Free Republic

NEW ORLEANS - The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Tony Spell, the Central Pastor who continued to hold church services in defiance of restrictions Gov. John Bel Edwards imposed to stop the spread of COVID. Overruling lower courts, the justices ruled that the restrictions on gatherings and the stay-at-home mandate Edwards imposed were unconstitutional. They ordered the charges against Spell quashed. Justices John Weimer and Scott Chrichton dissented on the ruling.

They are illegal, deadly, and federal agents are finding them on the streets of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, criminals are turning ordinary weapons into machine guns, by simply attaching a tiny switch to the gun. The penny size device can turn a semi-automatic weapon into one that can fire up to 1100 hundred bullets a minute with a single pull of the trigger.

A bill in the Louisiana legislature aiming to charge women and their doctors with murder for obtaining or providing abortion services was withdrawn from consideration on Thursday amid outrage and a successful effort to amend it. The measure by state Representative Danny McCormick would have would have abolished abortion in the state, granted constitutional rights to "all unborn children from the moment of fertilization" and classified abortion as a homicide crime. The measure drew international attention and was criticized by people on both sides of the abortion debate. It was removed from discussion by McCormick late Thursday after opponents amended...

Louisiana lawmakers 'cannot wait on the Supreme Court' and have advanced a bill that would not only abolish abortion but classify it as homicide. The move on Wednesday came two days after a leaked draft ruling showed the US Supreme Court poised to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Louisiana state Representative Danny McCormick, a Republican who introduced the 'Abolition of Abortion Act' legislation in March, said the impending ruling from the nation's high court should not delay the state's efforts to ban abortion access. 'We cannot wait on the Supreme Court,' McCormick said...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana owners of electric or hybrid vehicles would be charged an annual state road usage fee under legislation that cleared the House Transportation Committee on Monday. The Advertiser reports that the bill’s supporters argued that the bill is needed because revenue to pay for upkeep and improvement of existing roads and bridges comes from the state’s 20-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax. Owners of electric vehicles avoid those taxes, and hybrid drivers avoid part of them. Baton Rouge Republican Rep. Barbara Freiberg’s bill would charge EV owners $110 annually. Hybrid owners would pay $60 annually through the state...

Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, who is the nominee to serve as a U.S. district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, during a hearing about a previous comment she made claiming police kill unarmed black men every single day while at Princeton. "This is a really simple question, counselor. Do you believe that cops kill unarmed black men in America every single day? You said it at Princeton," he asked. "Senator, I said it in my role as an advocate," said Choudhury. "Oh, okay. You didn’t mean it," Kennedy replied....

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) is set to take part in a fundraiser for Jennifer Strahan, who’s challenging Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) in a GOP primary early next month. According to a flier first obtained by Punchbowl News, Cassidy will attend a reception for Strahan hosted by the Republican women’s group VIEW PAC on May 3.

BATON ROUGE, La. — A Louisiana man has been charged in connection with the fatal stabbing of a Baton Rouge woman whose death was live-streamed on social media, authorities said. According to WBRZ and KATC, police said Baton Rouge man Earl Lee Johnson Jr., 35, who was initially arrested Monday evening on charges of motor vehicle theft and fleeing a police officer, was charged with first-degree murder Tuesday in the death of 34-year-old Janice David. In a news release Tuesday, the Baton Rouge Police Department said Louisiana State Police contacted East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies Monday after a 15-minute Facebook...

Private donations from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg were used "to manipulate state law in a way that they could harvest ballots," asserts Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry won an appeal last week against private, "Zuckerbucks"-style funding for state elections, arguing that it's not the government's job "to entice people to go vote." Landry told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckberberg, who spent nearly $400 million on city and county voting operations in the 2020 presidential election, found loopholes in the law. "He ... found a way to manipulate the laws,"...

President Joe Biden should prioritize American energy independence and end reliance on adversaries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, 27 state financial officers say in a letter Tuesday to the president. In their letter, they urge Biden to consider the consequences of foreign energy dependence for U.S. businesses and consumers. “Policies implemented during the last year thwart the vitality of American energy production,” the financial officers’ letter to Biden reads. “The rising cost of fuel, coupled with precipitous inflation has, and will, continue to result in dire consequences for working-class families.” The 27 state-level officials are part of the State...

