Free Republic

(Apr. 23, 2024) – On Thursday, The Post & Email published an article reporting the National Archives’ displaying of an “unauthenticated” long-form birth certificate image purportedly issued by the State of Hawaii in 2011 to Barack Hussein Obama. The revelation was made by Mike Zullo, lead investigator of a 5+-year probe into the image’s authenticity launched by then-Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph Arpaio at the request of more than 100 of his constituents and delegated to his “Cold Case Posse.” Concerns had arisen soon after Obama, the junior first-term U.S. senator from Illinois, announced his presidential ambitions in February 2007...

Despite being slapped down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for ordering a Jan. 6 probationer’s computer use be monitored for so-called “disinformation,” a senior federal judge in Washington D.C. appears ready to reimpose the restriction on Daniel Goodwyn of Corinth, Texas. Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ordered Mr. Goodwyn to “show cause” for why the computer monitoring provision should not be reimposed. Judge Walton set a June 4 hearing date on the issue in Washington.

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that an enhancement charge used against Jan. 6 defendants to lengthen their sentences couldn’t apply to the Capitol protest. In a unanimous opinion from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, said prosecutors’ use of a “substantial interference with the administration of justice” charge to enhance the prison sentence of Larry Brock was too broad. “We hold that the ‘administration of justice’ enhancement does not apply to interference with the legislative process of certifying electoral votes,” wrote Judge Millett.... The ruling could affect other Jan. 6 defendants who...

[Video] The FBI is investigating an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting a federal judge and the special prosecutor involved in an upcoming public corruption trial. HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -- The attorney under federal investigation in a shocking contract killer case claimed in court on Friday that she was actually the victim of extortion. It’s yet another twist in a sprawling public corruption trial. Defendant Sheri Tanaka remains free on bail after a magistrate judge Friday declined to modify conditions of her pretrial release. She’s one of six people facing trial for bribery-related charges in the corruption case. Pretrial services filed a motion...

The former Kentucky clerk who refused to grant a gay couple a marriage license must pay an additional $260,104 to the couple, a federal judge ruled last week. David Ermold and David Moore sued former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in 2015 after she declined to issue the couple a marriage license because doing so would violate “God’s definition of marriage” and her religious beliefs as a Christian. The additional fees Davis must pay are on top of the $100,000 in damages she was ordered to pay Ermold and Moore in September after losing the lawsuit the couple brought. Davis’s...

Less than a week after a Del Rio-based federal judge ruled against Texas in the ongoing fight over the state’s razor wire, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused that decision while it reviews the case. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday temporarily halted a lower court order that gave Border Patrol agents legal cover to continue cutting concertina wire that Texas has installed on the banks of the Rio Grande. U.S. District Judge Alia Moses of Del Rio on Wednesday ruled against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, which wanted the judge to order Border Patrol...

A federal appeals court has set a mid-January deadline for the Louisiana state legislature to draw up a new congressional map, which comes in a long-running legal dispute that included a lower court ruling that found the current map likely unfairly diluted the power of black voters. A three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its order on Nov. 10, requiring the state legislature to pass a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. The appeals court's order notes that, if the state legislature fails to adopt a new map by the deadline, then the lower court should...

A federal judge has voided the court-martial conviction of former Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who left his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was then captured and held by the Taliban for five years. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton on Tuesday issued a 63-page ruling granting summary judgment in favor of Bergdahl, who was convicted after pleading guilty in 2017 to charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Walton argued that Bergdahl was denied a fair trial because the military judge who presided over the court martial, Jeffrey Nance, failed to disclose that he had applied to the executive...

A federal judge has voided former Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's court-martial sentence and subsequent rulings on the case by military judges, setting up the possibility that he could request a reinstatement of rank or change of status for his dishonorable discharge. Senior Judge Reggie Walton, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued an order Tuesday that partially granted the federal government's motion to dismiss the Bergdahl case. But Walton ruled in favor of Bergdahl's argument that the Army judge in his case failed to disclose a possible conflict of interest -- that he had applied for a civilian...

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in Virginia this week delivered a message to Congress, the White House and developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline: not so fast. Pennsylvania-based Equitrans Midstream’s roughly 300-mile pipeline, envisioned to bring shale gas from the Marcellus and Utica in Appalachia to markets in the Southeast, was fast-tracked as part of the Biden administration’s deal with Congress to suspend the debt limit in June. It’s also supported by Pennsylvania congressmen, including U.S. Reps. John Joyce, R-Blair, and Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, who joined U.S. Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., to introduce the legislation in May that helped...

