Free Republic

Stephen Miller’s America First Legal (AFL) has filed a bombshell lawsuit against Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in his capacity as Presiding Officer of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and Robert J. Conrad, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The lawsuit accuses the powerful duo of running what AFL describes as an “unconstitutional shadow agency” and violating federal transparency laws. The lawsuit, filed on April 22, slams the Judicial Conference of the United States and its administrative arm—both overseen by Chief Justice Roberts—as rogue “executive agencies” that have collaborated with far-left lawmakers to wage...

President-elect Donald Trump has said he intends to cut government spending by reasserting the presidential power of impoundment, a move certain to spark a court battle and one that could redefine presidential power for decades to come. Impoundment occurs when the president chooses not to disburse funds authorized by Congress; instead leaving them unspent in the U.S. Treasury.This power is not mentioned in the Constitution but has been employed by presidents since Thomas Jefferson. Congress enacted limits on the practice 50 years ago.Now, Trump intends to challenge the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA), which he believes is unconstitutional.“I will...

March 26, 2014 10:44 AM Read the Complete List of Obamacare Delays By Alec Torres The Obama administration will announce its tenth Obamacare delay later today, this time extending the March 31 enrollment deadline for people who say they’ve been unable to enroll in health plans in the federal marketplace by the deadline. The extension applies to the federal exchange operating in three dozen states and is expected to last for two or three weeks. Can’t remember what all the delays have been? Politico provided a helpful history of Obamacare delays from most to least recent: March 25: Final enrollment...

House Republicans say they’re proud of their 2013 campaign to stymie President Obama’s regulatory agenda, even as Congress comes under fire for one of its least productive years. The bitterly divided Congress will pass fewer laws in 2013 than any year in modern history. As a result of the gridlock, President Obama has turned to his administration’s regulatory authority in pursuit of key policy goals, including efforts to tackle gun violence and climate change. While House Republicans have pinned the blame for Congress’ anemic legislative output on Senate Democrats, they make no bones about their efforts to blunt Obama’s rulemaking...

High school civics courses and even college-level political science classes on the separation of powers can sometimes differ radically from the actual practice. In a time when corruption runs rampant throughout Congress, and the legislative branch consistently succumbs to the executive branch’s agenda, change within the government is necessary, say Thomas Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, co-authors of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track. Both Mann and Ornstein spoke about their book at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday, July 12 as part of a panel discussion with former Speakers...

Virginia Court Strikes Down Law Against Sex By Singles POSTED: 4:20 pm EST January 14, 2005 RICHMOND, Va. -- The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down an archaic and rarely enforced state law prohibiting sex between unmarried people. The unanimous ruling strongly suggests that a separate anti-sodomy law in Virginia also is unconstitutional, although that statute is not directly affected. The justices based their ruling on a U.S. Supreme Court decision voiding an anti-sodomy law in Texas. "This case directly affects only the fornication law but makes it absolutely clear how the court would rule were the sodomy law...

Amendment Banning La. Gay Marriage Tossed By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer BATON ROUGE, La. - 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 (news - web sites), an attorney for supporters of the amendment, said he will appeal the ruling. A gay rights group challenged the amendment on several...

WASHINGTON — Bucking the trend to break down walls between law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Capitol Police (search) has asked to be able to decline information requests from the executive branch. The Capitol Police insist this power is important to protect sensitive information from Freedom of Information Act (search) requests. The executive branch is subject to FOIA requests, but the legislative branch, of which the Capitol Police is a part, is not.

Two state supreme courts dealt same-sex marriage a pair of setbacks today, as the Arizona panel refused to hear a case brought by two homosexual men, and California justices, in hearing arguments in a San Francisco case, appeared to disapprove of the city's mayor issuing licenses to couples of the same gender. In the Grand Canyon state, the Supreme Court decided not to hear Standhardt v. Arizona, a case brought by two single men who were denied a marriage license. The Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed the suit on Oct. 8, and the homosexuals sought review by the state Supreme...

JEFF JACOBYThe end of the gay marriage debate? By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  May 16, 2004 THIS IS THE week that same-sex marriage comes to Massachusetts, and thus to the United States. The fundamental building block of civilization is about to undergo a radical change -- a change opposed by a majority of American adults. How did this happen? The joining of gay and lesbian couples in marriage may turn out to be the most consequential development of our lifetimes. How did we get here? The answer to that question has several parts. At the most obvious level, the...

