Free Republic

The six Republican justices handed down a decision on Friday that effectively legalizes civilian ownership of automatic weapons. All three of the Court’s Democrats dissented. The Court’s decision in Garland v. Cargill involves bump stocks, devices that allow ordinary semiautomatic weapons that can legally be owned by civilians to automatically fire, much like a machine gun designed for that purpose. Bump stocks cause a semiautomatic gun’s trigger to buck against the shooter’s finger, repeatedly “bumping” the trigger and making the gun rapidly fire. A semiautomatic weapon refers to a gun that loads a bullet into the chamber or otherwise prepares...

Let’s not beat around the bush. It is more likely than not that Donald Trump will return to the White House next year. Right now, polling averages show Trump with a slight popular vote lead over incumbent President Joe Biden. And, even if Biden overcomes this small deficit, the Electoral College system effectively makes Trump votes count more than Biden votes. Although there may be signs that the Republican Party’s advantage in the Electoral College is fading, that advantage was substantial in the last two presidential elections. Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Trump in 2016 by more than two points in...

A shooter opened fire at a ballroom dance studio, killing at least 10 and injuring as many more on Saturday night in the city of Monterey Park, a near suburb of Los Angeles. The shooting happened shortly after the conclusion of a nearby celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year. The gunman is still at large and a motive has not been determined.

Three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump handed down an astonishing decision on Wednesday, effectively holding that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency charged with protecting consumers from a wide range of predatory activity by lenders and other financial services, is unconstitutional and must be stripped of its authority. The decision by the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit relies on a novel reading of an obscure provision of the Constitution, and is entirely at odds with a Supreme Court decision that rejects the Fifth Circuit’s reading of that provision. This is not...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had to pull out of a public appearance yesterday due to threats following the leak of the draft majority opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Alito is the author of the draft opinion, which, in that form, would overturn Roe v. Wade and leave the issue of abortion rights to the individual states. Alito was set to appear at a judicial conference on Thursday, but the radical left has been protesting and calling for violence against the justices who voted to overturn Roe, and he has canceled. Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent...

After a treasonous leak on Monday night reportedly revealed that the U.S. Supreme Court plans to strike down Roe v. Wade as part of its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, leftists called for violence against SCOTUS, its justices, and the nation’s political system. Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, was one of the first to use incendiary language to describe the leaked ruling. “Seriously, shout out to whoever the hero was within the Supreme Court who said ‘REDACTED it! Let’s burn this place down,'” he tweeted shortly after the leak surfaced. Other blue checkmarks on Twitter called for the...

ThinkProgress, a progressive news website founded more than a decade ago, is up for sale, its publisher, the Center for American Progress, announced on Monday. "Unfortunately, like so many other news outlets that have relied on advertising to fund its work, ThinkProgress has seen a significant drop in revenue in recent years, along with other financial strains," Navin Nayak, executive director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said in a statement provided to CNN Business. "In addition, events over the last few years have underscored the divergent missions of American Progress and ThinkProgress."

...But some seem to welcome a slide in that direction. “Tell me again why we shouldn’t confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy,” tweeted Ian Millhiser, justice editor at ThinkProgress. “Because it is both wrong & supremely dangerous,” replied Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett. “When one side denies the legitimacy of good faith disagreement over policy — as well as over constitutional principle — the other side will eventually reciprocate. Neither a constitutional republic nor a democracy can survive that.” Princeton’s much-admired political theorist...