Free Republic

The decision revives a lawsuit against a Texas officer who shot a driver after endangering himself by jumping onto a moving car. ============================================================= During a routine traffic stop near Houston in 2016, a police officer killed Ashtian Barnes by blindly firing two shots into his car after jumping onto the doorsill as Barnes began to drive away. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the shooting was justified by the threat that the officer, Harris County Constable Roberto Felix Jr., faced when he shot Barnes. Last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the...

This is a major constitutional ruling on one of the most abused provisions of FISA." FISA Backdoor Surveillance Unconstitutional The recent ruling in United States v. Hasbajrami has sent shockwaves through the legal and intelligence communities, marking a decisive moment in the fight against warrantless surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall’s decision that backdoor searches of FISA Section 702 databases violate the Fourth Amendment represents a significant milestone for privacy advocates and civil rights defenders. This ruling has profound implications for government surveillance practices, reaffirming constitutional protections in the digital age.

Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger is expected to return to a courtroom this week ahead of his summer murder trial for the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students in November 2022. A hearing Thursday will consider 12 suppression motions filed by Kohberger’s defense. It will be the first time Kohberger has been back in court in over two months, when his defense team asked a Boise judge to “sanction” prosecutors over “inadequate disclosures” through the discovery process. His defense team is requesting expert witnesses be excluded from the case as a solution. His team is attempting to have...

Just when you think that things might be about to turn around with regard to the explosion of unbelievably stupid laws and regulations to harass and annoy the people, along comes another one that’s stupid enough to top them all. This one has sprung up seemingly out of nowhere in the past few weeks, in notices that have gone out among the New York co-op and condo communities. But the law’s application is far broader than just these communities. I suspect that many readers have received such notices in many diverse contexts. The law in question is a federal statute...

Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats claim they are the party of freedom. In Harris’ interview on Club Shay Shay on Monday, she argued that people need to vote for her to preserve the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, that Trump “wants to terminate the Constitution.” Yet, on the First Amendment, Harris previously called for government “oversight or regulation” of social media to stop what she calls misinformation. In 2022, her vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz, claimed: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.” On gun ownership, Harris went so far as claiming: “I am in...

The National Football League is the latest organization to turn to facial authentication to bolster event security, according to an announcement this week. All 32 NFL stadiums will start using the technology this season, after the league signed a contract with a company that uses facial scans to verify the identity of people entering event venues and other secure spaces. The facial authentication platform, which counts the Cleveland Browns’ owners as investors, will be used to “streamline and secure” entry for thousands of credentialed media, officials, staff and guests so they can easily access restricted areas such as press boxes...

The former Fox News anchor and conservative media personality divulged that he had set up an official Telegram channel for his Tucker Carlson Network, encouraging the public to “keep an eye on the announcements there.” The channel has already attracted more than 150, 000 subscribers.Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Russian-born IT entrepreneur and co-founder of the Telegram social network Pavel Durov focused on a variety of topics, including his visit to the United States. The 39-year-old revealed that he was closely watched and monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his time in the country. “We got too much...

The Institute for Justice says its data show that a century-old Supreme Court doctrine created a huge exception to the Fourth Amendment. Police can traipse onto the vast majority of private property in the country without a warrant thanks to a century-old Supreme Court decision, according to a new study by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public-interest law firm. In a study published in the spring 2024 issue of Regulation, a publication of the Cato Institute, Institute for Justice attorney Josh Windham and research analyst David Warren estimate that at least 96 percent of all private land in the...

Mena ‘doubts the constitutionality’ of his employer, the IRS, using AI to access everybody’s bank accounts nationwide. Mena recalls IRS agents stating “…the first person you shoot you’re gonna remember, but after that you’re gonna shoot like a hundred people, you’re not gonna remember any of them.” He says IRS agents “are assholes...they are the definition of an asshole, all of them.” This video was obtained by an O’Keefe Media citizen journalist who is a part of our American Swiper Program.

First, there were trackers on Taylor Swift and other celebrities’ private jet usage. Now, there will be more scrutiny on executives’ personal use of business aircraft who write it off as a tax expense. IRS leadership said Wednesday that the agency will start conducting dozens of audits on businesses’ private jets and how they are used personally by executives and written off as a tax deduction — as part of the agency’s ongoing mission of going after high-wealth tax cheats who game the tax system at the expense of American taxpayers. The audits will focus on aircraft used by large...

