Free Republic

Contrary to the narrative that pervaded the media the evening of Jan. 6, 2021, what attorney Michael Hamilton experienced before he left the rally at the U.S. Capitol Building was a day of “peace and prayer.” Hamilton, who also attended seminary many years ago, held a worship service on the front lawn of the Capitol building. “People were singing hymns and with their hands held in the air praising God,” Hamilton told The Epoch Times. Everywhere he went, he said, there were “deep-hearted patriots.” Then, three 15-passenger white vans arrived flanked by squad cars that Hamilton said he later confirmed...

“I’m not gonna make this about the victim at all,” she said. “We’re focusing on this defendant.” Nothing “can lead me to conclude that he is a flight risk,” and “I believe he greatly benefits from some sort of programming.” Ah, “programming”! That’s surely enough to keep the public safe from a man who lost control sufficiently to kill a kid. This is a judge with contempt for the victim’s survivors, and for the public. Her only concern is for the perp — hoping he can “benefit” from therapy or other “programming.”

Judge Kato Crews, nominee for US District Court for the District of Colorado, appeared on Capitol Hill Wednesday as part of his confirmation hearings and became the latest nominee who was unable to answer a basic legal question by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). Crews, who currently serves as a federal magistrate in Colorado, was unable to describe what the landmark US Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland was about. Brady, decided in 1963, “held that withholding exculpatory evidence violates due process ‘where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment.'” Seems like a pretty important case (and principle)...

ATLANTA - Five men convicted in Miami for being unregistered Cuban intelligence agents are not entitled to a new trial, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The five argued on appeal that pervasive community prejudice against the Cuban government and publicity surrounding the case prevented them from receiving a fair trial. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit threw out all the convictions last August, ruling that pretrial publicity combined with pervasive anti-Castro feeling in Miami didn't allow for a fair trial. The government asked the full appeals court to reconsider. The entire 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with...

Keaira Bennefield’s estranged husband — who now stands accused of killing her with a shotgun — somehow obtained an order of protection against her after he savagely beat the mom of three in their home, The Post has learned. The stunning new details behind the Buffalo woman’s shocking Oct. 5 slaying are contained in an official transcript of ex-con Adam Bennefield’s arraignment in the vicious, caught-on-camera beating inside their home — less than a week before cops say he gunned down his wife. Keaira, 30, said that Adam Bennefield, 45, “told me to ‘shut the --- up’ and that he...

I found this site helpful in my choices as I voted. I did also look up these people prior to finding this site and they were all conservatives that I saw. In Arizona we have voter ID and early voting mail in ballots. I am now looking up the judges as I go through my ballot wanted to pass on some information for Arizona voters who don't know about the judges.

After taking the life of an elderly married man and dearly loved father, Jennifer Higgins Bradanini was supposed to go to jail for six months, complete 350 hours of community service, pay $183,857 in restitution, and be on probation for two years. Even though the initial sentence was considered lenient, and outraged the victim’s family, the sentence later was unexpectedly modified. The six-month jail time became home confinement with an electronic monitoring device. Shortly thereafter, Higgins was seen on social media dancing with an ankle bracelet on a rally stage in Los Angeles. In divorce court, a family law judge...

In hopes this article does not require a tin-foil hat to understand, I would like to broaden my understanding of reports of [smart] phones being confiscated during the current “Night of the Long Knives” i.e. recent raids going on across the country. With that said, I am looking for folks smarter than this author (shouldn’t be too difficult) to help explain the federals’ strategy of ‘phone snatching’ Real Americans.Allow me to explain…The conventional wisdom is that smartphones are grabbed as part of the investigation of something that happened 20+ months ago (or whatever), and the phone snatchers have the right...

A decision by a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump to temporarily halt a Justice Department investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate triggered an avalanche of criticism from across the legal spectrum, including attacks from conservatives who served in the Trump administration. “It was deeply flawed in a number of ways,” former Attorney General William Barr said. But Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling is just one of a flurry of controversial decisions by Trump judges in recent months that have been criticized as out of step with longstanding legal principles. Among the provocative decisions from...

The Biden administration has canned several immigration judges, all appointed by Trump, and replaced them with “progressive” magistrates. Republicans have an idea as to why this happened (spoiler alert: politics as usual) but sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding answers anyway. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) want the answers by 5 p.m. on August 3. The letter begins:Dear Attorney General Garland:We write about your decision to terminate the employment of multiple immigration judges who were hired during the Trump Administration. If true, your termination of these immigration judges because of their political ideology...

