have been denied bail under a strict Arizona law will now have the opportunity to be released. The high court on Thursday kept intact a lower-court ruling that struck down the law passed in 2006 amid a series of immigration crackdowns in Arizona over the past decade. The law denied bail to immigrants who are in the country illegally and have been charged with a range of felonies that include shoplifting, aggravated identity theft, sexual assault and...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court said Wednesday that same-sex marriages can go ahead in Kansas. The nation's highest court denied the state's request to prevent gay and lesbian couples from marrying while Kansas fights the issue in court. The state constitution includes a provision banning gay marriage, approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2005.

MADISON, Wis. – Frustrated by one federal court, conservative activists in the crosshairs of a partisan Wisconsin prosecutor say they’ll take their First Amendment case to the Supreme Court. Andrew Grossman, an attorney for veteran political activist Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, said he hopes the high court will settle questions tied to political speech and Wisconsin’s politically charged John Doe investigation. The petition of certiorari, as it’s called, is due by Jan. 21. It’s been a long and winding road to the high court. U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Randa had argued the conservatives showed that...

So it turns out there is an Obamacare death panel after all. It has nine members and it operates out of a marble building directly across the street from the Capitol. When the Supreme Court on Friday announced that it would take up another challenge to the Affordable Care Act in March, it delivered the threat of two mortal blows to the signature achievement of the Obama presidency. First, it raised the possibility that the justices, who narrowly spared the law in 2012, will in June come out with a new ruling that would dismantle the law on different grounds....

The Supreme Court is taking up another Obamacare case—one that could devastate the health care law's coverage expansion. The justices on Friday agreed to hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a lawsuit that challenges the insurance subsidies at the heart of the Affordable Care Act. The suit argues that the subsidies—which roughly 80 percent of Obamacare enrollees received—should only be available in a handful of states. The Supreme Court is taking up another Obamacare case—one that could devastate the health care law's coverage expansion. The justices on Friday agreed to hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a lawsuit...

The window for President Obama to add another liberal justice to the Supreme Court probably closed last week when Republicans took control of the Senate. Over the last 10 years, the Senate's vote on high court nominees has increasingly followed party lines. Republican senators lined up against Obama's first two nominees — Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — but lacked the votes to block them. Now, they will have the majority to stop any nominee, particularly one with a liberal record.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear a lawsuit challenging an arbitrary IRS decision to issue tax credits and penalties through federally created Obamacare exchanges. Two federal courts have already declared the regulation unconstitutional, but a third court ruled that the IRS has acted within its authority. It was this ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that prompted the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell to file an appeal with the high court. If the Supreme Court rules against the Obama administration in this case, it could well be the undoing of the reviled health care...

Yesterday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals struck a reverberating blow on behalf of natural marriage and the Constitution by upholding bans on sodomy-based marriages in its jurisdiction.It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this ruling.It means, for one thing, that the issue is now on the fast track to the Supreme Court. If the Court accepts a marriage case by January, a decision will almost certainly be issued by next June.From a constitutional standpoint, the 6th Circuit’s ruling is a model of sound jurisprudence. The ruling observes that the Supreme Court has already settled the question of the...

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review whether the insurance subsidies through President Obama's healthcare law are illegal in 36 states, because the text of Obamacare limited subsidies to those states that set up their own exchanges. Here are six potential outcomes if the Supreme Court rules against the Department of Health and Human Services and declares such subsidies illegal. 1. Uncertainty keeps repeal flame alive The Supreme Court is coming at a time when there's an internal debate among Republicans about how the new Senate majority should approach the prospect of repealing Obamacare. Ever since the major...

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday stunningly affirmed the rights of voters in four states – Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee – to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, throwing a boulder into the millpond of complacent assumptions by homosexual-rights advocates that same-sex marriage is a given across the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court recently has refused to take on any same-sex marriage cases, allowing the movement to expand into about 30 states. But Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, which has fought on behalf of traditional...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells Newsmax TV that a Supreme Court decision on Friday to hear another legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is "devastating to the president." "I have no ability to judge what the Supreme Court will do," Gingrich said, noting that Chief Justice John Roberts once cast the deciding vote to uphold President Barack Obama's signature health care overhaul. But Gingrich said the new challenge is based on making the Affordable Care Act comply with the actual text of the statute that Congress passed and that Obama signed — and Gingrich said that in this...

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments against the availability of exchange subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Today’s order from the Court granted review in King v. Burwell, one of several cases challenging IRS regulations extending tax-credit subsidies to the states with federal exchanges. Briefings will be submitted over the next few months, and a ruling is not expected until June.

In a significant setback for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court just agreed to review King v. Burwell, the Fourth Circuit’s decision upholding an IRS rule extending tax credits to federally established exchanges. The government had asked the Court to take a pass because there’s no split in the circuit courts over whether the IRS rule is valid. At least four justices—it only takes four to grant certiorari—voted to take the case anyhow. As I see it, what’s troubling here is not that the Court took King in the absence of a split. Its rules permit it to hear cases...