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First Prayer in Congress, September 1774, in Carpenters Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Washington D.C., May 22, 2013 / 12:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a move that could have national consequences for prayer in public life, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a federal case challenging the constitutionality of opening prayers at the town council meetings of Greece, New York. “It is perfectly constitutional to allow community members to ask for God's blessing according to their conscience,� Brett Harvey, Senior Counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told CNA May 21. “A Supreme Court ruling reaffirming this historic tradition and...

The U.S. Supreme Court just announced it will hear in October 2013 the case Galloway v. Greece, concerning freedom of speech and legislative prayer. In 2008 two Greece residents, Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens, filed suit against the town alleging that the town’s habit of having explicitly Christian prayers delivered prior to board meetings flouted the First Amendment. In August 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Siragusa disagreed, ruling that prayers in Jesus’ name were not a violation of the U.S. Constitution. But a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in May 2012 overturned Siragusa’s decision...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized the Roe v. Wade decision Saturday, stating that it overruled the democratic will by handing down a decision made by “unelected old men.” Speaking at the University of Chicago Law School, the 80 year-old justice said that the 1973 decision, together with Doe v. Bolton, which legalized abortion until the ninth month of pregnancy, was too overreaching. Ginsburg said it would have been her preference that the High Court struck down only the Texas law in question without a decision that affected other states. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Ginsburg indicated that...

<p>The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto Monday over an Indiana farmer accused of having pirated the genetically-modified crops developed by the agribusiness giant.</p> <p>The high court was unanimous in its decision, ruling that laws limiting patents do "not permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder's permission."</p>

One of the most liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be expected to give a rousing defense of Roe v. Wade in reflecting on the landmark vote 40 years after it established a nationwide right to abortion. Instead, Ginsburg told an audience Saturday at the University of Chicago Law School that while she supports a woman's right to choose, she feels the ruling by her predecessors on the court was too sweeping and gave abortion opponents a symbol to target. Ever since, she said, the momentum has been on the other side, with anger...

During oral arguments on Prop 8, Justice Kennedy alluded to the views of children of same-sex couples as if their desires and concerns are identical to and uncritical of their parents’ decisions. But the reality is far more complicated. During the oral arguments about Proposition 8, Justice Anthony Kennedy referred to children being raised by same-sex couples. Since I was one of those children—from ages 2-19, I was raised by a lesbian mother with the help of her partner—I was curious to see what he would say. (snip) I have heard of the supposed “consensus” on the soundness of same-sex...

Diverse Group of Amicus Briefs Ask the High Court to Protect a Peaceful Hutterite ColonyFor Immediate Release: May 3, 2013Media Contact: Emily Hardman, ehardman@becketfund.org, 202.349.7224Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the State of Michigan, twenty-one First Amendment scholars, and eighteen religious organizations representing tens of millions of religious believers filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the Court to hear a religious liberty appeal on behalf of a Hutterite colony in Montana. The question in the case is whether the Hutterites, who trace their history to the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, can be forced to provide workers’ compensation insurance...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ripped the media and took a subtle dig at President Obama during an CSPAN interview dated from April 9th. When asked about how he felt about the nation’s first black President, Barack Obama, Thomas said he always knew it would have to be a person who was “approved by the elites and the media” because if it was someone who they didn’t agree with, that person would be picked apart.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV from the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, former Vice President Al Gore claims American democracy has been "hacked." Gore also opined on former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently commenting that she regretted her decision in Bush v. Gore.

The Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed the state of Alabama, and gave a win to the Obama administration, by declining to review a lower court ruling that had blocked a controversial part of the state's tough immigration law. Alabama had asked the high court to review an appeals court decision to stop enforcement of the 'harboring' provision that made it illegal to harbor or transport anyone in the state who had entered the country illegally. The appeals court had acted in 2012 at the Obama administration's request. The White House had said that Alabama's law was trumped by federal immigration...

