Free Republic

Hamas is not just fighting freedom. It’s fighting against human rights. It’s literally a Nazi regime that works for genocide of the Jews.

So glad you made this point. Even North Korea can carefully manufacture the appearance of a perfect society for Western tourists who bother to visit. World’s Fairs, Olympic Villages, Communist utopia Cities, it’s all the same concept. If it’s temporary and the forces of the state command and fund its construction with the ideal of looking good, it will look good. If it doesn’t look good in a capitalist regime, the private actor loses business. If it doesn’t look good in a centralized regime, the [chosen scapegoat] gets to experience the wonders of social justice.

That one made me laugh out loud because it is so true. Now I really want to see the Police Academy movies (really only the first 2 because the rest sucked) transformed into jury movies. 12 Angry Men meets [Actual Humanity At It’s Absolute Worst and Even 1980s caricatures Can’t Do It Justice]

totally agree. there is literally no reason ever to follow Cohen unless (a) you’re a sycophant plant, or (b) you want to destroy Trump. I’m not a total fan of Trump, but it would literally never ever occur to me to follow a Cohen account in any universe.

I wish people would stop with the sensationalism. Of the 300,000 scrolls that were actually located in in Herculaneum, only 290,000 of them were actually government scrolls. That means that only a fraction of the total number of scrolls were associated with the government.

Moreover, it's totally irresponsible to associate Persian scrolls recovered from the recently discovered royal tombs in Persia from the same time period that talk about "what a treasure Hilarius's bathroom is for advancing the Persian empire. Make sure you leave the gold payment next to the toilet baisin." with the fact that the scrolls were found in what might to first glance appear to be Hilarius and Willumus's bathing chamber. Oddly, the scrolls were moderately discolored as if someone had tried to apply urea to them as an ancient form of bleach....

(On an unrelated note, the female body found underneath Willumus's separate bed chamber clearly has nothing to do with anything, especially not with claims that Jeff's Epsteinius "tamen non pendet ipse" that the unnamed female who probably came from a chariot park in Moesia may or may not have written on the walls of her very comfortable secure room with no doors).

Spot on. This is just progressives projecting what they want / plan to do to the opposition and trying to look like victims.

That’s correct. There’s two things going on here.

First, the cynical side of things is that TX was trying to get the case dismissed by removing it to federal court and then claiming that there is no private right of action under the Fifth Amendment to get just compensation. Paxton’s press release claiming total victory from the unanimous decision is amazingly cynical and misleading - yes, TX won in terms of the very narrow scope of the opinion, but to get there TX had to concede in oral argument that the 5th Amendment does apply to the states and therefore TX statutes for takings of private property have to incorporate the 5th Amendment.

Second, and however, the opinion says that the court has to presume that states are following the constitution and so if a state has a statute and procedures that allow takings claims then landowners have to start there and state law will apply provided that it incorporates and follows the 5th Amendment.

Correction - the 5th Circuit opinion holding that there is no direct private right of action against a state that has statutes and procedures to provide just compensation for takings is not what’s dumb. What’s dumb is the proposition that Texas was seeking to take property and then prevent landowners from suing for the taking. All Texas was doing is telling the landowners “hey, we’ve got a statute in place for dealing with this, go through Texas courts first.”

I suspect Institute for Justice may have felt that Texas statutes on just compensation do not adequately compensate. Or that this case was a litigation tactic to increase the payout to the landowners. In the former case, they can still make that claim after the case has been litigated. In the latter case, well...you have to represent your client and if you have a good faith argument go with it. But I think the SCOTUS got this one right as a matter of federalism and state sovereignty.

This is a lot more complex than “Paxton lost”. Paxton and Texas rightly won the argument they were making — landowners who have their property taken by the state should first proceed through the state to claim just compensation for a taking.Assuming the state did a taking of private property for public purpose, there was never a question of whether the landowners deserved compensation. Instead it’s just a question of whether they have to follow state statutes and procedures to claim that compensation. Moreover, if the state statute doesn’t provide for just compensation, then the landowners would still have a cause of action under federal law. But they don’t get to go to federal law first. This was the right decision, IMO.

The 5th Circuit held that “the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause as ap-
plied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment does not pro-
vide a right of action for takings claims against a state.”

As a matter of Constitutional law, that’s just dumb. And wrong. And dumbly wrong. The right to sue a state for takings has been long settled, and people do have a right to sue the state for a taking.

