Free Republic

Sorry to rain on everybody’s parade, but this isn’t a good thing. Of course, I have already explained why I believe that civil unions would be better for us than gay marriage. I have also explained why at this point I don’t want gay marriage at all. (For those of you who don’t want to click, I can sum it up: 1) no-fault divorce, 2) alimony and 3) Terri Schiavo.) Had California’s state legislature passed a law, I wouldn’t be complaining. I still wouldn’t be getting married, for the reasons I referred to above, but I’d have no objection to...

LAS VEGAS, (AP) -- Elizabeth Halverson is a judge. But the way courthouse staffers see it, she expects to be treated like a queen. Her former bailiff, for example, says Halverson made him feel like a "houseboy." He says the judge — who is obese and uses a motorized scooter to get around — made him put her shoes on her feet, massage her back, cover her with a blanket for naps and make sure her oxygen tank was filled. He says she asked him, "Do you want to worship me from near or afar?" Halverson also surrounded herself with...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Bush administration has violated legal deadlines for updating the nation's clean-air standards on carbon monoxide, a federal judge in San Francisco has ruled. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White told the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to follow a schedule that would allow a full scientific review, public comment and any proposed changes in the standard to take place by May 2011. The EPA had proposed a timetable that would extend through October 2012. Carbon monoxide, an odorless and invisible byproduct of incomplete combustion in auto exhaust, refinery fumes and other emissions of fossil fuels, is lethal...

New Orleans (AP) -- The Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for flood damage caused by a "hurricane highway," a navigation channel that is believed to have funneled Hurricane Katrina's storm surge into the city, a federal judge ruled Friday. The Corps of Engineers had argued that it was immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood control system. The law says the federal government cannot be sued if something goes wrong with a flood control project such as a levee, reservoir or dam. Judge Stanwood Duval dismissed that argument, saying the Mississippi River-Gulf...

The U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down this week validating a lethal injection execution procedure in Kentucky is likely to jump-start executions in many states across the country but not in California. Our state uses the same three-drug protocol the court declared constitutional in a Kentucky case, but the legal flaws with California's death penalty procedure go beyond that one issue. In a detailed 2006 review of the state's death penalty procedures, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel called the state's "pervasive lack of professionalism" in carrying out executions "deeply disturbing." In calling for a temporary halt of the state's death...

San Francisco, CA (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that water regulators failed to consider the effects of global warming and other environmental issues related to the decline of California salmon populations when they approved increased pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger said a 2004 study prepared by federal regulators to support the increased water exports was scientifically inadequate. "There is no analysis of adverse effect on critical habitat," Wanger wrote about winter-run chinook salmon. The judge also ruled that there was a "total failure to address, adequately explain, and analyze the effects...

New York (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday upheld a city regulation requiring calories to be posted on the menu boards of some chain restaurants, calling the rule a reasonable approach to health officials' goal of reducing obesity. The judge turned back a challenge from the New York State Restaurant Association, a voice for the food service industry. "It seems reasonable to expect that some consumers will use the information disclosed ... to select lower calorie meals ... and these choices will lead to a lower incidence of obesity," U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell said. New York City's Department...

The federal government has failed to prepare an adequate plan to manage and protect the Merced River in Yosemite National Park, a federal appeals court ruled today. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's decision in 2006 that the National Park Service had not adequately addressed limits on public use of the 81 miles of the river that wind through the park. U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii blocked several construction projects after he issued his ruling, including repaving the heavily used Valley Loop Road and rebuilding some of the hotel rooms and campsites...

MIAMI, (AP) -- A federal judge has ordered a former Peruvian army officer to pay $37 million for his role in a 1985 massacre in Peru in which 69 civilians were slain, including elderly people and infants. U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan ruled Tuesday in a lawsuit filed against former Maj. Telmo Hurtado by two women — Ochoa Lizarbe and Pulido Baldeon — who were 12 at the time and survived the attack. Jordan had previously found in the lawsuit that Hurtado was had committed torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hurtado, 46, is in federal custody in Miami...

Honolulu (AP) -- A federal judge has ordered the Navy to take additional precautions when conducting sonar exercises off Hawaii that environmentalists say can seriously injure or kill marine mammals. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said Friday the Navy cannot conduct exercises within 12 nautical miles, or 13.8 miles, of the shoreline, where species that are particularly sensitive to sonar, such as the beaked whale, are found. Among other requirements, the Navy must look for marine mammals for one hour each day before using sonar, employ three lookouts exclusively to spot the animals during sonar use and stop sonar transmission...

Sacramento -- The former federal receiver hired to improve California's troubled prison health care system misspent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars before being fired last month, according to a state inspector general's report released Wednesday. Robert Sillen, who once threatened to "back up the Brink's truck" to the state's treasury to get the money needed to provide better inmate care, authorized $218,790 in overpayments to staff members for benefits such as health insurance and retirement that they already received, said the report, which found no evidence of fraud. In addition to millions spent on consultants and professional services, the...

Missoula, Mont. (AP) -- A Bush administration official apologized Tuesday to a federal judge in urging that he not hold the U.S. Forest Service's use of a fire retardant that environmentalists say kills fish and plants. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, acknowledged the agency was slow in preparing environmental studies related to the effects of the chemical firefighting tool dropped from airplanes. "There is no way to put a positive face on the fact that we dropped the ball," Rey testified in court. "We're sorry." While Rey was contrite, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy was...

Judge delays setting trial in Clinton fraud caseBut accuser begins seeking sworn testimony from high-profile witnesses Posted: February 22, 2008 1:00 am Eastern © 2008 WorldNetDaily A judge in Los Angeles yesterday allowed Hollywood mogul Peter F. Paul to begin taking sworn testimony in his $17 million fraud suit against former President Bill Clinton, but a technicality delayed establishment of a trial date. California Superior Court Judge Aurelio N. Munoz ruled Paul's legal team can begin seeking depositions from a host of big names – including Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton – that allegedly were witnesses to an effort by...

San Francisco -- For the second time this week, a federal court found today that a Navy anti-submarine training program threatened to subject whales and other sea creatures to harmful blasts of sonar and ordered protective measures in several sensitive zones, including one near Monterey Bay. The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth Laporte of San Francisco applies to the Navy's use of low-frequency sonar in submarine detection exercises conducted in large areas of the world's oceans. She said Navy officials, who had agreed to restrictions after she issued a similar ruling in 2002, failed to take adequate precautions when seeking...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- A prosecutor urged an appeals court to order resentencing of a civil rights lawyer convicted of helping an imprisoned terrorist sheik communicate with his disciples because she received a "slap on the wrist." Lynne Stewart was sentenced to two years and four months in prison, escaping a maximum punishment of 30 years behind bars. Prosecutors have said Stewart and co-defendants helped spread blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman's call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law. The sheik, who was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blow up five...

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson on Wednesday removed Robert Sillen as the federal receiver who oversees medical care for California's prison system. Sillen will be replaced by McGeorge School of Law professor J. Clark Kelso. In his seven-page order, Henderson said the receivership needs to move from what has been primarily "an investigative and evaluative phase" toward a system that "must ultimately be transitioned back to the state of California's control." Henderson said in his order that appointing a new receiver is more "appropriate" for the second phase, one that requires a "style of collaborative leadership."

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—A suburban village has been violating the Voting Rights Act by using an election system that leaves its rapidly growing Hispanic population without representation, a federal judge said Tuesday. The decision against Port Chester, on the Connecticut border 25 miles from New York City, is expected to force a revision of the village's at-large election system, in which all voters cast ballots for each of the six trustee positions that run the village government. The likely alternative is a district system, in which each district would elect one trustee. One district would be drawn around Hispanic neighborhoods to...

A federal appeals court ordered a San Francisco judge on Friday to reconsider his ruling requiring United Parcel Service to give its deaf employees a chance to compete for jobs as drivers of small delivery trucks. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 13-2 that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson had used the wrong standard in his 2004 decision that UPS was discriminating against deaf people with safe driving records by refusing to consider them for commercial driving jobs. Henderson allowed the plaintiffs to show that they were qualified for the jobs based on their driving records, and failed...

NASHVILLE — A federal judge has issued a stay of execution for Paul Dennis Reid, a death row inmate facing multiple death sentences for a series of slayings at fast food restaurants. Reid, a Texas drifter who came to Nashville to be a country singer, was convicted of killing seven people in Nashville and Clarksville in 1997. U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell ruled late last week that the Reid execution should be delayed. Reid’s execution had been set for Jan. 3.

13-year-old initiated sex, judge says Article from: Herald Sun December 17, 2007 01:51pm A JUDGE has labelled a man's rape of a 13-year-old boy "adolescent experimentation" and said the teen and the perpetrator were "both victims". Judge Michael Kelly's comments come a month after a prosecutor accused him of making inappropriate and disrespectful statements about the sexual assault victim during a plea hearing. The Melbourne County Court was told that in March 2001 a 24-year-old man began a relationship with a 13-year-old boy.