Free Republic

A federal judge in Virginia on Wednesday declared unconstitutional a set of federal laws and regulations that prohibit federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to 18- to 20-year olds, finding the measures violated the Second Amendment. “Because the statutes and regulations in question are not consistent with our Nation’s history and tradition, they, therefore, cannot stand,” U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne, who sits in Richmond, concluded in a 71-page opinion. Attorneys on both sides of the case said they expected the Justice Department to appeal the decision and request a stay, which would prevent Payne’s ruling from taking...

L. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and leading conservative who advised Vice President Mike Pence ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, told CBS News on Tuesday that he is willing to publicly testify about that experience and his alarm over Republican attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. "If invited by the Congress, I would of course be glad to testify," Luttig said in a statement. Luttig played a pivotal role in helping Pence and his chief counsel in the vice president's office, Greg Jacob, and outside lawyer Richard Cullen, to forge a legal and...

SANTA CRUZ — During a U.S. Department of Homeland Security search at a Lower Ocean neighborhood home early Wednesday, a Santa Cruz man was taken into custody in a child pornography-related investigation. Court records for the case, filed late last month in the U.S. Northern District Court, were sealed by Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu as of this week. However, an online case description cites federal code for alleged crimes relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors. According to a copy of the executed search warrant shared with the Sentinel, the raid occurred on the 100 block of...

A federal appeals court upheld a decision to temporarily block the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in three states.A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, issued a ruling blocking the mandate for Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee in November. And on Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the injunction in a 2–1 ruling.The Sixth Appeals Court majority wrote in its Wednesday order that the injunction was upheld “because the government has established none of the showings required to obtain a stay.”States are “imminently threatened in their proprietary capacities should they renew those existing contracts (thus triggering the...

This afternoon a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the Biden Administration's request for a stay of a lower court injunction barring enforcement of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for employees of federal contractors in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Judge Bush wrote for the court in Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Biden, joined by Judge Suhrenreich. Judge Cole (who recently announced his intent to take senior status upon the confirmation of his successor) dissented.Here is how Judge Bush summarizes his opinion:In 1949, Congress passed a statute called the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act ("Property...