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Sen. Joe Biden said Sunday that if President Bush nominates recently confirmed Circuit Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats will launch a filibuster. "If [Bush] sent up Edith Jones, I could assure you that would be a very, very, very difficult fight - and she would probably be filibustered," Biden told CBS's "Face the Nation." In the next breath Biden corrected himself, saying, "I misspoke, I misspoke. Janice Rogers Brown is what I meant to say." Asked whether that would break the Senate's much heralded compromise last month not to...

The GOP-controlled Senate on Tuesday ended a nearly two-year Democratic filibuster of California judge Janice Rogers Brown, putting her on track to become the second black woman on what many people consider to be the nation’s second highest court. The 65-32 vote virtually assures the conservative jurist and Alabama native’s confirmation Wednesday evening to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, part of a historic deal to avert a partisan showdown over judicial filibusters. It takes 60 votes to bypass a filibuster. In November 2003, Brown’s Republican supporters were able to get only 53 votes for...

Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected former President Donald Trump’s claim of executive privilege, holding that the archivist of the United States could provide a tranche of Trump’s presidential records to the House’s “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.”In a unanimous ruling, the federal appellate court concluded that President Biden’s conclusion that “an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States” controlled and that the archivist, therefore, must hand over the first of three sets of documents requested. The court added, however, that it would...

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday against an effort by former President Donald Trump to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. In a 68-page ruling, the three-judge panel tossed aside Trump's various arguments for blocking through executive privilege records that the committee regards as vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly riot aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court, said Congress had “uniquely vital interests” in studying the events of Jan. 6 and said President Joe Biden had made...

(CNN)An appeals court hearing Tuesday on former President Donald Trump's claim to keep January 6 documents from his presidency private showed that Trump faces an uphill battle to keep the documents out of the hands of House investigators... ...The case touches on some unsettled law around whether a former president can litigate executive privilege claims when the incumbent sides with transparency. And the three judges on the appellate panel -- all Democratic appointees -- signaled that they found some of the case's questions difficult, even as they expressed doubt about Trump's claims.... ...They also challenged the lawyers with several hypothetical...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday tossed out greenhouse gas emissions rules for heavy-duty truck trailers, ruling two government agencies had exceeded their authority. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2016 set rules for the first time requiring trailer manufacturers to adopt fuel-saving technologies like side skirts and automatic tire pressure systems. An industry group challenged the rule, which was put on hold by the court pending the review. The administration of then-President Barack Obama said it was important to regulate the fuel efficiency of the trailer portion of commercial...

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted former President Trump's request for an "administrative" injunction, temporarily blocking the release of his White House records from the National Archives to the House Committee Investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. "The National Archives and Records Administration and the Archivist be enjoined from releasing the records requested by the House Select Committee over which appellant asserts executive privilege, pending further order of this court," the order reads.

When District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich heard a challenge to the CDC’s new moratorium on evictions, I warned that the hearing didn’t go well for landlords or the US Constitution, see Federal Judge Signals She Will Allow CDC’s Illegal Eviction Moratorium Stay in Place. A little earlier today, Judge Friedrich made her ruling, and, as expected, it left the CDC action in place.A federal judge on Friday allowed the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium to remain in place, saying she didn’t have authority to block it despite her misgivings about the ban’s legality.U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich in Washington said...

Judge Sullivan oversaw the government’s case against General Flynn and refused to dismiss the case after both the prosecutors and Flynn’s attorneys agreed to drop it. This same insane and corrupt judge is now torturing Trump Supporters arrested after the protest on January 6th. We learned over the past few years that the DC judges are as corrupt as those in any banana republic. They included the current Attorney General Merrick Garland, Judge Amy Berman Jackson who oversaw multiple fake Russia collusion cases, and corrupt Judge Emmet Sullivan, who oversaw the corrupt case from the DOJ against General Flynn. Judge...

D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman penned a scathing dissent Friday on a defamation case The Reagan-appointed judge slammed the 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan landmark decision requiring plaintiffs to prove 'actual malice' by defendantsSilberman claimed the ruling has only increased the power of the press, which is almost completely controlled by the Democratic Party 'Two of the three most influential papers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,' he wroteHe named Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal as the 'few notable exceptions to Democratic Party ideological control'

Michael Flynn and the Department of Justice should not allow Judge Emmet Sullivan’s final irrational and unhinged act of judicial defiance to go unanswered. On Dec. 8, federal Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed as moot the criminal charge against Michael Flynn following President Trump’s pardon of the retired lieutenant general. Those outraged over the vindicative and unjust targeting of President Trump’s former national security advisor by the Obama-Biden administration and then the special counsel’s office celebrated the conclusion of the case. Yet Judge Sullivan’s dismissal came in the form of a vindictive, unconstitutional advisory opinion, designed to convict Flynn of a...

Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. government on Friday plans to execute a man convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter nearly two decades ago. Alfred Bourgeois, 55, is set to receive lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. He's awaiting a Supreme Court decision on his request for a stay. His attorneys said Bourgeois' execution would be unconstitutional because he is intellectually disabled and can't understand his punishment. They submitted evidence of IQ test scores of 70 and 75, as well as assessments by experts. The Eighth Amendment bans executing people with such impairments as cruel and...

A three-judge district court in Washington, D.C. recently dismissed one of many challenges to President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order that aims to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S. Census-based congressional apportionment process. And the decision may serve as a lodestar for the U.S. Supreme Court as they decide a similar case in the coming days and weeks....

President Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, bringing to an end a tumultuous four-year criminal case that felled the three-star general before prosecutors admitted they had wrongly pursued his case...

The Supreme Court has refused to take up an emoluments case filed by Democrats back in 2017. That means the lower court ruling that Democrats do not have standing to bring the case will stand. This little corner of the resistance is dead: The Supreme Court on Tuesday put an end to a lawsuit brought by congressional Democrats that accused President Donald Trump of violating anti-corruption provisions in the U.S. Constitution with his business dealings.The justices refused to hear an appeal by 215 Senate and House of Representatives Democrats of a lower court ruling that found that the lawmakers...

#Flynn Appeals court denies former National Security adviser @GenFlynn ’s effort to force a judge to immediately dismiss charges. 61 page opinion. ORDER attached.

A man who raped and strangled a 10-year-old Kansas girl in 1999 was executed this week, becoming the fifth federal inmate put to death this year. Keith Nelson received a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, after a higher court tossed out a previous ruling that the government was required to obtain a prescription for phentobarbital, the drug used to kill him. Questions about whether the drug caused pain prior to death had been a focus of appeals for Nelson, 45. He was the second inmate to be executed this week after the Trump administration resumed...

...Powell began with a short opening statement and then responded to questions posed by the 10 active judges hearing the appeal. (Judge Gregory Katsas did not participate in the en banc proceedings.) Jeff Wall, the acting solicitor general, argued next on behalf of the government, followed by Beth Wilkinson, the private attorney retained to represent Sullivan. Powell and Wall concluded with short, two-minute rebuttals. The questions posed focused mainly on the propriety of mandamus in the Flynn case given that Sullivan has not yet ruled on the government’s motion to dismiss. Mandamus is an extremely rare remedy, appropriate only when...

LIVE United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Live Stream

Maybe Judge Luttig was right all along. I had the misgivings you’d expect back in late May, when I disagreed with J. Michael Luttig, the stellar scholar and former federal appeals court judge, regarding how the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should handle the Flynn case. At the time, that court’s three-judge panel had not yet heard oral argument on Michael Flynn’s mandamus petition — i.e., Flynn’s request that the panel find that federal district judge Emmet Sullivan was acting lawlessly. Sullivan had not only failed to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn; he...