Free Republic

In her recent guest essay in the New York Times, former Times reporter and columnist Linda Greenhouse accuses Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito of weaponizing religious liberty. In reality, Alito merely issued a plea that religious liberty is provided “special protection” promised by the Constitution. It appears Greenhouse actually believes religious liberty should be relegated to a lower tier status than other rights. Doing so would do serious damage to our Constitution and to the fundamental rights millions of Americans enjoy under its protection. To support her claims, Greenhouse takes aim squarely at the role religious liberty plays in America,...

The Supreme Court has no excuse for allowing Nevada officials to use a public health crisis to fill poker tables while emptying pews. All four gospels record that the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus cast lots for his clothing. This was not the last time government agents were more interested in gambling than God. The latest instance is in Nevada, where the state government has granted casinos special privileges denied to churches. Casinos are allowed to operate at half-capacity, while churches are restricted to a hard cap of 50 people, no matter their capacity.When this double standard was challenged in...

For the judicial icon otherwise known as R.B.G., Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s past few roller-coaster months have included being lionized by Hollywood, laid low by cancer surgery, and most recently issuing one of the Supreme Court term’s more important decisions, placing limits on civil forfeiture, within a day of returning to the bench. People who know almost nothing about the court and can’t name another justice know her name. In a celebrity-saturated age, she is one of the culture’s most unlikely rock stars. Yet for all the accolades that have come her way, I’m willing to bet that among the...

There's an old political saying that presidential candidates appeal to their parties' wings -- left for Democrats, right for Republicans -- in the race for the nomination and then appeal to the center in the general election campaign. It was put in canonical form by Richard Nixon, one of only two Americans our major parties nominated for national office five times (the other was Franklin Roosevelt). The dozen or so already announced Democratic candidates seem to be following Nixon's rule, and with more reckless abandon than Nixon ever did. Maybe they figure that whoever gets the Democratic nomination will inevitably...

The lead defense attorney for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl said he wants him to receive the Prisoner of War medal. His civilian lawyer, Eugene Fidell, on Friday said his client should be recognized for the five years he spent in Taliban captivity after deserting his post in Afghanistan, according to an article by USA Today. "We have long felt he was entitled to the POW medal," Fidell said, the newspaper reported. It wasn't immediately clear whether Bergdahl's defense team plans to push for the award as part of the process to appeal his dishonorable discharge.

Something funny is happening on the way to the courthouse — and I don’t mean county clerks refusing to issue licenses for same-sex marriages. For decades, judicial conservatism has been defined at least in part as strict observance of the elements that make a case justiciable in federal court: a live controversy and a plaintiff with a concrete problem — as opposed to a general grievance — that can be fixed by a favorable ruling. I first learned about the doctrine of standing back when progressive law professors wrung their hands over how flagrantly justices like William H. Rehnquist were...

August 11, 2007 -- New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse caused a major headache for executives at the C-Span network when she acted like a diva, refusing to join a panel of fellow court reporters because it was going to be televised for the public. . . . Snip Greenhouse became "infuriated" and refused to speak at the last minute, claiming she wasn't told beforehand that the event would be carried by C-Span. She then gave the panel organizer an ultimatum. "I told her she had a choice - either she could have me on the panel speaking candidly or...

Notoriously left-wing New York Times court reporter Linda Greenhouse, famous for her 2006 rant against Republicans, "religious fundamentalism," and illegal immigration opponents has apparently learned from her mistake.No, she hasn't decided that someone with such fervently liberal positions needs a conservative counterpart on the beat. Instead, she decided that television cameras need to be banned from her public appearances: For Supreme Court buffs who watch C-SPAN, yesterday morning was one of disappointment. A promising panel discussion, “Covering the Court(s): Reporters on the Supreme Court Beat,” that included a bevy of court reporting superstars -- like Charles Lane from The Washington...

New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, who covers the Supreme Court, has stirred up quite a debate by delivering a political diatribe disguised as a public policy speech. She has become living proof of liberal media bias, as if we needed any more proof that such a bias exists. Although it was advertised as a speech to a group of fellow Harvard alums who were honoring her last June, she let it be known that she is an ardent feminist who sees pro-lifers as despicable human beings. She also expressed her opposition to President Bush's foreign policy in Iraq. Greenhouse...

Posted by Clay Waters on October 5, 2006 - 14:28. Perhaps the Times should rethink its policy on commencement speeches, given that every time a Times staffer gets up in front of a college audience he or she seems to spout left-wing rhetoric that contradicts the paper's increasingly disbelieved claims of objective reporting. The most recent controversy involved Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse , who returned to her alma mater Harvard in June and delivered these pearls of wisdom: "Our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib,...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — If Year 1 was the transition for the new Roberts court, Year 2 is likely to be the test. During the first term under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the justices were able to find common ground with some regularity by agreeing not to decide much. By the time the term ended in late June, the extent to which the members of the newly configured court were prepared to confront either precedent or one another remained unclear. Chances are high that the new term, which begins on Monday, will be different. The...

NEW YORK, September 28, 2006 (LifeSIteNews.com) – The New York Times reputation for objectivity took another blow today as one of that paper’s reporters has ripped into those who would “threaten abortion rights.” Linda Greenhouse, speaking at a Harvard University appearance this summer, complained of a “sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism. To say that these last few years have been dispiriting is an understatement.” Greenhouse, who received a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Supreme Court, told National Public Radio (NPR) she would not be backing away from the...

National Public Radio media reporter David Folkenflik was stunned by a June speech at Harvard by Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, which was very explicitly liberal. National Public Radio media reporter David Folkenflik was stunned that New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse would give a stem-winding liberal speech at Harvard in June, when commentary is rarely heard from "hard news reporters." Greenhouse, well-known in reporter-or-activist debates for marching in a rally for abortion rights in 1989, tore into the Bush administration and conservatives: "our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and...

September 26, 2006 · In June, Linda Greenhouse returned to Cambridge, Mass., to be honored at Harvard. Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times, reminisced a bit about the 1960s idealism that defined her college years, and told an audience of 800 she had wept at a Simon and Garfunkel concert when she was struck by the unfulfilled promise of her own generation. Greenhouse went on to charge that since then, the U.S. government had "turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones...

Kennedy may check the Supreme Court's tilt toward the right.The Swing Set: Kennedy chats with O’Connor, who may have penned her last ruling this weekJan. 30, 2006 issue - When conservative Washington lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court talk about "the Greenhouse Effect," they don't mean global warming. The Greenhouse in question is Linda Greenhouse, the longtime and esteemed Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times. The "effect" is to subtly push Supreme Court justices to the left. Unless a jurist comes to the court with very strongly held, or even fixed, conservative views, there is a tendency...