Free Republic

Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it; he is obligated to do so." Without question, it was this principle that a coalition of religious leaders had in mind, when 16 days in advance of the U. S. Supreme Court's decision, they stated in a Washington Post advertisement that they would not abide by a ruling that gives homosexuals a constitutional right to marriage. The ad, which covered a full page, featured "key signers" such as David and Jason Benham, Ambassador Kenneth Blackwell, Alveda King, former U.S. House Speaker Tom...

Like many first-year teachers, I enjoyed no protections despite forced union representation (and paying union dues) since a teacher’s contract strictly declared that non-tenured faculty could be removed for any reason. “For the cut of your hair” is the common refrain to describe the arbitrary, unjust power of administrators and school boards. For the record, this arbitrary retribution is no after-school special. In Manhattan Beach, CA, a French teacher was removed for some petty, if non-essential offenses. A teacher in Redondo Beach, CA was forced out on administrative leave for unclear reasons. Clearly, union membership did not benefit them. Even...

The Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that generic "Officer Safety" is not sufficient to ask people if they are armed.  In a ruling on July 9th, 2015, the court found that police officers may not simply ask someone if they have a weapon, if there is no good, specific reason.  From State v. Jimenez(pdf): In this criminal case, an Oregon state trooperstopped defendant for jaywalking and asked him if he hadany weapons on him. For the reasons that follow, we concludethat Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution1 does notpermit a law enforcement officer to make such an...

We’ve been told that people who want to maintain the man-woman definition of marriage are “on the wrong side of history.” Perhaps so. Maybe “history,” which is determined largely by how people behave, will continue to move toward making marriage genderless in the 90 percent of governments that still maintain the natural definition. But remember, Moses was on the wrong side of the golden calf. And Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was on the wrong side of Dred Scott—the 1857 Supreme Court decision that declared blacks were “so far inferior that they had no rights.” Thus, being on the wrong side of...

hat New Travesty Awaits the World?: At my age I have to wonder how soon this country will implode and wither away into a vast nothingness, with the inefficient and country-killing Executive Order travesty he holds over all of our heads The word “family” as we and others around the world know it, will soon disappear from the daily lexicon of human beings. The family normally consists primarily of a female, who after giving birth is entitled to be the ‘mother’ and a male, who after creating a birth with his female partner in the marriage, is given the title...

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage, which effectively codifies Bible believers as bigots, the attack on conservative Christian values has reached fever pitch. This is not the slightest surprise, as I and many others have been warning for some time now, but the ferocity and ugliness of it is still shocking, and it is something we must be prepared for. The other day I posted on Twitter, “Much has changed since the SCOTUS decision, but more has not changed. Jesus is still Lord, the world is still fallen, Satan is still raging.” An “equality” advocate responded...

Despite repeatedly losing its cases over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that it will continue to force religious organizations to distribute contraceptives – including the “week-after pill” – to their employees. As a news release at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty states, the Obama administration has been handed “multiple losses in contraceptive mandate cases at the Supreme Court,” including the Hobby Lobby decision, and cases involving the Little Sisters of the Poor and Wheaton College. Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Obama administration not to...

...“I am reluctant to call for retention elections — it makes me sad,” Mr. Cruz, a 2016 GOP presidential contender, said Wednesday evening on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “But I have done it because I believe that a majority of the justices are not honoring their judicial oaths.” Host Chris Matthews responded by saying that the Supreme Court seized the presidency in 2000 in halting the recount in Florida and that Mr. Cruz, who wrote in his new book, “A Time for Truth,” about his role in the 2000 recount, did not complain. “Those are great talking points. How many times did...

On the final day of its most recent session, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will consider a labor law case that experts say could dramatically limit the power of government employee unions. Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association was brought on behalf of 10 California public school teachers who sued for the right to leave their union and not still pay "agency fees." If the Supreme Court rules in their favor, it could have the same effect as extending right-to-work law protections to all public employees by invalidating the involuntary extraction of agency fees from worker paychecks. Previous decisions have...

So let’s suppose that the Supreme Court had struck down Obamacare and same-sex marriage last month instead of upholding both. Would Texas Sen. and presidential aspirant Ted Cruz be demanding a constitutional amendment requiring the Court’s justices to stand for election in order to keep their jobs? And would liberals be rallying to the defense of the Court, and condemning any effort to alter its supposedly august traditions? Of course not. Throughout our political history, the team that loses in the Supreme Court has tried to alter the court’s power and influence. This battle isn’t about deep judicial principles or...

