Free Republic

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2 to 1 decision written by the liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt overturned the votes of seven million Californians. They ruled that California's Proposition 8 defining marriage as between a man and a woman was unconstitutional. The entire ruling rests on the most feeble of cowardly Constitutional arguments in upholding the baseless lower district court opinion. It misconstrues precedent and has the strongest of logical weaknesses. Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum in response on February 12, 2012 rightly said that "I think judicial tyranny is a serious issue in this — in this...

Much has been reported in recent days regarding the Obamacare mandate that would require religious institutions to provide health insurance whose services include contraception. But few realize that a case with essentially the same underlying principle has been working its way through the federal court system for a couple years already. The L.A. Times reported in 2009 that "pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the 'morning after' contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. In a case that could affect policy across the western U.S., a supermarket...

Millions of innocent souls perished at the hands of Nazism and Communism. These ideologies are undoubtedly responsible for the greatest crimes in all of world history. The question of which ideology should be considered worse is discussed in a May 15, 2005 article in the New York Times by columnist and author Roger Cohen. Cohen’s article, "1945's Legacy: A Terror Defeated, Another Arrives" (see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E6DC1E30F936A25756C0A9639C8B63), analyzes the possible answers to this question without coming to a conclusion on the topic. He demonstrates the unique evils inherent in the history of both. He importantly points out that when it comes to...

There were two thinkers who were greatly influential in forming philosophies that would affect the future political theories that followed. The greatest thinker of the modern age was John Locke, who provided the framework that would allow for liberal democracy. A thinker who perhaps inadvertently laid down the foundation for totalitarianism was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau were grand thinkers, but Rousseau was an advocate of his own form of collectivism while Locke believed in individualism, the basis for a truly free society. It is sensible to begin by analyzing Locke, as he preceded Rousseau. John Locke writes in...

Justice Clarence Thomas correctly wrote in his concurrence to the 2007 abortion case of Gonzalez v. Carhart, "I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court’s abortion jurisprudence, including [Planned Parenthood] v. Casey and Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution." The American people need to realize how absolutely clear this really is. In fact, they need to recognize that doing nothing more than just looking to Supreme Court precedent alone is enough in and of itself to demonstrate this point all to well. Gonazelez v. Carhart, and the line of abortion cases leading to it, proves...

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003) the Supreme Court invalidated Texas’s sodomy law as violating the United States Constitution. The case involved “two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle.” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for a majority of the Court that “there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence. Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty...

A federal statute requires that any “justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Federal law also requires that a judge recuse herself if the judge previously served in governmental employment “and in that capacity participated as a ... counsel, adviser, or material witness concerning the proceeding or has expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.” It is clear that there is plenty of evidence that Elena Kagan deciding the Obamacare case is a violation of the federal statutes above....

The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on July 6, 2010, asking that the law be declared invalid since it interferes with the immigration regulations "exclusively vested in the federal government." The Supreme Court has just announced that they will decide the Constitutionality of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration law S.B. 1070. The measure was lawfully passed by the Arizona legislature and signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer, and the federal governments claim as it relates to immigration makes little sense. Instead of recognizing...

A Kansas based gay activist organization is calling on their State to repeal a law criminalizing "unnatural" sexual activities. Among such activities is homosexual sex, but the law in Kansas is not limited to gay sex. In fact, oral and anal sex generally are classified as "unnatural" under the legislation. The U.S. Supreme Court's misguided Lawrence v. Texas ruling in 2003 rendered the law essentially unenforceable by declaring sodomy laws unconstitutional. That decision was foolhardy in its reasoning and in the level of abuse of the Constitution required to reach the outcome desired by a majority of the justices. In...

There are many things that have made the bombing campaign in Libya that helped oust Moammar Gaddafi questionable at best. Among these questions are the fact that there was no congressional approval for the campaign, and more. I myself asked this question as well as other important inquiries while the bombings were taking place. But all these questions were the sorts of queries that were more relevant while the war was being waged, but once Gaddafi was at long last toppled and even violently lynched, many of the questions regarding the action have since subsided. Now that even Gaddafi's son...

