Free Republic

@RobertKennedyJr I’m going to file a lawsuit challenging the TikTok ban on Constitutional grounds. Don’t be fooled — the TikTok ban is not about China harvesting your data. That's a smoke screen. Intelligence agencies from lots of countries, especially ours, are harvesting your data from everywhere all the time. TikTok isn't even majority Chinese-owned, and the company agreed to put its data behind a U.S. firewall. The Biden administration rejected that deal. Congress and the administration don't understand that TikTok is an entrepreneurial platform for thousands of American young people. They want to screw them over just so they can...

Oral argument before the Supreme Court this week showed why it is nonsense to claim that anti-vagrancy laws violate the Constitution‘s Eighth Amendment provision against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Indeed, in the vernacular sense, what is cruel and unusual is a judicial edict that says law-abiding citizens must put up with public spaces featuring major health hazards, including even the plague. Yet that’s what some lower courts, bizarrely, say citizens must do. By any normal reading, the Eighth Amendment is intended to forbid overly harsh penalties, not to determine what sorts of conduct can or can’t be outlawed. Unfortunately, the...

The lawyer representing special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday asserted that the reason former President Donald Trump is the first president to face criminal charges is because his predecessors did not commit any crimes. Department of Justice counselor to Smith, Michael Dreeben, went before the Supreme Court to argue presidents should not have constitutional immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted during their presidency. Dreeben suggested that no president until Trump has ever committed crimes when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned him about no other president having faced prosecutions. “Over the not-so-distant past … certain presidents have engaged in...

SCOTUS Justices wrestled with how to define a president’s ‘official’ versus ‘private’ acts. A decision may delay President Trump’s trial, which would hand him a win. The Supreme Court seemed skeptical on April 25 of former President Donald Trump’s claim that he should receive absolute criminal immunity, but it appeared to be open to allowing some level of immunity for presidents. Conservative justices seemed poised to remand the case back to the district court in Washington with instructions on what constitutes official and private acts for further fact-finding proceedings. This would further delay President Trump’s trial in Washington and possibly...

Judge Aileen Cannon unsealed a trove of documents Monday that appear to reveal a coordinated effort within the Biden administration to target Donald Trump with political prosecution after he left office. Special Counsel Jack Smith and other federal prosecutors in President Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Trump in June 2023 for allegedly mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home. The indictment followed an unprecedented raid on a former president’s home the prior summer. President Biden also retained classified documents after leaving the vice presidency. Yet he was not charged because prosecutors say they believed he would “present himself to...

Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” that the Supreme Court acted like “partisan hacks” during the oral arguments on Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution. Host Jake Tapper said, “Justices signaled today that they were skeptical of Trump’s claim that he had complete immunity for anything he did that was an official act. But they also pushed back on how the special counsel framed the case. How likely do you think it is that the court’s going to try to reach a middle ground ruling that might push this trial beyond November’s election,...

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito suggested Thursday during oral arguments regarding presidential immunity that criminalizing individuals just because they question government-run elections would destabilize true democracy. Special counsel Jack Smith indicted former President Donald Trump for questioning the administration of the 2020 election. The high court is now hearing challenges as to whether presidents have immunity from criminal prosecutions for actions taken while in office that fall within the scope of their presidential duties. “Let me end with just a question about, what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want?”...

Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) argued Thursday before the Supreme Court that droning American citizens is permissible because Obama’s DOJ said so, whereas questioning election results isn’t OK because the government also says so. The Supreme Court heard arguments on the scope of presidential immunity after special counsel Jack Smith alleged that former President Donald Trump should be tossed in jail for questioning the administration of the 2020 election. Justice Brett Kavanaugh posed a series of hypotheticals to DOJ attorney Michael Dreeben about the scope of presidential authority, asking whether Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon in 1976 could have...