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that it’s legal for a state to limit use of its Freedom of Information Act to its own residents. The court unanimously upheld a federal appeals court decision validating Virginia’s limitation of its FOIA law to state citizens and some media outlets. In the case before the court, Rhode Island resident Mark J. McBurney and California resident Roger W. Hurlbert were suing Virginia for blocking them from getting public documents in Virginia that in-state citizens could have easily obtained. Virginia’s FOIA law limits access to state citizens and some media outlets. “We hold, however, that...

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court set the terms for boosting college admissions of African Americans and other minorities, the court may be about to issue a ruling that could restrict universities' use of race in deciding who is awarded places. The case before the justices was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white suburban Houston student who asserted she was wrongly rejected by the University of Texas at Austin while minority students with similar grades and test scores were admitted.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was hospitalized after a bicycle accident on Friday, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said. Breyer had surgery at a Washington hospital after fracturing his collarbone when he fell off his bike, spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg said in a statement, according to ABC News. The accident occurred near the Korean War Memorial. The surgery was successful and Breyer is expected to make a full recovery, Arberg said. According to the Associated Press, this is not Breyer’s first bike-related injury. The 74-year-old justice broke his collarbone in a 2011 accident, and he broke his ribs and punctured his lung...

Setting the stage for a constitutional showdown, the Obama administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad authority to make certain appointments without Senate approval. In January the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that three appointments to the panel, which normally has five members, were invalid. In the brief filed on Thursday, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli defended the recess appointment powers of the president, disputing the court's conclusion that it can only be used in the period between formal sessions of the Senate. If the appeals court ruling was...

#1 Eric Holder needs to be fired #2 Love these so called conservatives and proponents of "limited government" that support the violation of the 5th Amendment in the case of the Boston bomber because these are "special circumstances" don't you know? Public Safety exception? They arrest him and then tell the public that there is no remaining threat. However, they want to tell us the public is in imminent danger? This is bullshit and opens the door to government stripping our 5th amendment rights whenever they please. Also, it may keep the man from getting the federal death penalty due...

Police officers generally must try to get a warrant before forcing uncooperative drunken-driving suspects to submit to a blood test, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. The natural dissipation of alcohol in a person’s bloodstream does not justify an exception to the general constitutional requirements of a warrant, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority. She said such emergencies must be determined by the circumstances in a case-by-case examination and rejected the notion that officers face a “now or never” situation in obtaining blood alcohol tests. “In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood...

There are seven distinct ways the court could rule: If the merits are reached (meaning that the court decides the case meets the constitutional requirements to be adjudicated and a ruling released): The Nationwide Solutions: 1) The court could rule that Proposition 8 is constitutional. This would allow states to confine marriage to a union between a man and a woman. 2) The court could rule that it is a violation of the equal protections act of the 14th amendment to prevent same-sex couples from marrying. This would essentially legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states. The 8 state solution:...

The Supreme Court, following a pattern that is now quite well established, chose again on Monday to remain on the sidelines as the national debate over gun ownership heats up in the political realm. Without comment, the Justices denied review of the latest attempt to test whether the Second Amendment right to have a gun extends beyond the home. The denial of review in Kachalsky v. Cacace (docket 12-845) was the latest in a series of denials of attempts to get the Justices to explore the reach of the Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing a...

The Supreme Court is staying out of the gun debate for now. The justices on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a strict New York law that makes it difficult for residents to get a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.

A day after the Senate voted to begin debate on new gun control measures, the Supreme Court is expected to consider a new appeal aimed at loosening state restrictions on firearms. The justices are meeting in private Friday to discuss adding new cases for the term that begins in the fall. Among them is an appeal of a federal court ruling that upheld New York’s strict licensing scheme for carrying concealed weapons in public. The National Rifle Association and 20 states are backing an appeal by five New York residents who claim that the state law violates their constitutional gun...

Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the two cases concerning so-called same-sex “marriage,” the California Proposition 8 case and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case, on which the high court recently heard two days of testimony. However, some of the comments made by several justices in the course of the hearings on these two cases point to at least one possible way, dismaying to contemplate, in which the court might well invalidate DOMA in particular, in spite of what would seem to be the unassailable truth it represents in affirming that a true marriage must...

