Free Republic

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has rejected two Obamacare constitutional challenges, on the creative premise that the individual mandate is a tax, and that the Anti-Injunction Act requires that a tax already be implemented in order for plaintiffs to have standing to sue on the basis that a tax is unconstitutional.

A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of Alabama's new law cracking down on illegal immigration, ruling Monday that she needed more time to decide whether the law opposed by the Obama administration, church leaders and immigrant-rights groups is constitutional. The brief order by U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Blackburn means the law won't take effect as scheduled on Thursday. The ruling was cheered by opponents who have compared the law to old Jim Crow-era statutes against racial integration. But Blackburn didn't address whether the law is constitutional, and she could still let all or parts of the law take effect...

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati on Wednesday upheld the health-care law passed by Congress last year, saying the law's requirement for most Americans to carry insurance or pay a penalty is constitutional. The vote was 2-1 on the three-judge panel on the key question of whether the insurance requirement exceeded Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The majority concluded that it did not.

The Fourth Amendment expressly imposes two requirements:All searches and seizures must be reasonable; and a warrant may notbe issued unless probable cause is properly established and the scope of the authorized search is set out with particularity. Although“ ‘searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are pre-sumptively unreasonable,’ ” Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. 398, 403, this presumption may be overcome when “ ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a]warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,”

As the dust settles in Madison, Wisconsin Republicans face a troubling coda: Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill is being tripped up in the courts. Union heavies smell blood. And the unruly parade of lefty activists and hulking Teamsters that occupied the state capitol for weeks is back for a bruising final round. On paper, at issue is whether senate Republicans violated the state’s open-meeting laws. In mid-March, after a three-week stalemate, GOP lawmakers hustled Walker’s bill to the floor. The senate clerk approved the maneuver. But 14 Democratic state senators, on the lam in Illinois, howled in absentia. So did...

Sue Aitken called the police because she was worried about her son Brian. She now lives with the guilt of knowing her phone call is the reason Brian wound up sitting in a New Jersey prison. If it weren’t for a commutation of his sentence from the governor’s mansion, he would be stuck there for the next seven years. Aitken was sentenced in August for felony possession of a handgun. Before his arrest, Aitken, the owner of a media consulting business, had no criminal record. By all appearances he made a good-faith effort to comply with the stringent New Jersey...

The California Supreme Court ruled on Monday that police can search cell phone text messages of an arrested person without any warrant, and asserted that those arrested have no privacy rights over any personal belongings on them when they are taken into custody.  The 5-2 split verdict of the court settled a challenge to an appeals court judgment related to the arrest and trial of a drug dealer in 2007, but many see the verdict as a fresh encroachment by the government apparatus into the sphere of privacy rights and personal liberty.  Significantly, in a dissenting note, two judges...

Hundreds of paroled sex offenders are winning reprieves from a ban against their living near schools or parks as they flood local courts with constitutional challenges to the most controversial part of Jessica's Law. Judges in Contra Costa and elsewhere have routinely issued stays permitting sex offender parolees to ignore the ban on their living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children "regularly gather," pending rulings in their cases. The slow pace of those challenges means the stays could last until their parole terms expire and the restrictions no longer affect them. In the East Bay, at...

Sue Aitken called the police because she was worried about her son, Brian. She now lives with the guilt of knowing that her phone call is the reason Brian spent his 27th birthday in a New Jersey prison last month. If the state gets its way, he will be there for the next seven years. Aitken was sentenced in August after he was convicted of felony possession of a handgun. Before his arrest, Aitken, an entrepreneur and owner of a media consulting business, had no criminal record, and it appears he made a good-faith effort to comply with New Jersey's...

"Hey David," the Facebook message began, "Thought you might be interested in Brian Aitken, in jail in NJ for 7 years for owning legal guns." I get people approaching me all the time wanting me to write about their legal cases. Most of the time, I get very subjectively-recounted narratives with very little to substantiate, and even less on what the defendants may have actually done. Experience has made me naturally wary of jumping on such bandwagons without investigation.Here's what I've found.His supporters have established the "Free Brian Aitken" Facebook page. Mission: To help free Brian Aitken, an innocent gunowner...

