Free Republic

John Roberts should be a quick confirm. In 1995, while clerking for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, I and my two fellow law clerks asked the chief whom he thought was the best Supreme Court lawyer currently practicing. The chief replied, with a twinkle in his eye, that he thought he could probably get a majority of his colleagues to agree that John Roberts was the best Supreme Court advocate in the nation.

Judge issues permanent injunction against handful of devices found to infringe on a trio of Apple patents. Court ruling means Samsung can't sell you a Galaxy S3, a phone that has been replace by a succession of Galaxy flagship smartphones. Samsung has been ordered to stop selling a handful of older smartphones in the US that have already largely vanished from the market. In the latest round of the Apple v. Samsung patent war, US District Judge Lucy Koh on Monday granted an Apple motion for permanent injunction against devices that use technology covered by patents Samsung was found to...

For the second year in a row, the Anti-Police Terror Project (APTP) put out a call for 96 Hours of Direct Action to reclaim Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's radical legacy and take a stand against anti-Black racism and terrorism. In a courageous display of solidarity and the spirit of MLK, Black.Seed, a Black, queer liberation collective, has shut down the Bay Bridge as a show of resistance to a system that continues to oppress Black, Queer, Brown, Indigenous and other marginalized people throughout the Bay Area.

LA VERGNE, Tenn. (WKRN) - A 33-year-old Alex Green Elementary School employee was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment Sunday after officers allegedly found three children in her trunk. According to police, a total of nine students were reportedly in Andria James' 2010 Chevy Malibu at the time. Three of the children were allegedly inside the trunk. A customer reportedly spotted James' car at a La Verge Speedway Sunday and called police. News 2 spoke with James on Monday who claims she is not the person people are making her out to be. "There were never nine in my car...

Today's Morning Jolt looks at the rumors surrounding Trump's "major announcement and special guest." If you consider Ted Cruz the conservative ideal or near-ideal in terms of philosophical grounding, legal perspective, and ideological rigor - and the case for that seems pretty self-evident - then watching Tea Party leaders flock to Trump over him is pretty damn disappointing. April 15, 2009 is largely seen as the birth date of the Tea Party movement. Here's what Trump was saying that day about President Obama: TRUMP: Well, I think he's sort of a guy that just has a wonderful personality, a good...

Police and politicians in the German region that includes Cologne have been so scared to talk about North African migrant crime that is has effectively been a "state secret", a prominent German newspaper has reported. Die Welt says that crime committed by North African migrants has been especially high for years in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, but politicians have rarely spoken out on the issue. The region includes the city of Cologne which witnessed the worst of the New Year's Eve sex assaults three weeks ago, resulting in over 600 criminal complaints being filed so far. Under the sub-heading "They...

The U.S. Supreme Court, which delivered major rulings in 2012 and 2015 preserving President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, on Tuesday declined to take up a new, long-shot challenge to Obamacare brought by an Iowa artist. The court turned away an appeal by Matt Sissel, who had asserted that the 2010 Affordable Care Act violated the U.S. Constitution's requirement that revenue-raising legislation must originate in the House of Representatives, not in the Senate, as the healthcare law did.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said Monday she was “heartbroken” after the organization behind the Academy Awards nominated exclusively white actors in top acting acting categories for a second straight year, and vowed “big changes” were in store to combat what some critics call a major diversity problem at Hollywood’s biggest night.

Germany should completely close its borders to refugees if it is to solve to migrant crisis, a former President of Bavaria has said. Edmund Stoiber -- an elder statesmen in the Christian Social Union (CSU), Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian sister party -- said Germany had to change direction fast, and gave the Chancellor just two months to solve the problem. "Angela Merkel must now change her position, otherwise there will be disastrous consequences for Germany and Europe," Mr Stoiber said in an interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung. In what appeared to be an ultimatum, he added that if Mrs Merkel does...

KING Salman of Saudi Arabia could be preparing to upend the succession of the House of Saud by abdicating in favour of his controversial 30-year-old son Prince Mohammed bin Salman, bypassing his designated successor, according to American diplomatic sources. At present Salman, 80, is due to be succeeded by his nephew, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, 56. A report by the Washington-based Gulf Institute, supported by Saudi dissidents, claimed last week that the king could change the rules and install his son.

In politics and public policy, it’s important to build alliances that bridge philosophies and partisan allegiances. Moreover, ethics dictate that when such alliances are being built, that those seeking to bridge gaps are honest about who they are and their motivations for trying to bring people together.

The opening scene of War and Peace, the first two hours of which screened on A&E, Lifetime, and History Channel on Monday night, was specifically constructed with the purpose of allaying fears that the screen version would not be faithful to Leo Tolstoy’s 1800-page magnum opus.

nteresting. But so what if there's a private jet bound from Anchorage to Iowa? That could be a coincidence. Or...uh, maybe not: Oh my. The jet is headed to Ames, then hopping over to Tulsa? Exactly mirroring Trump's campaign itinerary? Dude. This might actually be happening. And what a splash it would make less than two weeks before Iowa. Should Palin's endorsement both come to fruition (there have been clues along the way), and push Trump over the top, emotionalist nationalistic populism will have officially supplanted principled, policy-driven, limited-government conservatism as the currently dominant strain within the American right-wing. I'll...

Just a thought on the Republican primaries.

When she sat on a 2011 panel at Claremont — titled “Women in Finance: Can You Achieve Work/Life Satisfaction?” — she urged the women in attendance to pursue careers in finance, preaching that they often make better investment bankers than men... The Cruzes have two daughters, the elder born in 2008, and live in a downtown Houston high-rise. “I still don’t understand my friends who say it’s not worth it to them to have someone living with them,” she said. “It is worth it to me on every level. I don’t mind sharing a bedroom down the hall if someone...

I'll admit it -- when this speculation began mounting yesterday, I wasn't remotely sold on the idea that Palin was poised jump aboard the Trump Train when so many influential figures within the conservative talk radio constellation are at long last blasting The Donald and rallying to Cruz. The Palin speculation seemed even less plausible when this rumor leaked:

If a neo-conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, what do you call a European who goes to welcome Muslim immigrants and gets savagely robbed? Besides a fool? I guess I will have to leave that up to the Europeans, who will first have to agree on a language for the term. Esperanto? Whatever term they agree on, will Dutch journalist Maaike Engels and photographer Teun Voeten accept the mantle? Time will tell. Jacob Bojesson reports at the Daily Caller that they were: ... attacked at knife point while obtaining footage for their documentary "Calais: Welcome to "The Jungle." The...

Since 1988, Donald Trump has been discussed as a potential United States presidential candidate, but when he officially announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015 the mainstream media refused to believe it. Over the next many months, Donald Trump would be attacked and criticized by the media – but were these criticisms legitimate? What is the Untruth About Donald Trump? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw8c2Cq-vpg&feature=autoshare

How many people it takes to get the President to the airport? I know this is a Facebook link, but I just had to post this here, this is unbelievable, just completely over the top. Did Bush or Clinton or any other President have this much?

A Sarah Palin endorsement of Donald Trump would do more damage to Palin's conservative credentials than it would to Ted Cruz, the candidate's communications director said Tuesday, remarking that he would be "deeply disappointed."Trump has teased a "major announcement" and a "very special guest" at a campaign stop in Ames, Iowa, later in the afternoon, leading to speculation that it could be an endorsement from evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. (whose Liberty University hosted Trump on Monday) or from Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 vice-presidential candidate."I think it'd be a blow to Sarah Palin, because Sarah Palin...