Free Republic

A federal judge invalidated the results of an oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday saying the Biden administration failed to properly account for the auction's climate change impact. The decision has cast uncertainty over the future of the U.S. federal offshore drilling program, which has been a big source of public revenue for decades but also drawn the ire of activists concerned about its impact on the environment and contribution to global warming. The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 15% of existing U.S. oil production and 5% of dry natural gas output, according to...

WASHINGTON — A federal court has rejected a plan to lease millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil drilling, saying the Biden administration did not adequately take into account the lease sale's effect on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, violating a bedrock environmental law.The decision Thursday by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington sends the proposed lease sale back to the Interior Department to decide next steps. The judge said it was up to Interior to decide whether to go forward with the sale after a revised review, scrap it or take other steps.Environmental groups hailed...

Paul Hodgkins, according to Joe Biden’s Justice Department, is a domestic terrorist. A working-class man from Tampa, Hodgkins committed what Democrats and the media consider a murderous crime comparable to flying a packed jetliner into a skyscraper or detonating a truck filled with explosives under a crowded federal building. Paul Hodgkins entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. What exactly did Hodgkins do on that day of infamy? He followed a group of like-minded Donald Trump supporters SNIP When he entered the sacred Senate chambers, Hodgkins carried with him a weapon so offensive that the mere sight of the...

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) asked a judge on Monday to dismiss the U.S. government's revised antitrust case that seeks to force the social media giant to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook said in a court filing that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had failed to provide a "plausible factual basis for branding Facebook an unlawful monopolist." The company added it appears the FTC "had no basis for its naked allegation that Facebook has or had a monopoly." The social media giant asked that the lawsuit be dismissed with prejudice, which would make it harder for the...

Whether it’s their response to January 6 or to COVID, activist judges have abandoned the law and are engaging in tyrannical acts. Thirty years of litigation work in the San Francisco Bay Area, which some might consider Ground Zero for activist judges, left me with a deep and abiding disrespect for leftist judges who are more concerned with their prejudices and feelings, than with facts and law. Two recent stories perfectly exemplify this. The first story involves an Obama appointee who is reaming people arrested because they dared to do what leftists always do: Enter government property, including the Capitol,...

Andrew McCabe, the disgraced Russiagate FBI agent who lied four times to the DOJ and FBI, will receive his full pension more than three years after he was fired by the Justice Department, according to the New York Times. Under the terms of a settlement stemming from a lawsuit McCable filed in 2019 over his firing, he will also receive around $200,000 in missed pension payments. The DOJ has also agreed to expunge any mention of his firing from FBI personnel records, and that he would receive special cuff links given to senior executives, along with a plaque bearing his...