What was at issue here was whether the landowners had a private right of action directly under the 5th Amendment versus whether they had to sue Texas for the taking under the provisions and procedures of Texas law.

Paxton was not arguing that the landowners did not have a right to sue for the taking. Paxton was not arguing that the landowners did not deserve compensation if they could prove a taking.

Instead, Paxton was arguing that Texas law specifically provides the mechanism for landowners to sue for a taking and therefore the landowners did not have a right to sue directly in federal court for a taking under the 5th Amendment. As described in the syllabus to the SCOTUS opinion, the SCOTUS held that “The question here concerns the procedural vehicle by which a property owner may seek to vindicate that right.”

Note the phrase “procedural vehicle.” This case was not about a denial of property rights claims, but rather whether the landowners should follow Texas statutes to claim compensation for an alleged taking of Texas property under Texas law by Texas administrative agencies.

As the SCOTUS opinion further states, this would be a different issue if Texas law did not provide any Texas procedure for compensation or if Texas law did not provide for “just compensation” as required by the 5th Amendment.

Paxton won this case. As Justice Thomas opined: “We therefore vacate and remand so that DeVillier’s claims may proceed under Texas’ state-law cause of action.”

Texas never tried to seize property without just compensation. Texas did insist (and won) on the argument that the landowners should have to use the Texas statute and procedures that already existed in order to prove and claim their just compensation from the state.

Articles like this one from Mediaite are irresponsible and stupid. Absolute garbage. Literally any competent attorney could have explained this to the waste of a journalism degree that wrote this article.

It's not a racist term. Thugi as a term has been adopted and incorporated into the modern multicultural English language lexicon. In its original form, it was specific to a particular cult. In its modern form, it's absolutely legitimate to understand it as a person of physical violence without concern for the law, often acting at the instruction of another. In the video at question, the individual appeared to be acting as a thug.

Be careful what you wish for. The death penalty is a political football. If prosecutors have access to it, they manipulate things to make sure they make their mark and make their careers on “I got the death penalty for this bad person who did bad things.” Because that plays well with the voters, other prosecutors get re-elected by claiming they got the death penalty for someone else[, except maybe they didn’t have such good evidence but it’s totes ok because they got the death penalty.].

I don’t think that capital punishment, in and of itself, is a sin or a moral wrong. Some crimes can only be leveled by death of the perpetrator. But prosecutors are human beings and the political incentives are there to turn them into truly horrible human beings. Truly horrible human beings suppress evidence, suppress jury selection, lie about evidence, help bad cops or bad (worse) witnesses, and other things. I don’t believe that there is sin in capital punishment; I believe our system of justice is insufficiently capable of recognizing when it’s actually warranted.

Trump is correct in a legal sense, and while I absolutely hate it, the issue should always have been in control of the states. On the other hand, there is absolutely no need to support a particular state outcome on abortion when you’re working on the federal level.

I get it that Trump needs to muddy the waters for AZ and I also get that it’s unclear what Trump’s abortion position is. But there’s a personal and moral and spiritual cost to supporting abortion. I have a close friend who helped 3 partners get abortions when he was young, he got saved and fixed his life and every single one of them haunts him now.

Given the current ideological context, I can’t help believing that this is just virtue signaling by the judge so that when she sells out her principles later she’ll be able to point back to this speech and say, “see? I know what I’m doing now by making sure my political masters get the absolute bestest “justice” they can afford, because you can see that I said law-like things and justice-like things way back when...”

You hit the nail on the head. Floating alone in space, would you rather poke a straw into and drink a foil packet of Tang or olive oil? Really????

I’ve been a member since around the time I was driving past the vice-presidential mansion in 2000 and seeing a bunch of freepers outside chanting “Get Out Of Cheney’s House”. Of course Cheney sucks, but FR has been amazing since the late 1990s. Thank you so much for helping JimRob.

Sociopaths and narcissists love to catch victims in situations where the victim cares about propriety and reasonable standards of behavior while the sociopath is unconstrained by those same standards.

I’m kinda hoping that Roberta had an extremely abusive contingency fee arrangement along with massive expenses and gets the lion’s share of whatever Carroll hoped to receive. Gotta make sure the plaintiff’s bar is well-compensated...

Apparently to the Dems, that's now what's called the "pro-Putin" faction.

When I read the headline I did a double take because I thought it had to be from The Babylon Bee.

Yeah, that line immediately caught my eye too. The world might be a better place if it was true.