The court would have to decide if the 4,000 marriages remain valid, if they would be automatically be voided or of they could they be voided at some time in the future. Assuming Newsom's defeat, which many legal scholars predict, the court asked: "Would the marriages that have been performed and registered nonetheless be valid, would the marriages be voidable or would the marriages be void?" Lockyer has already told the court in briefs that the marriages, which have left the newlyweds in a state of legal limbo, are invalid and that those married should get their $82 fees refunded.

…but that's not possible. Here's how the Washington Post's Dana Milbank began his Page 1 analysis of the White House's newly announced position on gay marriage: "With President Bush's embrace yesterday of a marriage amendment, the compassionate conservative of 2000 has shown he is willing, if necessary, to rekindle the culture wars in 2004." This neatly encapsulates everything that's wrong with inside-the-Beltway discussions of the culture war we currently find ourselves in. Presidents do not start culture wars; they react to them. They can fan or soothe passions, but they cannot create divisions that don't already exist. Indeed, both Bush...

Abraham Lincoln once observed that America was founded on a proposition, and that Thomas Jefferson wrote it. He was referring, of course, to the section of the Declaration of Independence that begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . " The reality, though, is that we are founded on a debate over what Jefferson's proposition means. And the current struggle over gay marriage is but the most recent chapter in that longstanding American argument. The words that started the current controversy were written by John Adams. In 1779, Adams almost single-handedly drafted the Massachusetts Constitution. It was...

Three top Senate conservatives have told GOP conservative groups to lay off Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who helped trigger a controversial investigation into leaked Democratic Judiciary Committee documents. Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), both members of the Judiciary panel, personally delivered that message to a group of nearly 20 conservative leaders last week. Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) also briefly attended the meeting on Capitol Hill. The 90-minute session grew heated at times, as the visiting conservative leaders repeatedly interrupted the senators and questioned their handling of the memo controversy....

<p>Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee fiercely denounced staffers in their own party yesterday for secretly accessing computer files of their Democratic colleagues.</p> <p>Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican and member of the Judiciary Committee, said that acquiring the Democratic memos was "an unethical or illegal wrong."</p>

Mr. Noel Hillman Chief, Public Integrity Section Criminal Division U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20531-0001 10 February 2004 Dear Mr. Hillman: In a recent complaint addressed to the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee, Mr. Manuel Miranda, former Majority Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and General Counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, apprised Committee Chief Counsel Robert Walker of the following revelation: “I have read documents evidencing public corruption by elected officials and staff of the United States Senate. . . . This includes evidence of the direct influencing of the Senate's advice and...

University of Western Ontario and well-known among lawyers as one of the most prominent legal commentators in Canada. Everyone who still appreciates our national heritage of freedom under law should ponder his latest book, aptly titled, The Most Dangerous Branch: How the Supreme Court of Canada Has Undermined Our Law and Our Democracy. With this title, Martin ironically alludes to the assurance by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers on June 14, 1778, that the people had nothing to fear from the powers conferred on the judiciary by the proposed Constitution of the United States. He wrote: "The judiciary, from...

The first killing of an abortion doctor by an anti-abortion activist happened in 1993. Since then, six more people have been killed in attacks on abortion clinics, which is fewer people who ended up dead by being in the vicinity of recently released Weatherman Kathy Boudin. Most of the abortionists were shot or, depending upon your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle. This brings the total to: seven abortion providers to 30 million fetuses dead, which is also a pretty good estimate of how the political battle is going. The nation embarked on...

The Betrayal of Checks and Balances The philosophy of Ayn Rand has taught me and numerous other thinkers of the new intellectual Renaissance the moral groundwork for laissez-faire capitalism as the sole economic system which fully and unequivocally recognizes the individual’s objective prerequisites to survival, his natural rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and property. With slight loopholes, this was the implicit philosophy behind the founding of America, and the principal force in its first one hundred fifty years of development. Yet, in the words of Aristotle, "The least initial deviation from the truth gets multiplied later a thousandfold.”...