Justice Kavanaugh asks DOJ Lawyer if Barack Obama should be prosecuted over his use of drone strikes against civilians

A Maryland high school teacher was arrested after he allegedly used artificial intelligence to create phony audio, planting racist and antisemitic words into the voice of his boss, officials said Thursday. Dazhon Darien, a physical education teacher and athletic director at Pikesville High School, was accused of falsifying the voice of principal Eric Eiswert in January, authorities said. "We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic," Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough told reporters in Towson. "It’s been determined the recording was generated through the use of artificial intelligence technology." Darien was charged with disrupting school activities...

Thursday’s argument in Trump v. United States was a disaster for Special Counsel Jack Smith, and for anyone who believes that the president of the United States should be subject to prosecution if they commit a crime.

The Supreme Court on Thursday heard oral arguments on Trump’s presidential immunity claim in Jack Smith’s January 6 case in DC. The case made its way to the Supreme Court after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Trump was not immune from prosecution. Trump’s lawyers previously argued that Trump is immune from federal prosecution for alleged ‘crimes’ committed while he served as US President. “In 234 years of American history, no president ever faced criminal prosecution for his official acts. Until 19 days ago, no court had ever addressed whether immunity from such prosecution exists,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in...

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts signaled concern about relying merely on the "good faith" of the prosecutors to prevent abusive prosecutions against presidents if the Supreme Court rejects presidential immunity. "Now you know," Roberts told Dreeben, "how easy it is in many cases for a prosecutor to get a grand jury to bring an indictment. And reliance on the good faith of the prosecutor may not be enough in some cases

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments Thursday on whether former President Donald Trump can be criminally prosecuted over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The justices have taken up the monumental question of if, and if so to what extent, former presidents enjoy immunity for conduct alleged to involve official acts during their time in office. The high court's decision will determine if Trump stands trial before the November election on four charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. Throughout arguments, multiple of the justices made clear they were looking...

New York Times to Americans: Embrace Big Brother, he’s watching anywayCongress just keeps on giving the executive branch more power, and 'America’s newspaper of record' doesn’t have a problem with it.The New York Times published an op-edthe other day in defense of warrantless government surveillance titled “Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.” Big Brother himself couldn’t have come up with a better title.The piece begins with this claim: “This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the United States and our allies.” Let me start here by asking New York Times editors, why this is a such an extraordinarily dangerous time for...

In the final argument scheduled for its 2023-2024 term, the Supreme Court will hear argument on Thursday in former President Donald Trump’s historic bid for criminal immunity. The question before the justices is whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The court’s answer will determine not only whether Trump’s trial in Washington, D.C., before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, originally scheduled for March 4 but now on hold, can go forward, but also whether the former president’s trials in Florida and Georgia can proceed. Jury selection is currently...

Now We Are Supposed to Cheer Government Surveillance?They are wearing us down with shocking headlines and opinions. They come daily these days, with increasingly implausible claims that leave your jaw on the floor. The rest of the text is perfunctory. The headline is the takeaway, and the part designed to demoralize, deconstruct, and disorient. A few weeks ago, the New York Times told us that “As It Turns Out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.” These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The Deep State is the opposite of democracy, unelected...

FIRST CITY IN CANADA TO REQUIRE A QR CODE, TO EXIT THE CITY. îles de la Madeleine, Québec. Island of Madeleine, QC

“We’re talking about sleeping … that is a basic function,” said the nation’s first Black female justice. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that it is “cruel and unusual” to punish unhoused individuals for sleeping in public spaces. “We’re talking about sleeping … that is a basic function,” Justice Jackson said during Monday’s oral arguments in a case that could result in the criminalization of homelessness. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard more than two hours of arguments in the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson. The justices listened to both sides of the case to determine whether...

Liberals control the legal profession, from the law schools and litigious nonprofits to the bar associations and judges (including many Republican appointees). Judicial supremacy, implemented through “universal injunctions,” allows any liberal legal group to tap one of 670 district judges in 94 district courts to decide on a broad range of public policies, which the political elite then treat as “law.” The good news: Evidence seems to suggest that at least three Supreme Court justices intend to end this irrational practice. We might only have three justices on our side, but governors should still firmly reject overreaching judges who believe...