Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge Wednesday reinstated a Clinton administration ban on the building of roads in untouched section. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte sided with states and environmentalists who sued to protect forest land. The Clinton administration prohibited logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres of forest land in 38 states and Puerto Rico. In 2005, the Bush administration replaced the rule with a voluntary state-by-state petition process. The judge overturned the new regulations.

Anchorage -- A judge on Thursday temporarily halted lease sales of more than 1 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that environmentalists say are essential feeding and breeding grounds for caribou and migratory birds. Nearly 13 million acres of the reserve in northern Alaska are available for lease sale or have been sold to oil companies, most notably ConocoPhillips. The company hopes to augment waning crude stocks in the Prudhoe Bay fields east of the NPR-A. Environmentalists filed the lawsuit in hopes of cordoning off about 600,000 acres of the 23-million acre reserve from more exploratory drilling. The government...

Gates Enoch admitted in March to gathering more than 150 images of children engaged in sex acts on his computer, and on Thursday he was scheduled to be sentenced for his crime in federal court in Austin. But at the end of an hourlong hearing in which Enoch, the 20-year-old son of a former Texas Supreme Court justice, again admitted to gathering as well as distributing the illegal images, Senior U.S. District Judge James Nowlin said he was unable to declare him guilty. Nowlin adjourned the hearing and invited lawyers in the case to bring him any evidence to show...

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Judiciary: Detroit Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has agreed to the American Civil Liberties Union's demands to shut down the National Security Agency's wiretapping program. Terrorists everywhere are cheering. The 73-year-old Judge Taylor, appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1979, has a long history as a radical. In 1964, she helped set up a Mississippi office of the National Lawyers Guild, which Congress in 1950 called the "legal bulwark of the Communist Party." What happened Thursday was nothing less than a judicial disarmament of the U.S. — stripping away some of our most valuable weapons in the global war on terror.

Carter appointee U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has used the same kind of language that has become popular on left-wing blogs like Daily-Kos to slam the Bush family in the verdict she delivered today, declaring the NSA surveillance of terrorists unconstitutional. In an irrelevant aside, she grabbed at the "King George" phrase thrown around in the left-wing blogosphere to launch a thinly-veiled attack on the President: Our constitution was drafted by founders and ratified by a people who still held in vivid memory the image of King George III and his General Warrants. In an allusion to the President's...

Associated Press Government's warrantless spying found to violate free speech, privacy rights DETROIT -- A federal judge ruled today that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas...

(AP) WASHINGTON A federal judge ruled Thursday that the nation's top cigarette makers violated racketeering laws, deceiving the public for years about the health hazards of smoking, but said she couldn't order them to pay the billions of dollars the government had sought. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler did order the companies to publish in newspapers and on their Web sites "corrective statements" on the adverse health effects and addictiveness of smoking and nicotine. She also ordered tobacco companies to stop labeling cigarettes as "low tar," "light," "ultra light" or "mild," since such cigarettes have been found to be no...

Are there no limits to which activist judges won’t go to advance their political and policy agendas? Answer: No. I wrote an entire book about it. And U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, appointed in the twilight of the Carter administration, is the latest in a long list of disgraceful lawyers who abuse their power. There are four things that strike me most about Taylor’s opinion. First, she grants standing to such plaintiffs as the ACLU, CAIR, Greenpeace, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Christopher Hitchens, and others, without a shred of information showing any connection between the plaintiffs’ assertions...

A federal district judge in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration's NSA surveillance of phone conversations is unconstitutional.

In a recent speech, I told the audience about the political landscape of the 2006 elections. It’s going to be much tougher for Republicans than in recent election cycles. As a political party, we must have our act together in order to be successful. Unfortunately, that task has become tougher. The congressional seat of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay is now in jeopardy thanks in part to a failure in leadership from party officials. Following a primary election victory, Rep. DeLay decided, through the advice of party officials, that because of the media circus that was surrounding his pending court...

