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A Florida judge ordered today that Fathima Rifqa Bary be returned to Ohio. The 17-year-old religious runaway will be transferred into the care of Franklin County Children Services. To ensure her safety, the details of her transfer will not be released, the Florida Department of Children and Families said in an e-mailed statement. Judge Daniel P. Dawson of the 9 t h Judicial Circuit Court of Florida agreed last week that Bary's case should be heard in Ohio, but he said he first wanted to receive documents detailing her immigration status. The girl is a native of Sri Lanka.

A Georgia judge has blasted attorney Orly Taitz, who has handled a number of court challenges to President Barack Obama's eligibility under the constitutional demand the Oval Office be occupied only by a "natural born" citizen, fining her $20,000 for what he called "frivolous" court actions, and he then mocked the concern over Obama's background. "Although counsel's present concern is the location of the president's birth, it does not take much imagination to extend the theory to his birthday," wrote U.S. District Judge Clay Land in an order released today. "Perhaps, he looks 'too young' to be president, and he...

WASHINGTON - Former Sen. Conrad Burns is no longer part of a federal investigation of jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Burns, R-Mont., narrowly lost re-election to a fourth term in 2006 after Democrats made his relationship with Abramoff a central issue. Abramoff is the key figure in a corruption investigation that has led to convictions of a former congressman, legislative aides, lobbyists and officials in the Bush administration. Burns said in a statement that he "never doubted that the baseless and politically motivated charges leveled against me would be found to be without merit." "My family...

13-year-old initiated sex, judge says Article from: Herald Sun December 17, 2007 01:51pm A JUDGE has labelled a man's rape of a 13-year-old boy "adolescent experimentation" and said the teen and the perpetrator were "both victims". Judge Michael Kelly's comments come a month after a prosecutor accused him of making inappropriate and disrespectful statements about the sexual assault victim during a plea hearing. The Melbourne County Court was told that in March 2001 a 24-year-old man began a relationship with a 13-year-old boy.

The federal government can no longer seize and read e-mail without a search warrant, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. Americans, the court said, have the same reasonable expectation of privacy for e-mail as they do telephone calls and snail mail. The unanimous decision of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a district court ruling that the government cannot use the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) to secretly obtain stored e-mail without a warrant or prior notice to the e-mail account holder. "We have little difficulty agreeing with the district court that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of...

Injured Reno judge popular target for angry parents By ANGIE WAGNER ASSOCIATED PRESS A lot of people don't like Chuck Weller, and to some it was no surprise when he was shot Monday in the chest as he stood near a third-floor courthouse window. As a family court judge in Reno, Nev., Weller decides how to split up families and who should pay the most child support. And when he rules against a parent in the volatile world of family court justice, he sometimes is regarded as the enemy. Local businessman Darren Mack, who had recent court dealings with the...

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal appeals court has upheld New York City's policy on school holiday displays, which allows symbols of Jewish and Muslim holidays but prohibits Christian nativity scenes. Santa Claus, reindeer and Christmas trees are permitted. The 2-1 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court judge, who said allowing secular symbols neither advanced nor inhibited religion. The appeals court said no objective observer would believe the city wanted to communicate to its million-plus students "any official endorsement of Judaism and Islam or any dismissal of Christianity." Instead, the court said,...

December 21, 2005 Yesterday a federal judge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, issued his long-awaited ruling in the intelligent design (ID) case. As I feared, he ruled against the Dover school system's inclusion of intelligent design in biology classes. While I am disappointed at the ruling, I am not disheartened, and you should not be either. In his 139-page opinion, Judge John E. Jones concluded that "it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom." In reaching this decision, he found that intelligent design is not "science" because its ideas can't be either verified...

<p>Tonight it is, March 23, 2005, over five days since Theresa Marie Schiavo commenced her ordeal of purposeful and legally sanctioned dehydration and starvation. We await a decision from the three judge panel from Eleventh Judicial Circuit as to her fate, as her family struggles with seeing Terri's physical health deteriorate.</p>

The baby wore a cute blue outfit with a teddy bear covering his bottom. The 17-pound, nearly 6-month-old boy wiggled with eyes open, his mother said, and smacked his lips. Then at 2 p.m. Tuesday, a medical staffer at Texas Children's Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun Hudson alive since his birth Sept. 25. Cradled by his mother, he took a few breaths, and died. "I talked to him, I told him that I loved him. Inside of me, my son is still alive," Wanda Hudson told reporters afterward. "This hospital was considered a miracle hospital....

Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Will of the people ignored again Posted: December 8, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Joseph Farah © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com What set America apart from the rest of the world was its commitment to the rule of law and the will of the people. Notice the use of the past tense. It is simply no longer true that America has a commitment to governance through the rule of law and the will of the people. The law is twisted and distorted to mean whatever judicial tyrants and their cheerleading elitist activists say it means. And the clear expressions of the...

The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review , by Larry D. Kramer (Oxford University Press, 363 pages, $29.95) JUDICIAL SUPREMACY IS THE gospel of modern American constitutional law. It is the doctrine that the Supreme Court has the last word on most of the country's important issues from electing a president to campaign finance reform to treatment of the Guantanamo detainees. In recent years there have been few critics of judicial supremacy. When someone of influence has questioned the doctrine, they have been excoriated in the media and academic press. For example, when then-Attorney General Edwin Meese questioned the...

When it comes to the Constitution and the role of government, it’s when Democrats and Republicans subtly tell you what they really think. Although this year’s presidential race has seen the two major foreign-policy crises of our time -- the war in Iraq and the ascent of global terrorism -- crowd other subjects out of the public debate, many of the issues that have been election-year staples for decades remain salient. Chief among these hardy perennials is the composition of the federal courts. On the surface, what kind of judges a president would appoint and what legal philosophies they are...

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (AP) -- A state judge Tuesday threw out a Louisiana constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, less than three weeks after it was overwhelmingly approved by the voters. District Judge William Morvant said the amendment was flawed as drawn up by the Legislature because it had more than one purpose: banning not only gay marriage but also civil unions. Michael Johnson, an attorney for supporters of the amendment, said he will appeal the ruling. A gay rights group challenged the amendment on several grounds, arguing among other things that combining the question of gay marriage and the issue...

Reuters SAN FRANCISCO -- The chief Western U.S. appeals court stood by its decision Friday to allow a wrongful-death lawsuit to proceed against a gun manufacturer. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declined to have a larger panel of judges reconsider its 2 to 1 November ruling that allowed a lawsuit against Glock Inc. and gun sellers. The suit alleges negligence for using a distribution scheme that made it likely their guns would end up in the hands of illegal buyers. The case stems from the murder of a postal worker, Joseph Ileto, who was shot by...

Judge Orders Kansas' Public Schools Closed POSTED: 11:08 am CDT May 11, 2004 UPDATED: 12:48 pm CDT May 11, 2004 TOPEKA, Kan. -- The state must close its public schools this fall while it fixes constitutional flaws in its system for distributing aid to those schools, a district judge ruled Tuesday in a case that is already under appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court. The order issued by Shawnee County District Judge Terry Bullock anticipates he will soon issue a follow up restraining order preventing the spending of any money after June 30. That means the Tuesday's order will not...