Google's Chrome web browser will soon include a warning that "private" browsing does not prevent users from being tracked, a move that comes months after Google settled a related privacy lawsuit. In December, Google settled a $5 billion privacy lawsuit, which alleged that it spied on people who used Chrome's private browsing — or 'Incognito' — mode. A pre-release version of the browser has been found to include an updated privacy warning that addresses a key piece of evidence in the settled lawsuit — that users "overestimate" the privacy protection features in Chrome. When the change is rolled out, users...

Ninth Circuit panel unanimously orders FBI to destroy records it created during searches of US Private Vaults boxes.. PASADENA, Calif.—This morning, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled against the government in a long-running class action lawsuit from the Institute for Justice (IJ) on behalf of people who rented security deposit boxes at US Private Vaults. The decision slammed the FBI for overstepping its authority when it opened up hundreds of renters’ boxes, conducted criminal searches of them all, and attempted to permanently keep everything in the boxes worth more than $5,000, all without charging any box...

JUST IN - Judge rescinds permission for Trump to give his own closing argument at his NY civil trial — AP

The same intelligence ‘experts’ who penned the Biden laptop letter in October 2020 are now calling on lawmakers to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA.The same intelligence “experts” who penned the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter in October 2020 are now calling on lawmakers to reauthorize the warrantless surveillance state through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). On Monday, 46 former national security officials signed a letter urging Capitol Hill to rubber stamp the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The same law was abused by deep-state FBI agents to surveil members of Trump’s campaign. The...

WASHINGTON — Opening statements began Monday in a trial to determine how much Rudy Giuliani will have to pay two former Georgia election workers after he was found liable for defaming them with baseless claims that they committed fraud in the 2020 election. Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani over the bogus claims, which they say upended their lives. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and former federal prosecutor, was found to have defamed the two women, including by falsely claiming they were handing around what he alleged were USB drives "like they were vials...

Civil rights attorneys argue FBI defied warrant by searching people's safe deposit boxes... FBI agents cataloged Cartier bracelets, Rolex watches and stacks of cash as they combed through safe deposit boxes seized from a Beverly Hills business accused of money laundering. But the owners of many of those boxes were not accused of any crimes. After hearing arguments from both sides Thursday, a panel of judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether the sweeping raid violated customers' Fourth Amendment rights. ... Agents took about $86 million in cash from the boxes, as well as a trove...

“We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.” — William O. Douglas, dissenting in Osborn v. United States (1966)The government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying programs as long as we’ve done nothing wrong.Don’t believe it.It doesn’t matter whether you obey every law. The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.For instance, it was recently revealed that the...

Former President Trump demanded a jury Monday after his unprecedented time on the stand, calling the civil trial against him and his businesses a "disgrace" and saying New York Attorney General Letitia James has "no case." Trump described his forced testimony as "election interference" while maintaining that his net worth is "far greater" than financial statements during testimony Monday. The former president and 2024 Republican presidential front-runner took the stand Monday morning in the non-jury civil trial stemming from James’ lawsuit against him, his family and his businesses. James alleged Trump defrauded banks and inflated the value of his assets....

Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-Lane) sent a letter to the Oklahoma Attorney General, the Sheriff of Pushmataha County, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and “All Oklahoma judicial authorities and other law enforcement entities,” requesting an investigation into ATF’s SWAT team raid at the home of his constituent, Russell Fincher. According to a press release, Humphrey said he was contacted by Fincher after a dozen ATF SWAT team members bearing “automatic weapons” raided Fincher’s home, handcuffed him on his porch in front of his 13-year-old son and coerced him into relinquishing his Federal Firearm License. “If this report is true, and...

Sometime in the next three weeks, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to ask a grand jury to indict multiple people for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result. July 31 is the first of 10 days between now and August 18 that Willis has instructed most of her staff to work remotely, citing safety precautions.That window comes as U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith is preparing to bring criminal charges stemming from his federal investigation into the Jan, 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Willis says the two investigations have not coordinated.“I don’t know...