Today: August 16, 2006 at 11:0:38 PDT Teens Sent to Jail Over Deer-Decoy Crash ASSOCIATED PRESS KENTON, Ohio (AP) - A judge decided two high school athletes can complete the football season this fall before they serve 60-day jail sentences for a car crash caused by a decoy deer placed in a country road. Two teens were injured. "I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm going to. I see positive things about participating in football," Judge Gary McKinley said Tuesday. Dailyn Campbell, a 16-year-old quarterback for Kenton High, and 17-year-old teammate Jesse Howard will serve their time in a juvenile...

Kenton athletes caused wreck that seriously injured 2 others; judge delays 60-day sentences KENTON, Ohio — Two teenagers who pulled a stunt last winter that left a man physically disabled and his friend brain-damaged will each spend 60 days in juvenile detention, but not before they finish the upcoming high-school football season. Judge Gary F. McKinley told a standing-room-only crowd in his courtroom yesterday that he knows his decision to allow standout Kenton High School athletes Dailyn Campbell, 16, and Jesse Howard, 17, to play sports before serving their sentences will be unpopular. Five deputies were on hand during the...

-Justice says he's tried to be right in his 38 years on federal bench, not liberal or conservative.- After 38 years on the bench, most would think a federal judge wouldn't have anything to prove. But even after ordering some of the most sweeping reforms for Texas institutions, 86-year-old William Wayne Justice said he's still trying to live up to his name. During the late 1970s through early 1980s, Justice's rulings from the bench of the U.S. District Court for the state's Eastern District prodded Texas to desegregate its schools, treat juvenile and adult prisoners more humanely, end jail overcrowding...

MINEOLA, N.Y. -- A district attorney elected last fall on a promise to limit plea bargains is being sued by a defense attorney who claims the prosecutor's new policies on DWI cases are unconstitutional. Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said she is not backing away from the changes, which include the creation of a separate courtroom for DWI cases. She also wants permanent criminal records for first-time offenders convicted of having a blood-alcohol level of 0.13 percent or more. The legal limit in the state is 0.08 percent. Rice has also stiffened her office's approach to plea deals, insisting...

Voters in November would be deciding which offices term limits would apply to under a proposal discussed today by members of the Knox County Charter Review Committee. If approved by the committee in two weeks, each office would be listed separately on the November ballot. Committee member Mike Hammond, a county commissioner, made the suggestion saying people would likely want to vote on each individual office, such as sheriff and mayor. The committee is looking at ways to repair the county’s charter pending an expected ruling from the state Supreme Court. If the court upholds the finding by Knox County...

MIAMI -- A federal judge Monday temporarily barred the Miami-Dade County School District from removing a children's book on Cuba from school libraries. U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which is seeking to keep the book, "Vamos a Cuba" ("A Visit to Cuba"), in schools. Gold's decision would keep the book on the shelves until the case goes to trial. Last month, the Miami-Dade school board voted to remove the book from its elementary schools after a parent complained that its depiction of life in the communist nation was...

Ex-teacher gets 15 to life for molesting students VISTA -- A former Escondido middle school teacher -- denounced by victims' families as a predator and praised by his family and friends as a decent man who would never harm children ---- was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years to life in state prison. Peter Thomas Ziskin, 44, of Solana Beach was convicted in May of 17 of the 26 child molestation charges prosecutors had filed against him. Ziskin was acquitted of six of the charges, and jurors were unable to reach a verdict on three counts. The charges involved allegations that...

The state Supreme Court on Monday agreed to snatch up a ruling striking down Knox County's charter and put it under the court's high-powered appellate microscope. In a rare move, the state's highest court exercised its so-called "reach-down" authority, power limited under the law to only a handful of cases "of unusual public importance." Justices will hear the case in September. The court's decision will allow the Supreme Court justices to review a ruling by Chancellor John Weaver that Knox County's charter was invalid instead of waiting for the case to travel first to an intermediate-level appellate court. Monday's announcement...

PEARL HARBOR -- The Navy asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to block a court order that prevents it from using sonar during its war-game exercises off Hawaii, an environmental group said. The emergency motion, filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, seeks a stay on an order stopping the Navy from using the high-intensity sonar, said Daniel Hinerfeld, spokesman for the National Resources Defense Council. The Navy was forced to abandon plans to use mid-frequency active sonar during the international maritime exercises after a federal judge issued the order. Environmentalists had sued, claiming the...