The developers of Mountain Valley Pipeline have asked the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency intervention to allow the project’s construction to progress. The pipeline developers made their application late Friday to vacate the stays of the Fourth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Such applications represent a request for emergency action addressed to a specific justice, in this case Chief Justice John Roberts. Each justice is assigned to circuits to handle such applications, and Roberts has the Fourth Circuit, which includes the region where the pipeline is being developed. The 35-page filing is in...

Autokeycard.com Seized By the ATF, Owner Arrested For Selling A Drawing In the Autokey Card case, a jury found Matthew Hoover, better known as CRS Firearms on YouTube, and Justin Ervin guilty. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) charged the men with violating the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 for selling machineguns and conspiracy. Ervin faced an additional charge of structuring. The case stems from Mr. Ervin selling a metal card with an image inspired by a lightning link etched into it. Ervin sold the cards as a novelty and contracted with Mr. Hoover to promote...

A federal appeals court on Monday vacated a water permit needed by developers to restart construction on the Mountain Valley pipeline in West Virginia, marking the latest setback for the $6.2 billion project. The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found several defects in the review the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection conducted before issuing the permit.

In Ciraci v. J.M. Smucker Company, (6th Cir., March 14, 2023), the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals held that employees of a company that sells food products to the federal government may not assert a 1st Amendment free-exercise claim against the company for denying them a religious exemption from a COVID vaccine mandate imposed by the company after the federal government required government contractors to do so. The court said in part: Constitutional guarantees conventionally apply only to entities that exercise sovereign power, such as federal, state, or local governments.... Smucker’s may be a big company. But it is...

By any standard, the treatment of January 6 defendants has been a disgrace to the Department of Justice, the DC federal bench, and the Constitution. Scores of people have been held in inhumane conditions in the DC Gulag, denied their constitutional right to speedy trial, and denied access to exculpatory evidence. The blanket media coverage excoriating them as “violent insurrectionists” has prevented these constitutional outrages from becoming a national scandal. But there is a chance, a small chance, that the release of CCTV Capitol video by Speaker McCarthy may change the national consensus (other than in conservative media) that there...

A federal judge in Chicago has denied a motion seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block Illinois’ assault weapons ban and a similar ordinance in Naperville. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall ruled Friday that the Illinois and Naperville bans on selling assault weapons are “constitutionally sound.” Lawyers for the National Association for Gun Rights and Robert Bevis, who owns a gun store in Naperville, had sought the court orders in a lawsuit to stop the bans. As is now common in such cases, they argued that it’s “impossible” for the new state gun law and a similar...

I reported earlier on some of the bombshells that the Missouri AG Andrew Bailey announced they’d discovered in the lawsuit against the Biden administration. The lawsuit, filed by the Missouri and Lousiana Attorneys General alleged the Biden administration had been colluding with Big Tech and social media to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content” on their platforms with “dis-information,” “mis-information” and “mal-information” labels.The Biden administration’s effort to squash speech extended to some pretty well-known names, including Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, and Tomi Lahren. But it was clear that members of the Executive Office of the President were regularly...

DETROIT (AP) — The Michigan attorney general said Friday there’s “clear evidence” to pursue charges against pro-Donald Trump Republicans who claimed they were the state’s presidential electors in 2020, despite Democrat Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory. Dana Nessel referred the matter to federal prosecutors last year, but no public action has been taken. A year later, she said it’s time for state authorities to step in. “Let’s be fair about what this was: It was an effort to overturn a lawful election,” Nessel, a Democrat, said. “That type of activity can’t go without any consequences. ... There are laws that specifically...

Wearing a MAGA hat represents a person exercising his or her right to free speech, a U.S. appeals court has ruled. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal judge and ruled in favor of a Washington middle school teacher who claimed that a principal violated his free-speech rights by threatening discipline if he continued to wear a "Make America Great Again" hat to training sessions. "That some may not like the political message being conveyed is par for the course and cannot itself be a basis for finding disruption of a kind that...

@julie_kelly2 Judge: “This is what law enforcement is supposed to do. I don’t see anything on the entrapment front. In my mind, law enforcement deserves a pat on the back.” He claimed the FBI informants “pulled the plug early” and commended the agency for its “careful monitoring.” 🙄 This same judge has aided DOJ in this bogus case from the start, denying defense motions to present damning evidence at trial and refusing to compel testimony from FBI informants, agents for defense. His conduct in retrial was a disgrace