The Obama Administration’s argument failed to persuade anyone. The only thing the high court seemed to agree unanimously on was that no one considered the Obama Administration’s stance on the issue convincing. The administration’s brief calls “for the nullification of the gay marriage bans now in place in California and the seven other states that forbid gay marriage while allowing civil unions.” Essentially this position asserts that for those states which allow civil unions they will be forced to grant full marriage. It takes no position on states that have no benefits for same-sex couples. Several Justices vehemently challenged the...

I was at a conference recently on the relationship between constitutionalism and liberty. There were quite a few very smart and learned people there. Two things struck me in particular from the conversations we had over several days: first, how little faith scholars today seem to have in constitutional structures, and, second, how little faith they seem to have in the possibility of human virtue. I have much more sympathy for the second prejudice than the first, but the conversations in general got me thinking about our current constitutional predicament and what it says about the relationships between character and...

Provo artist Jon McNaughton is back with a new painting, 'The Forgotten Man,' which features President Barack Obama standing on the Constitution. In the new painting, a man, sitting in the throes of depression on a park bench in front of a White House, is seen surrounded by 43 presidents. On the other side, Obama is standing on the Constitution ignoring the depressed man while James Madon pleading Obama not to stand on the Constitution.

“Obamacare” looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law. A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House. Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House. The Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the act in June, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a...

Has the nation lived down its history of racism and should the law become colorblind? Addressing two pivotal legal issues, one on affirmative action and a second on voting rights, a divided Supreme Court is poised to answer those questions. In one case, the issue is whether race preferences in university admissions undermine equal opportunity more than they promote the benefits of racial diversity. Just this past week, justices signaled their interest in scrutinizing affirmative action very intensely, expanding their review as well to a Michigan law passed by voters that bars ‘‘preferential treatment’’ to students based on race. Separately...

I never knew the extent of a lobby's power until fate called me to speak on behalf of children's rights. Now, six months after having come forward with a logical, secular argument against same-sex parenting based on experience, broad research, and international law, I have been met with vicious attacks and something far worse than viciousness: a massive nationwide cold shoulder. Both left and right are allied in a complete blackout of dissent from LGBT orthodoxy. Doug Mainwaring is a gay father in Maryland; he and I jointly signed an amicus brief in support of Proposition 8. Over the last...

WASHINGTON, - Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts told a Maryland coffee shop cashier he was the victim of credit card information theft. Roberts, who normally pays for his morning coffee with a credit card, paid with cash Tuesday and explained to the cashier that he had been forced to cancel his credit card when someone was able to obtain his numbers, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Kinda funny how when President Bush was pressing for a federal constitutional amendment banning one-sex marriage how many (actually the lionshare) Democrats said that the issue should be left to the states. When Dems supposedly supported traditional marriage they wanted the states to decide. Now that they support one-sex marriage, do they still believe that the states should decide or do they want the courts to force one-sex marriage onto all the states? How could any Democrat be for an approach that says no to a federal ban - let the states decide - and then flip to a federal...

Few things were certain after the Supreme Court's first foray into the issue of gay marriage earlier this week—except that conservative-leaning swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy will control the outcome. The four liberal and the four conservative justices appeared to split right down the middle on how (and whether) to decide the constitutionality of both Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. Kennedy—who in the past authored the court's two most important opinions affirming gay rights—seemed to be on the fence in both cases.

When Edith Windsor got engaged in the 1960s to the woman who eventually became her wife, she asked for a pin instead of a ring. A ring would have meant awkward questions, she said: Who is he? Where is he? And when do we meet him? … Windsor said the spirit of her partner of 44 years was watching and listening Wednesday, and she called marriage a “magic word.” “For anybody who doesn’t understand why we want it and why we need it, OK, it is magic,” she told reporters. Windsor is asking the court to strike down Section 3...

Why are some people gay? Most researchers who study sexual orientation think that both genetic and environmental factors play a role, but the relative contributions of each remain unclear. A new study of Swedish twins reinforces earlier findings that environmental influences--including the environment in the womb--may play a greater role than genes. Scientists studying complex human behaviors often turn to twin studies. Researchers look at both identical and fraternal twins to see how often they share a trait--a parameter called concordance. The greater the concordance among genetically identical twins compared with fraternal twins--who share only half of their genes--the more...

