Free Republic

What could happen if the current liberal activist Supreme Court was replaced with an activist conservative court - a Supreme Court filled with conservatives who would do what Leftists have done for years, and use that aristocratic body to impose their will on the nation? The Supreme Court, invoking the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that no person shall be denied by a state government equal protection of the laws, might strike down all progressive state income tax laws, holding that discriminating against a person on the grounds of income violates the Equal Protection Clause. This...

A Yemeni cleric who once said Osama bin Laden called him his sheik was convicted of terrorism-financing charges today in a federal court in New York City. The victory for the Justice Department came in one of the government's most visible terrorism-financing prosecutions, which had for a time appeared uncertain after the F.B.I.'s star informer drew attention by setting himself on fire outside the White House in November. The sheik, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, a prominent Yemeni who once held a government post in his homeland, was convicted after a five-week trial that federal prosecutors portrayed today as providing "an...

Environmentalists are raising a stink about changes to the state's waste management board, which governs California's garbage collection and recycling system. Michael Paparian, a veteran Sierra Club leader in Sacramento, is out. Reportedly in is Scott Harvey, a one-time San Diego city councilman and former executive director of the San Diego County Disposal Association, a lobbying and education group funded by the region's trash haulers. "These decisions really tilted the balance of the board toward the industry and away from the environment," said Bill Magavern, legislative representative for the California Sierra Club in Sacramento. The Sierra Club yesterday issued a...

I have been inundated with requests from readers to speak out on this topic, sign and forward a petition, one supporting her parent’s wishes, another allegedly supporting her wishes, as communicated by her husband and legal guardian Michael Schiavo. Until today, I have declined to inject my personal thoughts into this discussion. There is little in this world more difficult or personal than the decisions facing the Schiavo family today. My knowledge on this matter is limited to press reports in which, as a general rule, I have no confidence at all today. Unlike anyone else with whom I have...

JERUSALEM - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said Sunday that Israel has some "hard decisions" to make as it moves toward peace with the Palestinians and the creation of a neighboring democracy. On her first trip to the Middle East since taking over at the State Department, Rice also urged both sides to live up to their promises. "This is a hopeful time, but it is a time also of great responsibility for all of us to make certain that we act on the words that we speak," Rice said before meeting with Israel's prime minister,...

In the second ecclesiastical trial in less than a year of a gay Methodist minister, a jury of 13 clergy in eastern Pennsylvania convicted a fellow pastor today of violating church law by living in a lesbian relationship and ordered her defrocked. The ruling is evidence of the United Methodist Church's efforts this summer to tighten rules banning "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" from the ministry, a step that gained greater urgency after the jury in a trial in Bothell, Wash., in March cleared another lesbian minister of breaking church law. At the trial in Pughtown, Pa., the jury voted 12 to...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Los Angeles Say that an I.R.S. agent leaks a politician's income tax return to a newspaper reporter, an act that is a federal felony. The newspaper may have a First Amendment right to publish the information, especially since it bears on a matter of public interest. The government, meanwhile, is entitled to punish the agent, to protect citizens' privacy and ensure a fair and efficient tax system. To punish the agent, prosecutors may need to get the leaker's name from the reporter; but if the reporter refuses to testify because of a "journalist's privilege" to protect confidential...

The case was familiar, if disturbing. A Bronx man had been accused of punching and threatening his girlfriend. But the woman refused to testify. Prosecutors, though, soon got a break. A Bronx Criminal Court judge appeared to stake out some novel legal ground just weeks after a United States Supreme Court decision. He ruled that prosecutors could use 911 recordings of the woman's anguished call for help as evidence, even though she would not testify. Within weeks, prosecutors and judges around the country seized on the March 25 decision, by Judge Ethan Greenberg, citing it as important precedent as they...

Who are these schlubs? A new poll commissioned by GQ magazine reveals that one in five American men has turned down hot, steamy sex to watch sports on TV. That's 200 of the 1,000 men between the ages of 25 and 55 across the country whom pollsters talked with this summer. Veteran sex researcher Ed Laumann of the University of Chicago said that while this statistic may dismay many women, "There's another way of looking at it." "It means that 80% of the men turned off their televisions," Laumann said. "And when you consider that the average encounter in an...

