Free Republic

The judge in the federal pension fraud case has postponed the February trial date until May 15, 2007, after defense attorneys requested more time to prepare. U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez said the delay was reasonable because of the complex nature of the case, which involves five defendants and more than a million pages of documents, and because one of the defense attorneys has just been retained – eight months after indictments. The government did not oppose the delay. Defense attorney Michael Pancer was hired this month by Loraine Chapin after her previous lawyer was disqualified by Benitez over...

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Bush administration plan to allow commercial logging in the Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws. U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer sided with environmental groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service over plans to manage the 328,000-acre preserve, home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees. In the lawsuit filed last year, the Sierra Club and other conservation groups said the forest management plan was a scientifically suspect strategy meant to satisfy timber interests under the guise of wildfire prevention. In September last year, Breyer issued a preliminary...

A federal judge has ordered that a top fundraiser for an Islamic charity the government says has ties to terrorism be released from detention, his attorney said Thursday. Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan, who has been held for two years, was ordered released without bond, according to his attorney, Ranjana Natarajan of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "We're thrilled, we're just thrilled," Natarajan said. The order was entered Thursday by U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter. "It is ordered that judgment be entered granting the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus filed herein and ordering respondents to release petitioner forthwith on...

WASHINGTON - Federal Judge Royce Lamberth has long been known for speaking his mind — most notably in rulings siding with American Indians in their battle with the government over their trust funds. But Lamberth went a step too far, an appeals court said Tuesday, citing one particularly harsh decision last July in which he accused the government of racism. In a rare move, a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered Lamberth removed from the 10-year-old Indian trust case, saying he had lost his objectivity. "We conclude, reluctantly, that this...

A federal judge has declared a state law requiring students to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp also declared students do not need a parent's permission to be excused from reciting the pledge, citing previous federal cases. ''It is a long-standing rule of constitutional law that a student may remain quietly seated during the pledge on grounds of personal or political belief,'' Ryskamp stated in his ruling based on a lawsuit filed by a Boynton Beach High School student who had refused to stand for the pledge. Cameron Frazier, then a 17-year-old junior,...

A U.S. District Court judge presiding over the trial of a private investigator accused of wiretapping Hollywood celebrities said prosecutors can use evidence gathered in a search of his offices. FBI agents raided Anthony Pellicano's offices in 2002 and found illegal explosives. Authorities were investigating whether Pellicano hired a man to threaten a Los Angeles Times reporter working on a story about actor Steven Seagal and his possible links to the Mafia. Pellicano's attorney Steven Gruel challenged the legality of the search, contending the raids were a ruse to get inside and look for suspected wrongdoing. FBI agents seized computers...

After Fight in Terrorism Case, Conservative Star Gives Up Court Seat for Boeing Job. On Nov. 22, U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig was at work in his chambers here when he received a telephone call telling him to switch on the television. There, he saw Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announce that the government would file charges against Jose Padilla in a federal court -- treating the accused terrorist like a normal criminal suspect. The judge was stunned. Two months earlier, he had written a landmark opinion saying the government could hold Mr. Padilla without charge in a military brig....

A Federal Judge in Atlanta Georgia will soon determine the outcome of the International Marriage Broker Regulation Marriage act of 2005. (IMBRA). The law was passed by Congress on Dec. 17, 2005 and signed by the president on Jan. 5, 2006. Before the law was scheduled to be enacted on March 6, 2006 a Federal Judge in Atlanta issued a Temporary Restraining Order. A hearing was held including April 3, 2006 with the plaintiffs (European Connections and Tours)and defendants (The Attorney General)presenting Testimony. A decision is expected by the Federal judge the week of April 24, 2006. The laws provisions...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday rejected bail for a Lodi man involved in a terrorism investigation, finding that his relatives could not properly post his $1.2 million bond. U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott said he was gratified by the ruling, which overturned a decision last month by a federal magistrate who approved bail for Umer Hayat. Hayat's attorney said he will appeal Wednesday's decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hayat, 47, was arrested in June and charged with lying to the FBI by denying that his son attended an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan...

