Free Republic

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear an appeal by an evangelical Christian former mail carrier in Pennsylvania who accused the U.S. Postal Service of religious bias after being reprimanded for refusing to deliver packages on Sundays. The justices took up Gerald Groff's case after lower courts dismissed his claim that the Postal Service violated federal anti-discrimination law by refusing to exempt him from working on Sundays, when he observes the Sabbath... ...Groff sued the Postal Service in 2019. The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year threw out the case, finding that exempting Groff caused...

(January 11, 2023 / JNS) The Israeli left has taken a page from the book of its American friends and denounced as “anti-democratic” the platform of their political adversaries. As in the U.S., the steps proposed by the right are attacked as full-on fascism. Nowhere is this more the case than regarding the proposal to alter the Israeli Supreme Court’s jurisdiction and method of choosing justices. And nowhere could the hysteria be more ridiculous. Israel has a unicameral legislature and no written constitution. Such a government structure is hardly unique, and in fact, the country that gave birth to the...

A federal judge has asked former President Donald Trump’s attorneys to turn over the names of the individuals hired to search four properties for documents late last year, a source familiar with the order told CNN. The names were handed over Wednesday night, two sources told CNN. It’s the latest twist in the Justice Department’s efforts to use the court to enforce a subpoena from May that sought to collect all classified records Trump kept in his possession ... ...Last month, federal judge Beryl Howell, the chief of the DC District Court, declined to hold Trump in contempt of court...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' office has requested data on courses and programs that include “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “critical race theory” despite legal challenges to his law restricting such content. ABC News has obtained a copy of the Dec. 28 governor’s memo. In the memo, Office of Policy and Budget Director Chris Spencer asked State University System and Florida College System administrators to document “the expenditure of state resources on programs and initiatives... ...Schools are told to send this information no later than Friday, Jan. 13, according to the memo. This memo comes almost two months after a judge...

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - A controversial law allowing superior court clerks to personally pocket money when processing passports could draw new scrutiny in next year’s General Assembly. “Concerned would be a mild word to use,” state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick (R-Marietta) said.... ....An Atlanta News First Investigation uncovered in 2021 alone, Cobb Superior Court Clerk Connie Taylor raked in more than $220,000, while Fulton Superior Court Clerk Cathelene “Tina” Robinson pocketed more than $360,000 in passport processing fees. Those fees are in addition to their yearly salaries. All of this is completely legal but it comes as a big...

From One America News: “Victim rights advocate Nikki Goeser continues to be stalked by her husband’s killer from prison, and is now speaking out saying that the justice system is geared to defend criminals, not their victims.” This interview is related to a piece that Nikki Goeser wrote with Dr. John Lott at Real Clear Politics titled: “When Protecting Criminals’ Rights Come at the Expense of Victims.”

Police Chief Bradley Wendt had a long shopping list for his department in Adair, Iowa. Between 2018 and 2022, he requested around 90 firearms, including rifles, submachine guns and a .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun, an indictment alleges. Prosecutors say Adair’s police department never staffed more than three full-time officers during that period... Wendt is accused of using the weapons, some of which prosecutors say he obtained through a gun store that he also owns, for his own personal gain...

A Kentucky Supreme Court judge struck down the state’s so-called school choice program Thursday. The state’s highest court unanimously ruled House Bill 563, officially called the Education Opportunity Account Act, as unconstitutional. The legislation creates an almost dollar-for-dollar tax credit for Kentuckians who donate to scholarship-granting educational nonprofit organizations. ... ...“It’s always been clear to the plaintiffs and their supporters that the Kentucky Constitution prohibits any attempt to divert tax dollars from our public schools and students without putting the question to voters,” Campbell said in a statement. ...“We simply can’t afford to support two different education systems — one...

A federal judge granted government investigators access to email messages involving Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry – the official whose cell phone was seized by the FBI in August, it was revealed Friday. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell ruled that emails between Perry and other figures in former President Donald Trump's election overturn effort were not protected by privilege. This included 37 emails among Perry, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, lawyer John Eastman, and Clark's aide Ken Klokowski, a former senior counsel in DOJ's Civil Division. That made them fair game for investigators .... ...The judge also ruled a...

