Free Republic

Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has tested positive for Covid, and is unvaccinated, a federal judge told a courtroom Monday just as a civil defamation trial involving the one-time-Alaska governor and the New York Times was set to begin. Palin, who disclosed in March that she had been diagnosed then with the coronavirus, said last month that she will get a Covid-19 vaccine “over my dead body.”

The trial will begin this week in former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) defamation case against The New York Times over a corrected editorial linking her to "political incitement." Palin’s case is set to be heard in a Manhattan federal court beginning Monday, where the former vice presidential candidate will try and convince jurors that the newspaper and its former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her in an opinion piece, according to Reuters.

The New York Times doesn’t often defend its journalistic practices before a jury. But later this month, the “Gray Lady” will indeed do so as the influential newspaper has a trial date with Sarah Palin. Very much under the radar, jury selection in the four-year-old case begins on Jan. 24. The former vice presidential candidate alleges being defamed by a 2017 editorial linking one of her political action committee ads to a 2011 mass shooting that severely wounded then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. James Bennet, the author of the editorial, picked up on the use of crosshairs in the advertisement and...

A federal judge on Tuesday approved a plan to restructure Puerto Rico's bond debt, which had plunged the U.S. territory into the country's largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled in favor of the Plan of Adjustment that was years in the making, through arduous negotiations between the island's Fiscal Oversight Board, debtors and the government. According to Board officials, the plan will reduce Puerto Rico's debt by 80 percent and save the island more than $50 billion in debt payments. Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said the approval of the plan "represents a great step for...

The seditious conspiracy charges brought by the Justice Department on Thursday against the leader of the Oath Keepers and other members of the right-wing group signal the government is prepared to take on an ambitious fight to show that they joined the Jan. 6, 2021, attack as part of a coordinated effort to deny President Biden the White House. The indictment contains the first sedition charges that have been brought following the riot and mark a significant escalation in prosecutors’ efforts by drawing a connection between the physical acts of mayhem that day and the broader effort by former President...

Jan. 14 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Friday ordered former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli to pay $64.6 million for illegally ballooning the price of a drug to treat parasitic diseases. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York also barred Shkreli from the pharmaceutical industry for life. "Banning an individual from an entire industry and limiting his future capacity to make a living in that field is a serious remedy and must be done with care and only if equity demands," she wrote in her ruling. "Shkreli's egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running and ultimately dangerous illegal...

Sarah Palin wants jurors to be barred from seeing footage of her appearance on “The Masked Singer” in her defamation case against the New York Times that may go to trial in the coming weeks.

The Obama administration targeted sole proprietors and small businesses in the real estate industry after the crash of 2008, while letting the big banks off the hook with bailouts. One of most horrific cases involved Republican real estate broker Tony Viola, who served nine and a half years in prison as a juicy target of Ohio Democratic prosecutor Dan Kasaris. He was convicted of supposedly tricking banks into offering mortgages with no money down. But in reality, the banks were knowingly offering those loans — evidence the prosecution withheld from him. Viola only got out of prison due to an...

A woman who brought her 14-year-old son to the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year will serve three months in jail for illegally parading in the complex during the insurrection, CNN reported Friday.Why it matters: Virginia Spencer and her husband entered a hallway of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's offices while inside the Capitol, later joining a crowd that attempted to enter the House chamber as lawmakers were still trapped inside, per court documents. Worth noting: It's one of the longer sentences handed to Jan. 6 defendants who face charges for non-violent misdemeanors, CNN notes.Spencer will also be on probation for...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with a California seminary on Monday, ruling that it is entitled to ignore federal anti-discrimination law and expel students in same-sex marriages. Graduate students Nathan Brittsan and Joanna Maxon... sued the seminary, claiming that Fuller Theological Seminary accepts federal funding and is therefore bound by Title IX’s anti-discrimination mandate. In turn, the school argued that it is entitled to a defense based on what is known as the “religious exemption” under 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a)(3). ...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- On 12 November 2018, at about 8:34 pm, Basel Soukaneh was driving in Waterbury, Connecticut. He was not familiar with the area and was attempting to find a house he was considering purchasing. The GPS on his cellphone had frozen. The cell phone was on a holder on the dash, so he pulled over to adjust it. Shortly after he pulled over, with the engine running, an officer knocked on his window and demanded his license. The interior lights on the vehicle were turned on.According to the complaint, Soukaneh rolled down his window and said “Hi” to the...

Manhattan District Judge William H. Pauley III died on July 5, 2021, at the age of 68. William H. Pauley’s cause of death was announced after his passing. American senior judge Pauley died Tuesday morning, according to a court official. He had been previously diagnosed with cancer. May he rest in peace. William H. Pauley III was born on August 14, 1952, in Glen Cove, New York. In 1974, he received an Artium Baccalaureus degree from Duke University. Pauley served as a law clerk for the Office of the Nassau County Attorney in NY from 1977 to 1978. He also...

<p>PHOENIX (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked a move that would have given Arizona voters who forget to sign their early ballot affidavits up to five days after the election to fix the problem.</p> <p>The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put a lower court ruling on hold as it considers an appeal from Republican Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.</p>

Michael Cohen was cut loose from federal prison Friday afternoon — a day after a judge ruled he was thrown in jail as “retaliation” for planning to write a tell-all book about President Trump. Cohen was walked out of Otisville prison in central New York at about 1 p.m., his lawyer, Danya Perry, said. He was picked up by his son and is headed to his apartment in Manhattan. “Mr. Cohen is extremely gratified that the court upheld his fundamental constitutional right to speak freely and publicly,” Perry added in a statement. His release comes a day after Judge Alvin...

Donald Trump's dream of building a "big, beautiful wall" along the southern border took a hit yesterday when a federal judge ruled that Pentagon funds totaling $3.6 billion diverted for 11 construction projects along the southern border could not be used for wall construction. Significantly, the judge, David Briones of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, ruled that other funds, already approved by the Supreme Court, could be spent. Those funds, which come from a Pentagon counter-narcotics fund, could still be used for wall construction. The argument being used by the city of El Paso was...

Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced that it would expand the list of government benefits it considers when defining a person as a “public charge.” Under the new terms, an immigrant receiving, say, food stamps, emergency cash assistance, or living in public housing may see those benefits count against him when he seeks to upgrade or extend his visa status or apply for citizenship. It was long believed that immigrants to the United States should not impose social burdens and should thus secure local sponsors who could guarantee their expenses until they got settled. The Immigration Act of 1891,...

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to speed up deportations for people with bogus asylum claims, ruling Wednesday that the president and his team had gone beyond what Congress intended. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan — who a day earlier had excoriated former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — ordered the government to allow migrants with iffy claims to be given a full chance to make their case for asylum. And he ordered the U.S. to un-deport plaintiffs in the case who were already ousted under the new policy, saying they deserve to be brought back and allowed...

Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn reports the disappointing news that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the State of Virginia lacks the standing to sue the federal government over the Obama health-care law. The decision was based on a procedural question over the right to sue, and therefore does not change the high likelihood that this issue will be decided by the Supreme Court. Fortunately, it also appears as if the decision will not help the Obama administration bolster its legal case against the individual mandate. As Haberkorn reports, “The legal victories might not provide the administration with much...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the United States to release a prisoner from the Guantanamo detention center.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle issued a one-page judgment ordering the release of Yasin Muhammed Basardh, a 33-year-old from Yemen.</p>