WASHINGTON - Longtime federal judge William B. Bryant — the first black person to serve as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — has died. He was 94. Bryant, who continued hearing cases as a senior judge until recently, died Sunday night, court spokesman Sheldon Snook said. President Johnson nominated Bryant to the federal bench in 1965, after Bryant distinguished himself in private practice and as a federal prosecutor in Washington. He was first hired as an assistant U.S. attorney in 1951. On Friday, President Bush signed legislation that will name a new $110...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday set the stage for an atheist and three Sacramento-area school districts to take their dispute over the Pledge of Allegiance to an appeals court. U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton said he will stay a ruling made last month, meaning the schools can continue having children recite the pledge. In his previous finding, Karlton said he was bound by a 2002 ruling of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools because it contains the words "under God." That lawsuit was...

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge upheld three lawsuits Friday accusing Jordan-based Arab Bank of promoting Palestinian suicide attacks by funneling Saudi money to bombers' families. U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon denied six of eight counts in Arab Bank's March motion to dismiss the litigation, allowing bombing survivors and victims' families to move forward with their lawsuits seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. The lawsuits claim that Arab Bank aided terrorism by acting as the administrator of an "insurance plan" by the Saudi Committee in Support of the Intifada Al Quds, which paid $5,300 to the families...

Just heard on Fox....so sad.

News Alert:On January 13, a federal judge in Georgia ruled that stickers placed in textbooks of an Atlanta area school district saying “Evolution is a theory, not a fact” are unconstitutional! ( View sticker.) According to this judge, such criticisms of evolution are an endorsement of religion. The judge’s action is the latest example of the nationwide effort to ban any critical analysis of the theory of evolution and insist that evolution be taught as the only option! The Action:The Center for Reclaiming America has launched a national petition to rally 100,000 citizens immediately to oppose this federal court...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge has allowed the county to continue with its plans to close the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center by denying a temporary restraining order sought by doctors and residents. The motion by Friends of King/Drew argued that the court needed to intervene immediately so community members would not be deprived of emergency medical services. The court filing rejected Thursday is part of a civil rights lawsuit alleging that closing the trauma unit would have a disproportionate affect South Los Angeles residents. Health department officials have said they need to close...

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that terror suspects held in Cuba must be allowed to meet with lawyers, and that the government cannot monitor their conversations. In a sharp rebuke of the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the administration "attempts to erode this bedrock principle" of attorney-client privacy with "a flimsy assemblage" of arguments. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the 600 foreign-born men then held in the Navy-run prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could challenge their captivity in American courts.

A federal judge threatened to put the state's prison system into receivership after warning that a prison guard contract renegotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger harms reform efforts in the nation's largest state correctional system. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the guard's union, already has a pattern of interfering with investigations and employee discipline, U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson wrote Monday in a letter received Tuesday by Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger's proposal would worsen problems by granting even more concessions to the union in return for postponing pay increases, despite numerous warnings from a federal court special master, witnesses at Senate...

CINCINNATI -- Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese's fight to return the Ten Commandments to his courtroom wall suffered a setback Wednesday. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth District's three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that displaying the plaque violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. "We're obviously pleased with the ruling," Gary Daniels, litigation coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said. A federal judge forced DeWeese to remove the Ten Commandments in 2002 after a lawsuit by the ACLU. "We've contended such a display is offensive to the Establishment Clause and violates the...

A federal judge in Kansas ruled a university's prominent display of a sculpture that mocks the Catholic faith did not violate the Constitution. Washburn University's sculpture, entitled "Holier than Thou," depicts a Roman Catholic bishop with a grotesque facial expression wearing a miter that resembles a phallus. The Topeka school's Campus Beautification Committee selected the display to help fulfill its goal of having "one of the most beautiful campuses in Kansas." After refusing to act on complaints brought by numerous Catholics, including the archbishop of Kansas City, a lawsuit was filed by the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center....

Carhart wins temporary victory BY BUTCH MABIN / Lincoln Journal Star Citing the health risks a late-term abortion law could pose to mothers, U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf on Wednesday temporarily barred the federal government from enforcing the measure against four doctors. In an order issued shortly after President Bush signed legislation that banned so-called partial-birth abortions, Kopf ruled the measure appeared to suffer the same constitutional flaw -- the absence of a health exception for the mother -- that the U.S. Supreme Court identified in a 1997 Nebraska measure. "While it is ... true that Congress found that...