From the Courthouse News Service, a federal district judge has rejected a motion to dismiss the suit brought by the Obama Justice Department against the state of Arizona: PHOENIX (CN) – A federal judge rejected motions in which Gov. Jan Brewer, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu sought dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s new immigration law. The complaint filed by civil rights groups, including Friendly House and the American Civil Liberties Union, contains sufficient allegations that S.B. 1070 perceptibly impairs the ability of the organizational plaintiffs to provide the services that...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has expressed a willingness to ban protesters from burning the Koran as the modern day equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.The Supreme Court has ruled burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.Breyer spoke to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America today:But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater,” Breyer...

PHOENIX – A judge has blocked the most controversial sections of Arizona's new immigration law from taking effect Thursday, handing a major legal victory to opponents of the crackdown. The law will still take effect Thursday, but without many of the provisions that angered opponents — including sections that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A man who shot and wounded a friend in Berkeley in 1991 because he thought the man had stolen his money and a necklace should be released from prison, a federal appeals court has ruled in a rare repudiation of the state parole board. Damon Cooke, a financial consultant with no criminal record before his conviction for attempted murder, has mentored other inmates and has done nothing to support the board's conclusion in 2002 that he would be dangerous if released, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.Although state courts have been overturning...

Judicial Supremacy and the ConstitutionWe need to reclaim the Constitution from the Supreme Court.  Many Americans are puzzled and angry about the judicial assault on religion, morality, and common sense that has been going on for the past few decades. People wonder, for example, how the First Amendment (which guarantees freedom of religion as well as separation of church and state) could possibly require the expulsion of religion from public life, or outlaw prayers at high-school football games and graduation ceremonies. To answer questions like these, one must understand how federal judges got the power to make such controversial political...

Gun control laws divert money from law enforcement activities that work. The thousands of hours spent by police to register guns are time that police could have put to solving crimes. That diversion of resources is the real threat to public safety. On Friday, a federal District Court judge tried to indirectly reinstate the D.C. handgun ban. Judge Ricardo Urbina, a Clinton appointee, wants to make it so difficult for people living in DC to use a handgun defensively that few will get one. Last September, a Washington Post reporter, Christian Davenport, found out just how difficult it still is...

Judge Ricardo Urbina of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Friday that the Washington, D.C., firearm ordinances enacted after the Supreme Court's D.C. v. Heller decision in 2008 "permissibly regulate the exercise of the core Second Amendment right to use firearms for the purpose of self-defense in the home." Urbina dismissed a case brought by Dick Heller, the same plaintiff who challenged the previous D.C. ordinance in the Supreme Court. Heller challenged the District's firearms registration process, its ban on assault weapons and its prohibition of "large capacity ammunition feeding devices," claiming they violated the Second...

As noted in this space countless times, California's government is broken, endemically incapable of addressing the state's most pressing policy issues. As the crisis has deepened, another factor has made itself increasingly evident – intervention by state and federal courts in what used to be political policy decision-making. The chronically unbalanced state budget is the most obvious example of the system's dysfunction. Any major financial decision discomfits someone. Those who feel aggrieved often go to court, seeking either to overturn or at least delay its implementation. One federal judge seized control of the prison health care system, saying the state...

Matthew Vadum NewsRealIf you thought you sent representatives and senators to Washington, D.C., to exercise the constitutionally mandated power of the purse — you’re wrong. Silly you. You wasted all that time in civics class learning a whole bunch of outdated claptrap about separation of powers and the lawmaking process for nothing. The spending power belongs to federal judges now, regardless of what that quaint little document called the U.S. Constitution says. That’s what ACORN’s favorite federal judge, Nina Gershon of the Eastern District of New York ruled Wednesday. In December Gershon, a Bill Clinton appointee, helped ACORN out by...

During his first year in office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger railed against state lawmakers, calling them "girlie men" and "obstructionists." As he enters his final year, Schwarzenegger is targeting a different branch of government: judges who "are going absolutely crazy." The Republican governor openly complains about the judiciary these days for blocking budget decisions and forcing California to find billions of dollars elsewhere. Recent judgments have contributed to the state's $20.7 billion projected deficit. Courts have ruled that California's attempts to divert transit and redevelopment money are illegal. They have found in some cases that the state cannot furlough workers. They...