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. famously declared that there were no Trump judges or Obama judges. He is about to get a real test on that matter. A law professor has filed a brief with the Supreme Court urging the justices to rule against Texas in a lawsuit over the Biden administration’s handling of immigration enforcement. The lawsuit claims Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been unethically “judge shopping” by looking for Republican-appointed judges to handle his cases. Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said Mr. Paxton looks for courthouses dominated by Republican...

Mississippi is one of several states with trigger laws that go into effect once Roe v Wade was overturned. A lawsuit was filed by the state’s only abortion clinic after the Supreme Court ruling overturned Roe v Wade. The lawsuit asked for a temporary block to the state’s trigger law that would ban most abortions. On Tuesday, a Mississippi judge rejected the request. Barring further developments, the clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, will close at the end of business today. The state law takes effect Thursday.Mississippi’s law has been on the books since 2007. It has never been challenged in...

Abortions in Florida and Kentucky may temporarily resume after judges barred the states from enforcing abortion bans on Thursday. Kentucky and twelve other states implemented a trigger law which would outlaw abortions in the instance of a ruling to overturn the 1973 landmark, Roe v. Wade. Kentucky Judge Mitch Perry granted a temporary restraining order on Thursday to halt the state from enforcing a ban triggered by the Supreme Court's 6-3 vote - the state passed the trigger law in 2019. 'We're glad the court recognized the devastation happening in Kentucky and decided to block the commonwealth's cruel abortion bans,'...

Last night John rendered his "Verdict: The New York Times blew the story." The "story" was the testimony of five federal judges -- Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum and four former FISA court judges -- on Senator Specter's proposed revision of the FISA statute. According to yesterday's New York Times story by Eric Lichtblau: In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel...voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They...

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Friday on “Anderson Cooper 360” that the lawsuit against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) attempting to disqualify her from running for reelection over her comments and tweets surrounding the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 would not be successful. Cooper said, “Do you think the case brought against Greene would be successful?”

Voting to advance Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be the main event when the Senate Judiciary Committee meets Monday. But the committee will also be sending to the Senate floor several other federal judge nominees, as Democrats push to keep the judiciary confirmation machinery cranking while Jackson dominated the spotlight. There are 108 current or expected lower court vacancies now pending, 84 of them openings for which a nominee has not yet been named. The general time crunch is being further complicated by the procedural tactics Republicans can employ to slow a nominee’s path to confirmation, in...

Once upon a time, a Supreme Court nomination was largely noncontentious. The general approach of the Senate’s advise-and-consent mandate was that the primary determination of who should earn a seat on the bench was determined by voters in the most recent presidential election. Nominees were often simply confirmed on a voice vote, sent by the Senate to lifetime appointments across the street with little debate. As you probably noticed, that is no longer the case. Not only are voice votes extinct, so are broadly bipartisan confirmation votes. The last Supreme Court nominee to have received more than 70 votes was...

Like Christine, I want to preserve my anonymity, which is why I am shopping this story only to the most discrete members of my own party on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And working with the most trustworthy opposition researchers on my side of the aisle. I have retained as my lead attorney an activist who serves with various nonprofit NGOs funded by international philanthropist Vladimir Putin. Let’s call my attorney “Grigori,” for the moment. All fact inquiries should be directed to Grigori. I may or may not choose to tell my story publicly, depending on the advice of my personal...

A recent Wall Street Journal investigation found that over the last decade, 131 federal judges failed to recuse themselves in hundreds of cases that involved their own financial interests. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, in his year-end review of the federal judiciary, said the report’s findings indicate a “serious problem of inadequate ethics training,” especially for those judges who had numerous violations. The conflicts of interest primarily include judges hearing cases involving their or their families’ stock holdings, which ultimately tainted some 685 court cases. Given the rising concerns that the federal judiciary is becoming increasingly politicized,...

[1:51 video clip] "Joe Biden nominated a Muslim woman for a federal judgeship for the first time in US history as part of his vow to fill his administration with as many Muslims as possible. Nusrat Jahan Choudary specializes in ‘c̶i̶v̶i̶l̶ Muslim rights and c̶i̶v̶i̶l̶ Muslim liberties.’"