There’s a showdown at the OK capitol. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has vowed that a Ten Commandments monument on capitol grounds, which the state Supreme Court recently ruled was unconstitutional, will remain through appeal, KOCO reports. “The Ten Commandments monument was built to recognize and honor the historical significance of the Commandments in our state’s and nation’s systems of laws,” Fallin says in a statement. “The monument was built and maintained with private dollars. It is virtually identical to a monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol which the United States Supreme Court ruled to be permissible. It...

It seems every day brings more and more dismal news. The riots across the nation, violence in schools, and the senseless shootings in Charleston, all seemed to crescendo with the tragic decisions of the Supreme Court last week. It makes a person hesitant to even get out of bed in the morning. The final nail in the coffin for me was the rainbow White House. Taking the very symbol of the promise God gave his children and using it to announce to the world—and proclaim to God Himself, “We reject you!” was just too much for my heart to take....

When President Obama was first running for office in 2008, he promised that he'd go about "fundamentally transforming" America once in office. But it wasn't the 47-year-old Senator from Illinois — who went on to win two presidential elections — who'd bring about such a transformation. It was a 78-year-old unelected Supreme Court justice from California named Anthony Kennedy.

A federal court has declared that former Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson lied about her personal knowledge of certain facts and misrepresented negotiations between her legal team and lawyers representing her fellow Supreme Court justices. “[T]he Abrahamson affidavit contains some statements that are not based on personal knowledge and that falsely portray the negotiation of the stipulated facts,” wrote Judge James Peterson in a June 10 decision striking portions of Abrahamson’s filing from the court record. Peterson was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama. Since April, when state voters ratified a constitutional amendment changing how...

The Supreme Court decision allowing gay “marriage” in the United States has upset all right minded Christians, and rightly so. It is pretty clear that the Supreme Court has rubber stamped a widespread rejection of Christian morality by a large segment of the American people. Not only has the Supreme Court ratified same sex “marriage” but they have overturned majority opinions of the people, set themselves up as arbiters of human morality, trampled on states’ rights, ignored not only historic Christian teaching, but the understanding of marriage held by all people at all times and in all cultures down through...

Jonathan Cahn, the Bible teacher and author who started warning nine years ago that America was facing the judgment of God if it did not reject secularism and return to its Judeo-Christian roots, says the June 26 Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in all 50 states marks the formal end to Christian America. Barring a “miracle of God,” the die has been cast, said the author of “The Harbinger” and “The Mystery of the Shemitah.” Cahn, speaking at the annual Messiah Conference at Messiah College in Pennsylvania on America’s Independence Day, said the U.S. and the world...

Of the entire GOP presidential field, I think the candidate with the best or most substantive grasp of the constitutional defects of the administrative state—the term for our unaccountable “fourth branch” of government that increasingly governs us without our consent—is Ted Cruz. (If Tom Cotton were running for president, he’d get the clear nod on this point, but perhaps some day. . .) At the very least, Cruz knows enough about the separation of powers to make the bold suggestion that some states have a legal basis to ignore or resist the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision legalizing gay marriage. As...

By trying to resolve policy matters, the U.S. Supreme Court "stopped being an umpire," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. Cruz said the justices have become team players: "They put on an Obama jersey, they got out the eraser, they erased terms in the (Obamacare) statute and rewrote it, joining the Obama administration. ... In a period of 24 hours, we had two decisions in the Supreme Court where a majority of the justices violated their judicial oaths," he told NBC's Chuck Todd. "In one, they ignored the text of federal law -- they rewrote...

“To learn who rules over you, find out whom you are not allowed to criticize.”— Voltaire If you’re wondering what Americans can do as our ruling class sets about enforcing its redefinition of marriage, start by looking back at what it did to the citizens of Indiana when their legislature raised the possibility that someone might object to joining in celebrations of homosexual marriage. Support for homosexual unions was incidental to the insistence of the likeminded folks atop society’s commanding heights on punishing Indiana. What incurs their ire has less to do with any substantive matter than with the...

I in no way assert that I am an expert on the Supreme Court. I have read many books about Supremes such as Felix Frankfurter and John Jay, but that only gives me an inkling of insight. Listening to tapes of the testimony of the most famous cases gives me a little more knowledge. When the decisions came down last week, I relied on experts on both sides to give their thoughts and interpretations. Yet, they missed the key point of what occurred last week. A few got close. You see there was a court case in 1984 called Chevron...