Free Republic

bortion has been an important economic stimulus ever since it was legalized by the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, Chelsea Clinton claimed at a "Rise Up for Roe" event on Saturday. At the event promoting opposition to President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the former First Daughter of President Bill Clinton credited legalized abortion for helping add trillions of dollars to the U.S economy because women who had abortions were more inclined to enter the labor force: "Whether you fundamentally care about reproductive rights and access right, because these are not the same thing, if you...

One of the nation's most powerful labor unions is rallying supporters to oppose Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to replace Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. On Friday, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) began circulating a petition online for its allies to send to their home state lawmakers. The union letter calls Kavanaugh a "narrow-minded extremist" and accuses the D.C. Circuit Court judge of undermining workers' rights and opposing abortion. "Kavanaugh is a narrow-minded extremist who will chip away at our rights in the workplace, the doctor's office and the ballot box," the letter says. "If Kavanaugh is confirmed he...

ORONO, Maine - Democrats have all but acknowledged that they are unable to stop the Senate from confirming Trump nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court this fall. Moderate Republican senators such as Susan Collins of Maine, the most closely watched GOP swing vote, are sending strong signals that they will back Kavanaugh. Several Democrats facing difficult reelections this year have indicated they are open to voting for the judge. And leaders of the resistance are already delivering post-mortem assessments and blaming fellow Democrats for a looming failure. Barring a major revelation, the Senate is poised to install the...

Republicans said Friday they’ve scheduled Judge Brett Kavanaugh for a confirmation hearing Sept. 4, moving ahead with a speedy schedule that could still see him confirmed in time to be on the Supreme Court before October. Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley announced the hearing, saying there’s plenty of information out there for senators to evaluate the judge without waiting for potentially millions of pages of documents from the National Archives. “It’s time for the American people to hear directly from Judge Kavanaugh at his public hearing,” Mr. Grassley said. If the hearing follows past practice it will involve the...

Only yesterday the Democrats in the U.S. Senate were giddy with the idea that Judge Brett Kavanaugh had united the women of America, who would pressure their senators to do him in. But the campaign to confirm Kavanaugh for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is beginning to look like ladies' day at the baseball park. Successfully casting Kavanaugh as Harvey Weinstein will be difficult. Eighteen of the 25 women who have served as Kavanaugh law clerks, who know the judge best, signed a letter (the other seven couldn't sign because of current or pending employment elsewhere) describing "uniformly...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday he still wants to have Judge Brett Kavanaugh confirmed and sitting on the Supreme Court by the start of the new term in October. That is an aggressive schedule that means senators would hold a final vote well before all of the documents they’ve requested about his background would be released to the public by the National Archives ~snip~ “He’ll get confirmed. It won’t be a landslide, but he’ll get confirmed,” the senator said.

The National Rifle Association’s legislative-lobbying arm announced Tuesday a seven-figure national and region ad campaign to support the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. The national cable and regional broadcast ads will start airing Tuesday and will run through Aug. 27. The regional ads are to air in Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, North Dakota and West Virginia. “The NRA strongly supports Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court because he will protect our constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA). “It’s...

The late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia was a fan of President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Bryan Garner a friend and now biographer of Scalia told The Wall Street Journal Monday.Garner, a long-time literary collaborator with Scalia and friend, said that the late justice “thought it was most refreshing to have a candidate who was pretty much unfiltered and utterly frank.�He had spent two weeks in 2016 traveling with Justice Scalia through several Asian countries just a week before his death.Garner added that while Scalia liked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, “he was fascinated by the fact that Trump was so...

Once again partisanship is rearing its disgusting head at the pre-confirmation debate over Brett Kavanaugh.  Long gone are the days when a judge’s qualifications were the only factors considered.  After all, Antonin Gregory Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 1986, and in 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg had only three dissenting votes. A play about Scalia, The Originalist, shows how Americans should be willing to accept a viewpoint other than their own, something the Senate is unwilling to do. It is now playing in New York, and is also available to stream.  With all the divisiveness going on...

The Democratic push to get documents from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's work in the George W. Bush administration ran into a new roadblock on Friday. The National Archives, in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), said it will only respond to a request for documents under the Presidential Records Act (PRA) if they come from a committee chairman, who are all Republicans. The National Archives and Records “remains unable to respond to PRA special access requests from ranking minority members,” wrote Archivist David Ferriero, who was appointed by former President Obama. Schumer and Ferriero spoke on...