SAN FRANCISCO - When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last week that he had selected a Democratic labor leader, Pat Henning, to run the state's Employment Development Department, it was the just the latest move to confound observers seeking a window into the Republican governor's political soul. In his first year in office, Schwarzenegger has largely kept his promise to toe a conservative line on fiscal matters while veering left on social issues like gay rights and the environment. The unorthodox approach has perplexed hardcore partisans of both parties while winning praise from voters, with polls showing some 65 percent approve...

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 8 - A federal judge ruled Monday that President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the United States naval base here as war criminals. The ruling by Judge James Robertson of United States District Court in Washington brought an abrupt halt to the trial here of one detainee, one of hundreds being held at Guantánamo as enemy combatants. It threw into doubt the future of the first set of United States military commission trials since the end of World War...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces decisions on bills that would create a Sierra Nevada conservancy, require economic impact reports before local governments approve Wal-Mart-like superstores and promote recycling of cell phones. Also headed to his desk are measures that would bar kids under 14 from using tanning salons without a doctor's approval, require schools to notify parents when they serve students irradiated food and give consumers at least 30 days to claim rebates. California lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to dozens of bills as they rushed to wrap up their 2004 session by Friday. The Sierra Nevada bill,...

Christopher Pittman said he remembered everything about that night in late 2001 when he killed his grandparents: the blood, the shotgun blasts, the voices urging him on, even the smoke detectors that screamed as he drove away from their rural South Carolina home after setting it on fire. "Something kept telling me to do it," he later told a forensic psychiatrist. Now, Christopher, who was 12 years old at the time of the killings, faces charges of first-degree murder. The decision by a local prosecutor to try him as an adult could send him to prison for life. While prosecutors...

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary June 12, 2004 President Bush Salutes Remembers President Reagan in Radio Address      Audio THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week, America mourned the passing of President Ronald Reagan. We remembered a gentle, decent man, and one of the greatest leaders our nation has known. He was a courageous patriot whose leadership transformed the country and the world he leaves behind. In this time of sadness, we think especially of Nancy Reagan, a loyal, loving wife of 52 years; and the President's three children, and the rest of the Reagan family.  Radio Address...

America In the Balance by Vernon E. Lawrence Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac; and to Isaac...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's U.S. governor, Paul Bremer, has arrived in Washington and is expected to meet soon with top officials at the White House for what is likely to be a decision-making session, a U.S. official said on Tuesday. "When decisions need to be made, Bremer comes. Some decisions need to be made," the official told Reuters. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was no expectation Bremer would be leaving his post. There was no immediate comment from the White House. Bremer's return for what officials called "consultations" comes amid growing frustration in Washington with...

The Justice Department is ordering federal prosecutors here and elsewhere to report federal judges who impose lighter sentences than recommended — which a leading Minnesota jurist and other critics say will have a devastating impact on judicial independence. "This will have a chilling and intimidating effect on judges, and this is why I no longer draw criminal cases,'' said Paul Magnuson, a senior federal trial judge in Minnesota who now handles mostly civil cases. "I predict that the number of departures by federal judges from sentencing mandates will fall to virtually zero.'' The July 28 memo from Attorney General John...

WAYLAND -- Photographs of Wayland youths apparently binge drinking, smoking marijuana and partying in private homes are posted on the Internet and common knowledge to a number of local teenagers -- and police. Many of the teenagers who appear in the photographs, according to one Wayland High School student, run in the same crowd as William Senne, 18, who last weekend crashed into a state trooper while allegedly driving drunk. State Police Trooper Ellen E. Engelhardt remained in critical condition at Boston Medical Center yesterday, according to a hospital spokesman. The pictures, uploaded by students to private Web sites and...

Invercargill's James Hargest High School board of trustees yesterday stood by its decision to allow four boys to remain at school for indecent assault, while kicking out another student for smoking cannabis. Chairman Murray Frost broke his three-day silence after the board reversed an earlier decision not to talk to media. The high school has been publicly criticised this week, for the apparent disparity in punishments it meted out to students involved in two separate incidents. The first, in May, involved an indecent assault on a 13-year-old third form girl during school time. Her mother said the girl was tackled...

<p>The California Legislature, as noted in this space before, has a penchant for making policy decisions that backfire with unintended, sometimes very damaging consequences -- largely because lawmakers don't take the time to fully explore the potential ramifications of what they decree.</p>