The Department of Homeland Security is disseminating a mass migration plan devoid of removal mechanisms to replace the soon-to-end CDC Title 42 emergency order.

Three red states — Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri — have filed suit to block the Biden administration from lifting Title 42. The administration said on Friday that it would lift the public health policy that has been in place since the Trump administration, which enabled border enforcement to summarily expel millions of aliens who attempted to enter the country at the southern border. The order is set to be lifted on May 23 — at which time DHS estimates the already overwhelming influx at the southern border may increase to as many as 18,000 apprehensions per day.On Sunday, the attorneys...

Border chief Alejandro Mayorkas is directing that economic migrants get every opportunity to stay once the Title 42 barrier is removed — regardless of the huge damage he inflicts on ordinary Americans. Mayorkjas’ intentions are described in his February strategy, which was leaked to Breitbart Texas on April 4. The February strategy is titled “DHS Southwest Border Mass Irregular Migration Contingency Plan,” and it says on page 16: A. Secretary’s Intent. 1 ) Purpose: The purpose of this plan is to describe a proactive approach that humanely prevents and responds to surges in irregular migration across the U.S. [southern border]....

Senate Judiciary Committee member Ben Sasse (R-NE) announced Friday night he will vote “no” on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination, threatening the committee’s approval of the judge. If a majority of Judiciary Committee members do not vote to approve Jackson’s nomination, the vote may result in an 11-11 tie between Republicans and Democrats, forwarding her nomination to the Senate floor with additional procedural steps, meaning the nomination does not have the committee’s recommendation, which under other circumstances is often fatal. A full Senate vote could then mean moderate Democrats may oppose Jackson’s nomination because of her record of soft...

A large, deadly tornado battered parts of the New Orleans area on Tuesday night, with damage reported in Arabi and the Lower Ninth Ward.... According to PowerOutage.us, there were more than 10,000 customers without power in Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. The weather service said there were two tornado reports in St. Tammany Parish.

Following a tornado that plowed across the Arabi area of St. Bernard Parish Tuesday night, parish officials said there were mutltiple injuries and several reports of people trapped in their homes. "We have reports of people that are trapped," St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jimmy Pohlmann said. "We're in the area doing assessments now." Parish President Guy McGinnis said there were reports of people trapped inside bathrooms in their homes. The tornado struck Arabi, in a south to north direction, McGinnis said. Asked about damage, McGinnis said a this point it appears to be extensive.

You heard it. I heard it. The whole world heard it. Even CNN reported it. PJM’s Matt Margolis reported on it here. At the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington on Saturday, Kamala Harris said: “The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance.” Now, Ukraine is not actually in NATO, and so standing firmly with the Ukrainian people would not actually be an act in defense of the NATO alliance, and of all people, the person pretending to be vice president of the United States should know that. So...

NEW ORLEANS — Monday afternoon, Austin Northcott knew something was wrong in his Mid-City neighborhood. “I heard screaming, like you’re about to die sort of scream,” said Northcott. “Just not a normal scream.” Those screams were from 73-year-old Linda Frickey, who police say was carjacked and dragged to death by her own SUV. Witnesses say it happened when a vehicle pulled up next to her parked SUV in the 300 block of N. Scott Street.

Kamala Harris is a nightmare to work for, reportedly refusing to do her 'homework' her staff prepare for her and then blaming staff when her ignorance makes her a laughingstock to the public. Not surprisingly, she hasn't been able to keep staff. That was news a few months ago, and the bad public relations from it died down with the news cycle. But it doesn't mean the flight still isn't happening. The Daily Mail did some interesting digging and found this: Kamala Harris is losing her ninth staffer since June in deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh, who is moving to...

Harris repeated the phrase "the passage of time" at least four times within the span of a minute, seeming unable to move the conversation forward during remarks she made in Sunset, Louisiana, on Monday. "We were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time right. The significance of the passage of time, so when you think about it there is great significance to passage of time," Harris said. "There is such great significance to the passage of time when you think of a day in the life of our children....