The Atlantic's socially liberal Andrew Sullivan asked in March 2008 two very interesting questions: "1. Why is it illegal for me to pay a prostitute for sex, but it’s NOT illegal for a film director to pay two people to have sex in front of a camera and then make money for his product in the form of a DVD or an online download? 2. As a corollary: Why are a prostitute and her john held in such contempt by the media and the public, but Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy are treated as rock stars on both cable and...

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness": Now, therefore, I do...

Though this article was written in May of this year, it is always timely nonetheless given that it is used as an illustration of the larger discussion of the role of the Supremacy Clause within our Constitution. Please forgive this being a late posting: The Texas House of Representatives passed a TSA "nullification" bill that would ban passenger searches at airports without probable cause. The proposal would classify any airport inspection that "touches the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person including through the clothing, or touches the other person in a manner that would be offensive to...

Many people believe in the Constitutional misconception that the newsman is afforded extra Constitutional protection by the First Amendment which states that "Congress shall make no law...abridging...the freedom of speech, or of the press." This is simply not the case. The Supreme Court rightly recognized that notion is based on fallacious reasoning, though later federal appellate courts have not been as wise in applying that precedent. "Freedom of the press" is not a term synonymous with today's media or news reporting, it refers first and foremost to the printing press, (which produced, for example, such important political opinionated works as...

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the Obamacare individual mandate forcing American citizens to purchase health insurance as Constitutional under the Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 enumerated power to "regulate Commerce...among the several States." The majority opinion was written by Judge Laurence Silberman, appointed by President Ronald Reagan. Silberman is the first Republican judicial appointee to actually author an opinion upholding Obamacare. This is the same judge that authored an influential opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller finding that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to bear arms, a decision upheld by the United States...

Karl Marx believed that class conflict is what drives history forward. He envisioned a more perfect society that could grow out of the eventually doomed capitalistic one. This communist society would be classless in its highest phase of development. As Karl Marx famously said in the “Critique of the Gotha Program,” it would “inscribe on its banner: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!” Marx’s mantra meant the end of incentive, the fabric of any successful society. His political philosophy would only lead to disaster and totalitarianism. He completely ignores the fact that success requires...

Jeffrey Toobin recently wrote in the pages of the New Yorker about Clarence Thomas. As an article overall, it has faults some of which I shall focus on, but is worth reading nonetheless. He writes that "[t]he conventional view of [Supreme Court Justice Clarence] Thomas takes his lack of participation at oral argument as a kind of metaphor. The silent Justice is said to be an intellectual nonentity, a cipher for his similarly conservative colleague, Antonin Scalia." I have heard Thomas speak, and he says that he thinks the oral arguments are rather pointless, and to some extent he is...

The Salt Lake Tribune reported in July that an "attorney for a reality-show family files a lawsuit that could send the state’s ban on plural marriage to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nationally-known constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said the lawsuit to be filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City will not call for plural marriages to be recognized by the state. Instead, it asks for polygamy between consenting adults like his clients, former Utahn Kody Brown and his wives, to no longer be considered a crime." Turley however makes clear that he is not going to argue before...

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on August 12, 2011 that "[t]his economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives. We have not found any generally applicable, judicially enforceable limiting principle that would permit us to uphold the mandate without obliterating the boundaries inherent in the system of enumerated congressional powers. 'Uniqueness' [of the health care market] is not a constitutional principle...

Speaker of the House Henry Clay and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman John C. Calhoun pushed legislation known as the Bonus Bill through the House of Representatives. On December 23, 1816 Calhoun introduced the bill to set apart funds for "internal improvements," spending money on roads, canals, or what today would be commonly referred to as infrastructure. The bill had set apart and pledged federal funds "for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive...