Free Republic

Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund founded by billionaire James Simons, donated over $13 million to Sen. Ted Cruz’s failed presidential campaign. For a guy who’s supposed to be pretty smart with his money, the ROI on that one has got to sting. Nevertheless, now that Mr. Cruz is out of the race, Mr. Simons has begun pouring millions of dollars into Hillary Clinton‘s campaign, with Renaissance Technologies donating over $2 million to Ms. Clinton so far this election cycle. Euclidean Capital—also owned by Mr. Simons—has given the Clinton campaign over $7 million in contributions, and such figures are likely to...

The U.S. Navy chaplain who was removed from the military for disobeying a “lawful” order banning prayer “in Jesus’ name” has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and overturn a decade of rulings in his case. The petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed by attorney John B. Wells on behalf of Gordon J. Klingenschmitt. His case was filed back in 2011, after his removal from the military over the issue of praying “in Jesus’ name” sparked years of battles. Since his removal, Klingenschmitt has been leading the PrayInJesusName.org ministry, and he also has been serving...

Realville, as Rush often says, is where he lives. That’s a place without blinkers or rose-colored glasses. That’s actually where we all live, though some of us prefer to deny it. That is, until reality bites. Then our wishful thinking or willful ignorance dashes upon the hard rock of unforgiving reality. The crackup always smarts. Thus is the case with the 2016 presidential election. There’s Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In other words, there’s Column A and Column B. That’s the choice. Column C is fairyland. Come November, tens of millions of voters will flock to the polls to choose...

Contrary to those in the media and elsewhere who claimed he was “far more accepting” on LGBT issues than other GOP candidates, Donald Trump is proving that he very much will be a force against LGBT equality if elected president. And he’s doing it in a more insidious, under-the-radar way than any previous GOP presidential nominee. Though he rarely raises his positions against LGBT rights on the campaign trail, Trump is making pacts with anti-LGBT forces. Today, Trump spoke at the Road to the Majority summit in Washington, an event attended by Christian right activists and sponsored by the Faith...

Donald Trump called for the Republican Party to fall in line behind his presidential bid Saturday during campaign swings through Florida and Pennsylvania, attacking skeptical members of his own party along with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. “We have a war to win against a very crooked politician. The Republican Party really should get their act together,” Trump said here Saturday. “They have to come together. We have to win. And if for no other reason, the Supreme Court, remember that.”

A flyer circulated before Donald Trump’s Friday rally in Richmond, Virginia, called for violence and declared “passive resistance … has no effect on heartless racists.” Under a headline of “Self-Defense,” the flyer reads: We fully support your right to self-defense, we do not expect you to take a beating by Trump goons in order to “look good.” Your safety is important, protect yourself. Fascism wants us to peacefully resist while it steamrolls us. We take our inspiration from the workers of Spain who rose up by the millions to fight fascism when it came to their country. Passive resistance works...

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., accused presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee of applying a double standard by planning to construct fencing around this summer's Democratic convention. "It's interesting that the Democratic National Committee will have a wall around their convention to keep unapproved people out while at the same time, their presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, pushes for open borders policies that are even more radical than President Obama's," Alabama's junior senator said in astatement. "She would refuse to deport dangerous criminal aliens until after they have been convicted of committing heinous crimes against Americans, close detention...

A brief look at the most egregious examples from the last 40 yearsAnnoyed at federal judge Gonzalo P. Curiel's persistent rulings against him in the Trump University case (brought by a law firm that has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches by Bill and Hillary), Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that maybe it's because the judge is a second-generation Mexican immigrant. The entire media -- and most of the GOP -- have spent 10 months telling us that Mexicans in the United States are going to HATE Trump for saying he'll build a wall. Now they're outraged...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed again Friday that the Senate will not confirm President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland, this year. “Let me say this once more, and let me say it clearly: Barack Obama will not get a Supreme Court Justice in the 11th hour of his presidency on the way out the door,” McConnell said to loud applause at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C. …

Police Apprehend Suspect in Ohio After Shooting Sheriff's Deputy, 1 Other By BRIAN MCBRIDE Jun 10, 2016 Police apprehended a suspect this morning after allegedly shooting a sheriff's deputy and at least one other person Thursday night near Cincinnati, Ohio, police said. Lt. John Faine of the Warren County Sheriff's Department identified the suspect as Mohammed Abdou Laghaoui, age 19. He was described as armed and dangerous. The arrest took place at a location close to the shootings, Faine said. Authorities responded to reports of an active shooter near a Kroger grocery store in Deerfield Township.

On May 26, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial in which it claimed the NRA is exaggerating Hillary Clinton’s threat to gun rights. Focusing on the Supreme Court, the Tribune claimed there is no guarantee that Republicans would confirm Clinton’s appointees to the highest court, and even if they did, there is no guarantee those justices would revisit landmark decisions like District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) or McDonald v. Chicago (2010).

You’ve probably heard that in 1971 the Supreme Court reversed Muhammad Ali’s conviction for refusing to be inducted into the Selective Service. But why did it do so? What was the legal issue on which the case turned? And what, if anything, did the criminal case have to do with Ali losing his championship and being precluded from fighting for more than three years? Here’s a brief summary of the legal machinations. I am deeply indebted to former Georgetown Law professor Tom Krattenmaker, one of Justice John Marshall Harlan’s clerks in the October Term 1970, from whom I learned some...

1.Justice Sonia Sotomayor famously invoked her identity as a “wise Latina” who could outdo a white man. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said in an October, 2001 speech that became a point of criticism for Republicans. 2.When Donald Trump released his list of potential Supreme Court nominees, the left was quick to point out they were all white. Think Progress published an article titled “Your Ultimate Guide To The 11 White People...

In 1950, Congress enacted Law 600, which authorized the people of Puerto Rico (PR) to organize a government pursuant to aconstitution of their own adoption. The PR people capitalized on that opportunity, calling a constitutional convention and overwhelmingly approving the charter it drafted. Once Congress approved that proposal—subject to several important conditions accepted by the convention the Commonwealth of PR, a new political entity, came into being. Those constitutional developments were of great significance and, indeed, made PR “sovereign” in one commonly understood sense of that term. At that point, Congress granted PR a degree of autonomy comparable to that...

Clearing the way for the Supreme Court to rule on immigration policy without a distraction, a federal trial judge in Texas on Tuesday postponed a sweeping order that had added controversial new requirements for the federal government in carrying out the policy. U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Brownsville delayed all facets of his broad May 19 order until August 22, when he will hold a status conference. Some lawyers involved in challenges to the Hanen ruling had vowed to go to the Supreme Court promptly if the judge or a federal appeals court had not acted to delay...

In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.” In her speech, Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusio....

Newt Gingrich confirms that he's running for President in 2012 because you know he would never backtrack from a statement like this: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday he shouldn't have called Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist, but said he was still concerned that she would bring bias to her decisions.

Noah Feldman is a Harvard law professor and a prolific author. In an op-ed in The Post and Courier, Noah Feldman has penned an article that grudgingly admits that the Second Amendment is a fundamental right deserving as much respect as the First Amendment.  Feldman gets much wrong.  For example, he declares that the Supreme Court found that the Second Amendment is an individual right for the first time in 2008.  From bloomberg.com: The evolution of gun rights has an internal legal logic to it. The contemporary story starts in 2008 with the case of D.C. v. Heller, a 5-to-4...

Government has a right to regulate the Second Amendment, Hillary Clinton said in an interview on the June 5 airing of This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Clinton contended that Americans have historically recognized the government’s “right” to regulate the bearing of arms, suggesting that it was not until District of Columbia v Heller (2008) that anyone thought otherwise. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you believe an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right? That it’s not linked to the service in the militia?”

Escalating its constitutional battle with a federal judge over the ethics of government lawyers in the major test case on presidential power over immigration, the Justice Department late Friday night asked a federal appeals court to swiftly nullify the judge’s order of sanctions. In a massive filing of nearly four hundred pages, the department also asked that the judge’s order be put on hold while it is being challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. This new conflict between the Obama administration and U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Brownsville, Texas, is separate but related...