New Yorker who sat on the jury that found two Trump Organization companies guilty of criminal tax fraud has revealed how the panel referred to the former president as “Joe Smith” during deliberations. “I constantly fought my knee-jerk belief that of course anything with the name Trump on it is crooked,” the juror told the Daily Beast.... ...New York City residents on the jury had been angered at how the Trump Organization had cheated working people, the juror told the Daily Beast. They discussed how city services like fixing potholes were impacted by the unpaid taxes during jury room deliberations....

....America First Legal is headed by Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. While AFL lacks the name recognition and financial heft of many conservative counterparts, it has racked up notable court victories over the Biden administration. Casting itself as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU,” AFL has weaponized the grievance politics embodied by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement through dozens of federal lawsuits... ...The group’s success is alarming civil rights advocates, who fear Miller has figured out how to harness the courts to protect America’s declining White majority ...

Philadelphia's mayor said he is "disappointed" that a court ordered the city to remove a plywood box covering a statue of Christopher Columbus. A spokesperson for Jim Kenney said the office believes the statue should be removed from Marconi Plaza.... ...Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt handed down her ruling on Friday, telling the city that if it disagrees with the statue's "message" it can add a plaque..."More to the point, the City accepted the donation of the Columbus statue in 1876. It has a fiduciary duty to preserve that statue, which it designated an historic object in 2017," the judge wrote.

Closing arguments ended Friday in the criminal trial of the Trump Organization with New York prosecutors urging the jury to put aside politics and the company’s namesake and focus simply on the fraud allegations against it – despite accusing Donald Trump of knowing about the schemes in real time. The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Monday, but before court ended Friday, defense attorneys moved for a mistrial after prosecutor Josh Steinglass told the jury that Trump must have known about the tax crimes and “sanctioned” some of them.... ...Defense attorney Michael van der Veen argued the jury was...

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by the Biden administration to reinstate its debt relief program. The three-judge panel consisted of an appointee from each of the last three presidents, according to Politico. The Biden administration was appealing to overturn the Nov. 10 decision by Fort Worth, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman...

A cannibalistic double-murderer from Florida could end up walking the streets again — without ever going to trial. Former Florida State University fraternity member Austin Harrouff, 25, was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity Monday after randomly hacking John Stevens and his wife Michelle Mischon to death with a machete in 2016. Deputies said they found Harrouff kneeling over Stevens and gnawing on his face, noting that he spit out pieces of flesh before being taken into custody.

The California judge who sentenced disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to more than 11 years in prison last week has recommended that she serve her time in a minimum-security women’s facility. Holmes, 38, was sentenced to 135 months in prison on Nov. 18 after she was convicted of defrauding investors who backed her bogus blood-testing company. According to a court filing from last week, Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California recommended she serve her sentence at Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas.

AG Eric Schmitt says they'll be taking depositions from Anthony Fauci, Jen Psaki and more Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt was awarded a major gain in his lawsuit between a coalition of GOP attorneys general against the FBI and top Biden officials. A motion requesting depositions was granted, giving a green light to proceed with depositions of top Biden administration officials regarding alleged collusion with Big Tech over free speech....

As he enters prison, a disgraced former DEA agent who lived a decadent double life has claimed his own crimes were the tip of the iceberg... ...In interviews with the Associated Press, Irizarry, who recently began a 12-year prison sentence, has claimed that corruption is endemic in the powerful US drug agency... ...Irizarry claimed to the Associated Press that dozens of other agents joined in with his debauchery, and that they deliberately tailored drug operations so that they could visit party hotspots...

Two Nigerian athletes are facing up to a decade behind bars after taking part in a fraud scheme uncovered by the FBI. Last week, Emmanuel Ineh and Toluwani Adebakin were convicted of transferring tens of thousands of dollars to the West African country as part of what was deemed "a complex fraud scheme" by the American justice department. The 23 and 25-year-olds were team-mates at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi when they were found to be part of the conspiracy. According to the prosecutors, athletes from multiple institutions....

HONOLULU (AP) — A jury on Thursday found two Native Hawaiian men guilty of a hate crime for the 2014 beating of a white man who was fixing up a house he purchased in their remote Maui neighborhood. ...In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Justice sought to prosecute Alo-Kaonohi and Aki and secured a federal grand jury indictment in December 2020 charging each with a hate crime....Prosecutors alleged during the trial in U.S. District Court in Honolulu that Alo-Kaonohi and Aki were motivated by Christopher Kunzelman’s race when they punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat him...