The old adage that one lie leads to another is never more apparent than when modern American public officials deal with issues arising from sexual immorality. President Bill Clinton, for example, started a chain of lies when he decided to have an adulterous relationship with a White House intern. Clinton first lied to his wife, then to a federal court, then to the American people. Nor could Clinton's lies, delivered as president, be his lies alone. His partisans in Congress either had to abandon him or add another link to the chain of lies by declaring that perjury and obstruction...

Liberal activists respect neither natural law nor positive law. What God and the people have joined together, they feel perfectly free to put asunder. Marriage, by their lights, is a purely human institution that they can make and remake at will. This unholy cause has been on display during Holy Week at the Supreme Court, where activists, such as Hillary Rosen, declared loudly that “procreation is not the point of marriage.” Apparently Jesus Christ was mistaken on this point. He seemed to think that marriage had to do with the two sexes coming together and becoming “one flesh,” a biological...

During oral arguments on Wednesday at the U.S. Supreme Court on a case testing the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Samuel Alito suggested that Congress could have used a more “neutral” term than marriage in the law the defines marriage as a union of one man and one woman for federal purposes. “Congress could have achieved exactly what it achieved under Section 3 by excising the term ‘married’ from the United States Code and replacing it with something more neutral,” Alito said. “It could have said ‘certified domestic units,’ and then defined this in exactly the way...

Marriage Decline: The disintegration of the nuclear family — particularly in the African-American community — and the rise in fatherless homes have greater societal implications than gay marriage, yet few pay attention. The debate over gay marriage has taken center stage with two cases, one involving California's Proposition 8 which bans it, and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which bars federal agencies recognizing the validity of same-sex marriages in the states where they are legal, now before the U.S. Supreme Court. We have argued that the civil purpose of marriage is not and never has been to reaffirm the...

WASHINGTON — A majority of the justices on Wednesday questioned the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, as the Supreme Court took up the volatile issue of same-sex marriage for a second day. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, widely considered the swing vote on the divided court, joined the four liberals in posing skeptical questions to a lawyer defending the law, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for the purposes of more than 1,000 federal laws and programs. “The question is whether or not the federal government under a federalism system has...

Industry associations lost their last appeal The Obama administration has been pushing to reduce the amount of oil that we consume within the United States. This has resulted in a big push to increase the use of alternative fuels and rules forcing automakers to become more fuel-efficient. The alternative fuel push lead to the EPA’s decision to approve a gasoline blend that uses more ethanol for 2001 model year vehicles and newer. However, many automotive manufacturer associations continue to assert that increasing the percentage of ethanol in fuel could harm some vehicles. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Association...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was questioning former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, a pro-gay marriage Republican. She brought up a very interesting question during the exchange: If gay marriage is legal, what about polygamy? Sotomayor asked, "If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist?" before referencing "polygamy and incest among adults," as reported by Matt Canham of the Salt Lake Tribune. The argument is an illustration of a broader issue about the culture of American society. To agree that gay marriage is indeed protected by the "equal protection" clause in the Constitution, wouldn't the...

If the Supreme Court can find its way through a dense procedural thicket, and confront the constitutionality of the federal law that defined marriage as limited to a man and a woman, that law may be gone, after a seventeen-year existence. That was the overriding impression after just under two hours of argument Wednesday on the fate of the Defense of Marriage Act.

The Supreme Court's conservative justices on Wednesday were sharply critical of President Obama's approach to a federal law on same-sex marriage. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder decided in 2011 that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. They quit defending it in the courts, but directed federal agencies to continue to comply with the law. Conservatives on the Supreme Court criticized that approach Wednesday during oral arguments over whether DOMA is constitutional. “I don't see why he doesn't have the courage of his convictions,” Chief Justice John Roberts said of Obama's decision to continue following the law, even...

In Murphy v. Ramsey, SCOTUS defined marriage as "The union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony." In Maynard v. Hill, SCOTUS spoke of marriage as being between one man and one woman. Remember, liberals, Stari Decisis....right? Chuck E. Cheese Schumer seems to like to invoke those words whenever it suits him. Marriage should be redefined, and those that are against redefining it are bigots? Then why are liberals bigotted against consenting ADULT Polygamists? Marriage is about love and equality? Then why don't liberals love consenting adult polygamists/polygamy and desire equality for them,...

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday over the constitutionality of a California law that reserves marriage as a union between one man and one woman, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the effects on children who are raised by same-sex couples is not confirmed by experts or science. “There's considerable disagreement among – among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a – in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not,” Scalia said during the exchange between the justices and Charles Cooper, the attorney representing the petitioner in Hollingsworth...

In some ways, today's Supreme Court arguments over California's proposition 8 were overshadowed by the decision of several Democratic senators from red or purple states to openly and active support marriage equality. Actually, even that pales in comparison to Richard Land, the key Southern Baptist political evangelist, who just said, basically, "nevermind," when it comes to the next generation of evangelicals being uncomfortable about gay rights. (To be sure, he still opposes gay rights, still thinks that gay marriage will lead to polygamy, and believes that anti-gay leaders are being ostracized from polite society.) On that last part, he's kind...

42-year-old Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father. By dint of his mother’s citizenship, Cruz was an American citizen at birth. Whether he meets the Constitution’s requirement that the president of the United States be a “natural-born citizen,” a term the Framers didn’t define and for which the nation’s courts have yet to offer an interpretation, has become the subject of considerable speculation. Snip~ Legal scholars are firm about Cruz’s eligibility. “Of course he’s eligible,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells National Review Online. “He’s a natural-born, not a naturalized, citizen.” Eugene Volokh,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm just waiting for the printer to spit something out here. It's about the chief justice. Here's the headline: "Chief Justice John Roberts Compares Gay Marriage To Forcing A Child To Call Someone 'A Friend.'" They have released the audio of the oral arguments now, and this is the story from Mediaite. "The optimism that Jean Podrasky, cousin of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, displayed when she told The Los Angeles Times that she 'trust(s) he will go in a good direction' in deciding whether same-sex couples have the right to marry may have been misplaced....

Supreme Court justices signaled on Tuesday that they are reluctant to embrace a broad ruling finding a fundamental right to marriage for gays and lesbians across the United States. As sign-waving demonstrators massed outside, the court completed more than an hour of oral argument on whether to let stand a California ban on same-sex marriage without indicating a clear path forward. Swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy raised concerns about the court entering "uncharted waters" on an issue that divides the states. Kennedy even raised the prospect of the court dismissing the case, a relatively unusual move that would leave intact...

The United States of America is facing the definition of marriage. (The original amicus brief before SCOTUS, with its supporting documentation, can be found here.) Why the big push in the USA? Follow the money trail. Some are calling this the "trials of marriage." Perhaps we should consider instead "marriage on trial." Other countries call this same-sex civil "partnership" and this is legally equal to marriage between a man and a woman. So the issue is not equality before the law, but redefining marriage. Norway has had "registered partnerships" since 1993. Sweden has called them "registered partnerships" since 1994.

The United States of America is facing the definition of marriage. (The original amicus brief before SCOTUS, with its supporting documentation, can be found here.) Why the big push in the USA? I say follow the money trail. Some are calling this the "trials of marriage." Perhaps we should consider instead "marriage on trial." Other countries call this same-sex civil "partnership" and this is legally equal to marriage between a man and a woman. So the issue is not equality before the law, but redefining marriage. Norway has had "registered partnerships" since 1993. Sweden has called them "registered partnerships" since...

This week’s Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage cases owe much to Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 ruling that overturned anti-sodomy laws. However, the story behind Lawrence isn’t what many suppose. Anne Hendershott A cake for a same-sex wedding at Morfey's Cake Shoppe in Seattle in 2004 (CNS photo from Reuters) The recent endorsement of same-sex marriage by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came as no surprise. She joins a long list of politicians—mostly Democrats, but increasingly more Republicans—who claim to have been “recently� converted to the cause. Earlier this month her husband, the former President William Clinton, published...