Free Republic

“Government’s first duty,” President Reagan said in 1981 and President Trump recently tweeted, “is to protect the people, not run their lives.” The safety of law-abiding citizens has always been a core principle of conservatism. And it is why we need to take this opportunity to pass real criminal-justice reform now. Although violent crime rose during the final two years of President Obama’s time in office, it decreased during the first year of Trump’s presidency. We need to keep that momentum going. And criminal justice reform can help us do that in two ways. First, commonsense sentencing reform can increase...

Numerous international groups are trying to influence Ireland into legalising abortionThe great and the good internationally have a big interest in the outcome of Ireland’s looming abortion referendum, planned for next year. They want Irish voters to erase from their constitution the so-called Eighth Amendment, which gives the unborn child the same right to life as every other human being. Abortion is only permitted in Ireland when the life of the mother is at real and substantial risk. This amendment was inserted into the constitution following a referendum in 1983 which passed by a two-to-one margin. Ever since then secular...

IRELAND: a post-mortem examination - by Roberto de Mattei (Revisited) Almost exactly three years ago, in May 2015, following the "same-sex marriage" referendum in Ireland, Roberto de Mattei made his "post-mortem examination" of the formerly Catholic powerhouse. On this sad Saturday, as vote tallies confirm that an overwhelming majority of Irish voters chose to remove the 8th amendment of the Irish Constitution, we take a moment to revisit his piece. What did the 8th amendment say exactly? These words: The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of...

Irish Political Party Suspends Member of Parliament After She Votes Against Legalizing Abortion International   Micaiah Bilger   Mar 22, 2018   |   10:25AM    Dublin, Ireland Share this story: For voting to protect unborn babies’ lives, an Irish member of parliament has been suspended from her party. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The Irish News reports TD Carol Nolan, a member of Sinn Féin, voted against her party Wednesday on the referendum of the Eighth Amendment, which protects unborn babies’ right to life.A referendum vote on the amendment is slated for May.Though her party supports legalizing abortion in Ireland, Nolan does...

An Irish newspaper was forced to retract an article after it admitted that it had published a fake poll about abortion, misleading its readers into believing a majority of Irish doctors support the abortion of pre-born babies in the first trimester. The Irish Examiner splashed the headline "75% of doctors support 12-week access to abortion" over its front page on February 8. The sub-heading read: "Poll of 400 medics shows support for liberalising abortion regime", and claimed that "three out of every four GPs and hospital consultants are in favour of allowing unrestricted access to abortion up to 12 weeks...

Irish women are having abortions regardless of a near-total constitutional ban on terminating pregnancies, the country’s health minister said Tuesday in defense of a planned referendum that will ask voters whether the amendment should be repealed. Health Minister Simon Harris said on Ireland’s RTE television that he is beginning work on a proposed abortion law that would be submitted to parliament if the May referendum removes the constitutional ban. The legislation would allow abortions during the first trimester, he said. “Whether the Eighth Amendment is in our Constitution, or indeed not in our Constitution, abortion is a reality for Irish...

The great and the good internationally have a big interest in the outcome of Ireland’s looming abortion referendum, planned for next year. They want Irish voters to erase from their constitution the so-called Eighth Amendment, which gives the unborn child the same right to life as every other human being. Abortion is only permitted in Ireland when the life of the mother is at real and substantial risk. This amendment was inserted into the constitution following a referendum in 1983 which passed by a two-to-one margin. Ever since then secular liberal opinion has been bent upon overturning that referendum. When...

A Kansas man who robbed a bank last September and told police that he was hoping to get caught so he would get prison time to escape his wife was sentenced Tuesday to six months of home confinement after pleading guilty, the Kansas City Star reported.

Rain and lack of public transport did not deter tens of thousands of people taking to the streets of Dublin calling for the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution to be repealed. Some of the activists in the crowd spoke to The Irish Times to share why they had taken part in the demonstration. […] Susan Smullen, Dublin: “I think the Eighth Amendment needs to go. It just holds women back; I think women should have a choice of what they want to do with their own bodies, particularly for women who are pregnant with fatal foetal (sic) abnormalities; it’s horrific...

The Justice Department is discouraging state court systems from jailing defendants who fail to pay fines or fees, warning against practices that it says run afoul of the Constitution and erode community trust. A letter being sent Monday by the federal government to state court administrators makes clear that judges should consider alternatives to jail for poor defendants who don’t pay their fines. It also says defendants should not be locked up without a judge first establishing that a defendant who failed to pay did so willfully. […] The new guidance comes amid concerns that some local courts are effectively...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 02, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hausfeld, a global plaintiffs’ law firm, announced today that the judge overseeing Brown, et al. v. Transurban USA, Inc., et al., No. 15-cv-494 (E.D. Va.), the Honorable James C. Cacheris, has largely denied the Defendants’ motions to dismiss the pending class action case. The plaintiffs in the case alleges that the I-495 and I-95/I-395 HOT Lanes operator (Transurban) and its debt-collection agents (Faneuil, Inc. and Law Enforcement Systems, LLC (“LES”)) violated state and federal law by assessing and seeking to collect crippling administrative fees and penalties for allegedly missed tolls. Drivers who use...

Leading into a key hearing in her case Tuesday, one of two Waukesha girls charged in the Slender Man stabbing case has asked a judge to declare the law that required her to be charged as an adult unconstitutional and dismiss the case. Attorneys for 13-year-old Anissa Weier filed a motion last week challenging the law as it applies to her, saying it violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that keeping her from the juvenile court system violates her rights to equal protection and due process. Weier and Morgan Geyser, 12, are charged as adults...

OCALA - Lawyers representing a Marion County man accused of sexual activity with a miniature donkey have filed a motion asking a judge to declare the Florida statute banning sexual activities with animals unconstitutional. Carlos R. Romero, 32, declared last week that he wanted to take his case to trial. He is accused of sexual activities involving animals, a first-degree misdemeanor, after he allegedly was found in a compromising position in August with a female miniature donkey named Doodle. In the motion filed in Marion County court on Dec. 6, the assistant public defenders handling Romero's case — Joshua Wyatt,...

IN A COLORADO TOWN in 1996, Verle Mangum bludgeoned Janet and Jennifer Davis to death. Janet, a 42-year-old nurse's aide, had come home from work and discovered Mangum, then 17, having sex with her 11-year-old daughter, Jennifer. When Janet reached for the phone to call the police, Mangum picked up a baseball bat and fatally bashed her with it. He then used the bat to murder Jennifer as she cowered in the bedroom. A jury eventually convicted Mangum of both murders. Under Colorado law he was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. In 2007, when the...

LOS ANGELES -- A jury has hit the state with $1.73 million in damages in a suit by the family of an illegal immigrant who died of penile cancer that went untreated during more than a year in state and federal custody. The Los Angeles Superior Court jury found state prison doctors partly to blame Wednesday for the death of Francisco Castaneda in February 2007. A separate suit against the federal government is tentatively scheduled for trial in April, the family's lawyers said Thursday.

Reporting from Washington - According to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a prisoner who was slammed to a concrete floor and punched and kicked by a guard after asking for a grievance form -- but suffered neither serious nor permanent harm -- has no claim that his constitutional rights were violated. Thomas objected when the high court, in a little-noted recent opinion, said this unprovoked and malicious assault by a North Carolina prison guard amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The court's decision came a few days after Thomas' now-famous former law clerk John C. Yoo was charged with flawed...

MINNEAPOLIS – A replay of the nation's only file-sharing case to go to trial has ended with the same result — a Minnesota woman was found to have violated music copyrights and must pay huge damages to the recording industry. A federal jury ruled Thursday that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song. Thomas-Rasset's second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a $222,000 judgment.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes"The Obama Administration's Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old. Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held...

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

As I returned from church and sat down to relax by reading the local liberal news rag, that mind-control mechanism for sheeple and liberals, I was slammed with a front-page article called “Humanity in death”. I sometimes make the effort to read through this bastion of liberal slant and omission of truth in order to gat a glimpse into what the “enemy within” is up to. It appears these leftists now want us to eliminate the practice of lethal injection as a form of capital punishment, because it is allegedly inhumane according to one death row inmate and his team...