Free Republic

An entitled Oregon shoplifter has sued a grocery store after a clerk beat him up for stealing a cart full of corn dogs and cookies. Joshua Merkel is asking for $10,000 to cover the medical expenses and mental anguish he claims was inflicted during the foiled heist in southwest Portland. Merkel has sued Albertson's grocery store and cashier Matthew Cooper for allegedly attacking him outside the store, leaving him with a black eye and a shattered jaw. The incident happened two years ago, but Merkel filed a civil lawsuit, seen by The Oregonian, last month in Multnomah County Circuit Court....

Colorado attorneys are starting to push back after a certification prompt began appearing when they log into the state’s court e-filing system. The requirement traces back to Senate Bill 25-276 and related statutes, including C.R.S. § 24-74-105, which deal with how the state handles nonpublic personal identifying information. Under that law, access to certain data comes with a certification—made under penalty of perjury—about how it will be used. On paper, the statute applies broadly to third parties accessing protected data. In practice, though, the certification has now been built into Colorado Courts E-Filing (CCE), meaning attorneys are being asked to...

Two weeks ago, Federal District Court Judge Beryl Howell permanently enjoined the Trump Administration from implementing the president’s executive order targeting the Perkins Coie law firm. Trump’s order suspended security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and barred them from federal buildings, prohibited the government from engaging the firm, and directed that it be investigated for violating civil rights laws. The order explained that these restrictions were appropriate because of Perkins Coie’s “dishonest and dangerous activity,” including hiring Fusion GPS to manufacture a false dossier to “steal an election.” As counsel to Hillary Clinton, the firm worked with Fusion GPS to...

Federal lawyers cannot be held hostage by a lawfare apparatus that threatens their destruction for daring to represent GOP administrations.On Tuesday, word came that the legal disciplinary authority in Washington, D.C., was charging U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin with ethics violations, kicking off proceedings that could result in penalties up to and including disbarment.Martin himself had questioned that very Disciplinary Counsel, Hamilton P. Fox III, the former head of the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, about whether his tribunal was operating politically in correspondence from February 2025. Martin wrote a letter to Fox then, suggesting that the Democrat-dominated panel might...

Can men get pregnant? Years ago, such a question would have been an insult to the intelligence of anyone above the age of 8. And yet, Dr. Nisha Verma, a senior advisor to the nonprofit Physicians for Reproductive Health, attempted a rhetorical bob-and-weave when asked about it by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) at a congressional hearing on abortion pills Wednesday. “I take care of people with many identities,” Verma said before expressing a hestitation about where Hawley was going with his line of questioning. “The goal is just to establish a biological reality,” Hawley said. “You just said a moment...

Texas is now the first state in the U.S. to eliminate American Bar Association oversight of its law schools, ending the state's 42-year-long reliance on the national organization. The Texas Supreme Court issued an order Tuesday finalizing a tentative September opinion, asserting the ABA should "no longer have the final say" on which law school graduates can take the bar exam — a requirement to becoming a licensed lawyer in each state. … The change means law school graduates who want to practice in Texas are no longer required to attend an ABA-accredited school. The power to approve those law...

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Bill Glahn in Crime, Illegal immigration, Judiciary Rule No. 4 I spent countless hours in 2025 sitting in the back of federal courtrooms in Minnesota observing two types of cases play out: illegal immigration and welfare fraud. The one thing that both had in common was the application of Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals Rule No. 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” It’s a distillation of the Cloward-Piven “overwhelm the system” strategy. Federal bureaucracy was designed to handle a system where we had a few thousand illegal immigrants...

A Delaware judge on Monday rejected JPMorgan’s request to halt ongoing payments tied to Charlie Javice’s legal defense, ordering the bank to continue complying with an existing fee-advancement order while its appeal proceeds. Javice and her lawyers spent $530 on gummy bears, more than $3,000 on first-class airline tickets, a $581 dinner that included a $161 seafood tower and $25,800 on hotel upgrades — then billed the costs as part of the staggering legal tab she wants JPMorgan Chase to pay, the bank alleged in court filings. According to the filings, the expenses included a $284 car ride covering just...

This week, the Federal Trade Commission issued a little-noticed letter to the Texas Supreme Court that could have a significant impact on the legal profession. The state justices are exploring a radical change in bar admissions, seeking alternatives to the American Bar Association. In their letter, FTC officials indicated that they view the ABA as an effective monopoly in bar admissions. The potential state change itself may be less important than how the ABA itself has changed in bringing about these growing calls for separation from the roughly 150-year-old organization. In the fall, the Texas Supreme Court issued a tentative...

The ABA’s left-wing bias targets Catholic law schools, exposing the need for reform in America’s politicized legal education system. Last month, Florida Attorney General James Uttmeier made public a letter to the American Bar Association (“ABA”) accusing it of violating the First Amendment right to religious freedom when it said a Catholic law school did not meet one of its equal opportunity accreditation standards. The school is Florida’s St. Thomas University College of Law, and the standard is number 205, titled “Non-discrimination and Equal Opportunity.” The ABA’s finding did not specify how St. Thomas fell short. Standard 205 is distinct...

Cold Case Heats Up"[The current FBI] was competent at cracking the case; [Christopher Wray's] was competent at corruption and obstructing it."- Mike BenzDo you have any idea what tapestry of corruption and crime is attached to the little thread of the J6 / DNC / RNC pipe bomber suspect arrested yesterday by the FBI? Consider this: suspect Brian Cole, Jr., is alive and probably talking, unlike, say, Jeffrey Epstein and Thomas Matthew Crooks in other matters of public interest. Let’s hope he is under FBI protection in custody, lest something. . . say. . . happen to him.Dressed for government...

... In the 1960s, when the first right-to-die organizations began helping terminally ill people end their lives in Switzerland, the Swiss gave broad support to a practice widely viewed as a personal choice. Backed by the world's most liberal right-to-die laws, assisted-suicide groups have since then quietly helped thousands kill themselves. Lately, the increasingly controversial activities of Dignitas and its founder, Ludwig Minelli, are pushing even the famously tolerant Swiss too far, prompting calls for changes in the nation's assisted-suicide law. Mr. Minelli has long played the agent provocateur of Switzerland's right-to-die movement, most notably because his group helps the...

The founder of Dignitas, a controversial assisted suicide organization, ended his own life at age 92, the group announced Monday. It’s a tragic irony that underscores the dehumanizing consequences of the deadly practice. Ludwig Minelli, a former journalist and human rights lawyer, died November 29 through what Dignitas described as “voluntary assisted dying,” just days before his 93rd birthday on December 5. The Zurich-based death group, which Minelli established in 1998 to enable people to end their lives “on their own terms,” provided no further details about the circumstances of his death. Dignitas, one of Switzerland’s most prominent suicide killers,...

A startling new study says Artificial Intelligence may be close to replacing many jobs for humans, and many jobs occupied by lawyers as well."AI is a wonderful tool that can help people in many amazing ways," explained lead researcher Stan Marsden. "But we worry it will soon replace a significant number of jobs that humans hold in the workplace. It might also take jobs from lawyers and other non-human entities as well." The study showed a startling trend as AI replaces human-held jobs at a faster and faster rate. Job experts worry that many humans and lawyers might be out...

Patty DeMint and Michelle Robey, affectionately known to employees as the “DQ Sisters,” own the Dairy Queen Grill & Chill in Medford and have long been described as surrogate mothers, mentors, and champions for people seeking second chances, according to a GoFundMe. “They’ve pulled off Christmas miracles for employees’ kids, quietly paid for funerals, celebrated graduations, and lifted us up through struggles big and small,” employee Tammy Gonzales wrote. DeMint and Robey have also made the restaurant a “second chance” company, hiring people with disabilities, those recovering from addiction, and even individuals with felony records who needed a fresh start....

Two days before lawmakers gather for a special session on Medicaid, Republican senators in New Mexico are urging their colleagues to confront what they say is an even more urgent crisis: the state’s broken medical malpractice system. At a forum on Monday in Bernalillo, the Senate GOP’s five-member “Medical Malpractice Legislative Task Force” heard from doctors, patients, and state officials about the crushing burden malpractice costs have placed on New Mexico’s health care system. The message was clear: without reform, doctors will continue fleeing the state, leaving patients without critical care. Republicans blasted Democratic leaders and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham...

Many federal courts are trying to teach lawyers a lesson for court filings with errors generated by artificial intelligence, but one recent case takes a kinder, gentler approach. A federal magistrate judge in the Eastern District of New York refused to impose monetary penalties on a lawyer who submitted three hallucinated cases in a court filing, citing her “remorseful explanations” and “tragic personal circumstances.” Imposing lesser sanctions, U.

Liz Cheney is now revered by the left thanks to her attacks on Donald Trump. The left professes to admire her integrity and courage nut the truth is that Liz Cheney is a grifter. In her recent concession speech she said she'd work to keep Trump from being reelected: “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.” That may sound familiar to you. Very familiar. In 2016 she said this about Hillary Clinton: "...we've gotta do everything possible to make sure they never get anywhere near the Oval...

On Friday, a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump's executive order targeting legal firm Susman Godfrey, ruling it was "unconstitutional from beginning to end." This is the fourth defeat in court Trump has suffered since imposing punitive measures on a number of law firms that either were involved in legal cases against him or represented his political rivals. Newsweek contacted the White House and Susman Godfrey for comment on Saturday outside of regular office hours via email and telephone respectively. Why It Matters In March, Trump issued a slew of executive orders targeting law firms resulting in a number taking...

The CIA's alleged torture of accused U.S. embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani does not justify dismissing criminal charges against him, a federal judge ruled yesterday. Southern District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected the claim made by Mr. Ghailani's defense attorneys that the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment requires dismissal of the indictment based on "outrageous" government misconduct. The reason, the judge said, was that there was no causal connection between the defendant's alleged mistreatment and his prosecution in the Southern District.