Free Republic

After years of bulldozing, President Obama finally got Senate confirmation for a scandal-plagued diplomat forced out of a U.S. ambassadorship for her close ties to a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government. That means a leftist open borders activist (Mari Carmen Aponte) with a controversial past officially represents the administration abroad. In a 62-37 vote last week, the U.S. Senate approved the confirmation of Aponte, a former board member of the National Council of la Raza (NCLR) and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), as the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador. Obama originally nominated Aponte in December 2009 and made her...

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed President Trump's latest bid to block a subpoena for his taxes from Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero rejected Trump's arguments that the subpoena, from a state grand jury looking into payments made to adult actress Stormy Daniels before Trump 2016 presidential win, was issued in bad faith and is too broad. "We will appeal," the president's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow said. Vance is seeking eight years of Trump's personal and business tax returns as well as other financial documents as part of an investigation into the president's business...

President Obama's recent nominee for ambassador to El Salvador was forced to withdraw her nomination to another diplomatic post a decade ago following concerns about ties to Cuba, raising red flags as her name heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee once again for approval. President Obama's recent nominee for ambassador to El Salvador was forced to withdraw her nomination to another diplomatic post a decade ago following concerns about ties to Cuba, raising red flags as her name heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee once again for approval. The White House announced the nomination of Mari Del Carmen...

A legal advocacy group advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the 1980s actively opposed conservative Robert H. Bork's nomination to the high court calling him a "threat" to the "civil rights of the Latino community." The Senate went on to reject President Reagan's nominee in 1987. The revelation is included in 350 pages of documents the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund delivered to the senators late Tuesday evening. Judge Sotomayor worked for PRLDEF in various capacities from 1980 until she became a federal judge in 1992, spending most of her time as a board member. The...

We wonder what Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has to hide. Her confirmation hearing starts Monday, but the White House refuses to turn over boxes of documents for review about her past. Republican senators requested board meeting minutes of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, where Ms. Sotomayor served on the board of directors from 1980 to 1992. White House Counsel Greg Craig contends that all documents deemed "responsive" already were sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Contrary to White House dodging, these board meetings may be important in evaluating Ms. Sotomayor's legal and policy reasoning because the...

WASHINGTON — A civil rights group advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the 1980s brought several discrimination lawsuits that sought to scrap the results of job tests because too few Hispanics scored well, according to new documents that are fueling GOP criticism of the judge. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Hispanic sanitation workers in New York City who wanted to stop white employees from getting promotions because, they argued, the qualifying exam unfairly disadvantaged minorities. The case unfolded as Sotomayor chaired the organization's board of directors' litigation committee, although there is no evidence that...

WASHINGTON – A Puerto Rican civil rights organization advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor campaigned against seating conservative Robert Bork on the high court in the late 1980s, according to new documents that shed light on the group that's become a key focus of Republicans questioning Sotomayor's fitness to be a justice. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund officially opposed GOP nominee Bork in 1987, "because of the threat he poses to the civil rights of the Latino community," its president reported in one of several documents from the group that the Senate Judiciary Committee released Wednesday....

Republican senators raised new questions Tuesday morning about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's work with a Puerto Rican legal advocacy group, citing its stance on abortion. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) argued against parental notification for minors seeking abortions, writing in a 1980 legal brief that "just as Dred Scott v. Sanford refused citizenship to Black people, these opinions strip the poor of meaningful citizenship under the fundamental law." President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee already faced questions for her role on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a closely watched, reverse-discrimination case involving...

When Sonia Sotomayor goes before the Senate next month for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the questioning is likely to focus on her work as a civil rights advocate in the 1980s as much as on her nearly two decades on the federal bench. That is because she was a board member of a Puerto Rican advocacy group that sued to overturn New York City's civil service exams and to win more police and firefighter jobs for Latinos. Sotomayor embraced affirmative action and later described herself as leading an "attack" on testing and promotional exams that favored whites and limited...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- Hispanic activists and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city of Hazleton yesterday over one of the toughest crackdowns on illegal aliens by a U.S. city. Hazleton, with a population of about 31,000 and located 80 miles from Philadelphia, voted last month to fine landlords $1,000 for renting to illegal aliens, deny business permits to companies that give them jobs and make English the city's official language. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund said the lawsuit is the first in the nation against a city that passed an ordinance against illegal immigration. The...

The New York DMV is trying to prevent illegal aliens from getting New York driver's licenses. If you've been reading the New York Times or the New York Daily News or press releases from various organizations, you might have been confused into thinking that they're trying to prevent all immigrants from getting licenses, but that's not true. For instance, the far-left New York Immigration Coalition has a page discussing this issue. Only one sentence on that page makes an oblique reference to this being an issue of legal vs. illegal: The law does NOT say that immigration status is a...