Several Washington state employees are suing for the right to break ties with their union, claiming the Supreme Court's landmark Janus decision should allow them to cancel their membership immediately. That June ruling said state government workers could not be forced to pay so-called “fair share” fees to support collective bargaining and other union activities. The decision delivered a blow to public-employee unions. But the lawsuit filed Thursday, if successful, could point to further repercussions. The six plaintiffs have all attempted to leave the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) since the Supreme Court decision, but say they've been told...

The National Archives says it will take months to process the records Republicans have asked to see from Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s previous government work, throwing a curveball at the GOP, which had hoped to review the documents, hold hearings and confirm him to the Supreme Court before October. The Archives said it will take at least through October to review 1 million pages that Republicans have requested to see. And that doesn’t include the 3 million additional pages Democrats have asked for. If Congress waits for those, it could push the confirmation schedule beyond the November elections and into...

...Against this backdrop, I want to focus on Justice Clarence Thomas and specifically on the record he compiled during the past term. There is something almost discordant about including Justice Thomas in a discussion of “the future” because his highly personal and eccentric jurisprudence would take the court and the Constitution hurtling backward into the past. That’s no great revelation. He has long insisted that the only legitimate way to interpret a constitutional provision is to give it the “public meaning” it supposedly had at the time it was written. So in 2011, for example, he dissented from a majority...

Whenever I get around to running a most punchable face contest on Power Line, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal will be one of the contestants. Blumenthal’s outward appearance and visible affect are the least of it. Either he is a bloomin’ idiot or he thinks he is talking to bloomin’ idiots, or both. At a rally against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court justice yesterday on Capitol Hill, for example, Blumenthal warned that Kavanaugh’s confirmation would make Trump a monarch. Now that is stupid, but I thought Trump was Hitler already! This guy doesn’t even know how to do...

What if I were to tell you that there is a political issue that galvanizes young voters? An issue that unites libertarians, independents, and African-Americans? An issue with bipartisan power, that works not only in cities, but has demonstrated strength in red states like Kentucky and West Virginia? It’s an issue likely to generate cases to be heard by the Supreme Court in the next decade and one on which the Trump administration’s leading law enforcement official—Attorney General Jeff Sessions—is already on the losing side politically. Given all that, you would think this issue would be a central part of...

Some Senate Democrats are refusing to give President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh the time of day. They have no legitimate reason for the obstruction, according to former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, who served President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. In an op-ed for The Hill, Gray excoriated these politicians for "manufacturing" excuses to ignore Kavanaugh, like their sudden need to see all of his old White House documents. Senate Democrats have no excuse for refusing to meet with President Trump ’s Supreme Court nominee, so they have manufactured one. Democrats say they...

The second-ranking Democrat in the Senate said Tuesday that JudgeBrett Kavanaugh misled senators during his 2006 confirmation hearing, and vowed to make the judge explain himself before winning a seat on the Supreme Court. Sen. Richard Durbin said JudgeKavanaugh in that earlier hearing denied involvement in crafting the Bush White House’s policy on detainees and enemy combatants caught during the war on terror. But Mr. Durbin said he now believes JudgeKavanaugh, who had been in the White House counsel’s office and later served as staff secretary to President George W. Bush, was involved in those decisions. ~snip~ Mr. Grassley said...

Oh, does Larry have some good ideas! Start an organ donation drive for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Keep her alive forever. Worth a listen

The youths argue they have a right to “a climate system capable of sustaining human life,” and that the government had violated the public trust doctrine to the detriment of future generations.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is something of a hero of the left. And unlike her colleague Anthony Kennedy, who recently announced his retirement and gave Donald Trump the chance to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice, Ginsburg says she's going nowhere fast. [snip] Many are breathing a sigh of relief at Ginsburg's assurance that she wants to stay on the Supreme Court. Liberals are afraid that Trump's pick to replace Justice Kennedy, Brett Kavanaugh, will tilt the highest court in the land heavily conservative. If Ginsburg were to give up her seat, the court would only have Barack Obama-appointed Justices...