Free Republic

Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey is renewing his push to expand the U.S. Supreme Court by adding four seats, less than a day after President Biden announced his support for reforming the high court. Speaking in front of the Court building Thursday, the Democratic senator urged Congress to pass the Judiciary Act, a proposal that would create a 13-justice bench...

Justice Elena Kagan on Thursday defended the code of conduct the Supreme Court created last year, but conceded there needs to be a way to enforce the rules for it to be more effective. “I think that the rules that we put out are good ones,” Kagan said at a judicial conference in Sacramento. “I think that the thing that can be criticized is, you know, rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them. And this one, this set of rules does not.” ... Kagan’s criticism of the court on Thursday was not limited to its new code of conduct....

(The Epoch Times)—President Joe Biden said in a July 24 speech from the Oval Office that he plans to call for Supreme Court reform in his final stretch as America’s commander-in-chief. President Biden made the remarks after explaining his decision not to seek reelection and laying out his plans for his final six months in office. “Over the next six months, I’ll be focused on doing my job as president,” he said, highlighting key goals such as boosting economic growth, lowering inflation, tightening gun control, and safeguarding the planet from what he described as a “climate crisis.” “And I’m going...

Joe Biden directed Department of Homeland Security boss Alexandro Mayorkas to assemble an “independent security review” of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. The inclusion of Obama DHS boss Janet Napolitano ensures that this review will be anything but independent. Napolitano made her public debut in the 1991 campaign to keep Clarence Thomas off the U.S. Supreme Court. Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexually harassing her and Napolitano, then with a Phoenix law firm, represented Hill in the matter. In the confirmation proceedings, Hill’s witness Susan Hoerchner, “suddenly developed amnesia,” about parts of her story that contradicted...

The United States Supreme Court on Monday ordered the state of New York to respond to a lawsuit filed by the state of Missouri by this Wednesday, according to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. Bailey filed the lawsuit on July 3, and argued that the prosecution of former President Donald Trump in his hush money case, along with the court's gag orders, damaged Missourians' right to hear him speak freely ahead of the election. The lawsuit requests that the Supreme Court rule that New York illegally interfered with the presidential election, and postpone any sentencing in the court case until...

Rick Santorum’s Catholic faith is an obvious centerpiece of his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, and it is rare for him to speak without referencing his religious beliefs. It is also rare, however, to hear him speak about his particular church, St. Catherine of Siena, which he and his family have belonged to for at least a decade. Even his 2005 manifesto on his personal faith and politics, It Takes a Family, did not mention the church. I was curious to learn more about it, so last Friday morning, I attended a 9 a.m. Mass there. St. Catherine is...

President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans. He is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

President Joe Biden is seriously considering publicly endorsing major reforms at the Supreme Court, a move that would make him the first sitting president in generations to back seismic changes to the way the nation’s highest court operates, according to two sources familiar with the deliberations. Chief among the changes Biden is planning to publicly back are term limits for the nine justices, who currently serve lifetime appointments. The president is also said to be preparing to throw his support behind an ethics code for the court that would contain an enforcement mechanism, which was notably absent from the code...

On July 1, 2024 the Supreme Court ruled U.S. presidents have immunity for official acts with President Donald Trump at the center of the case. In his concurrence in the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas made the argument that Special Counsel appointments could broadly be unconstitutional, but especially if they are not appointed by Congress. "It is difficult to see how the Special Counsel has an office 'established by Law,' as required by the Constitution. When the Attorney General appointed the Special Counsel, he did not identify any statute that clearly creates such an office," Clarence wrote. "None of the...

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a 156-year-old ban on at-home distilling is unconstitutional, siding with a group that advocates for legalizing the ability of people to produce spirits like whiskey and bourbon for their personal consumption. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump in Fort Worth, on Wednesday agreed with, opens new tab the Hobby Distillers Association's lawyers that the longstanding ban exceeded Congress's taxing power and ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause.

Republican chairs of House committees will send letters to agency heads including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to ask for their reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision last week in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturning the Chevron doctrine, which gave deference to federal agencies in writing regulations. In a news release, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said, “This week, House Republican Committees are sending letters to their corresponding federal agencies to demand the review of various overreaching regulations in our fight to free the American people from the power-hungry administrative state. Agencies can’t be allowed to run free without...

I'm telling you that Barrett has decided she's a politician, not a Justice...' Tech companies are once again colluding with Democrats to push disinformation and censor legitimate conservative opinions, this time with the imprimatur of legitimacy conferred by the U.S. Supreme Court that allows them to do so more shamelessly and aggressively than ever. Today’s censorship is being made possible by the letters A, C and B—as in Justice Amy Coney Barrett. While the court’s two other centrists, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, are equally culpable (along with its leftist bloc) in allowing the atrocity that is...

The Salt Lake Tribune is throwing a fit over the U.S. Supreme Court stripping the ungodly regulatory power of unelected bureaucrats while picking a fight with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for daring to support the move. “Utah politicians are wrong to say the end of Chevron is a boost for liberty,” The Tribune editorial board complained in a whiny July 7 screed targeting Lee and other Utah Republicans who celebrated the Court’s ruling. Under the so-called “Chevron Doctrine,” deference was given to federal agencies' subjective interpretations of ambiguous laws to enforce burdensome regulations on American businesses, which was upended by...

The incident sparked criticism of Sotomayor's Second Amendment positions during her tenure on the high court, including one decision where she co-signed a dissent that said the Constitution does not protect "a private right of armed self-defense." In that case, McDonald v. Chicago, decided in 2010, then-Justice Steven Breyer dissented from the majority which ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own a gun against the regulations of state and local governments. "In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense," Breyer wrote. Parker Thayer of...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is moving forward with her attempt to impeach two members of the Supreme Court: Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. On Wednesday, July 10, the New York congresswoman, 34, formally presented her argument for moving to oust both Justice Alito, 74, and Justice Thomas, 76, introducing articles of impeachment against both.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and a group of House progressives on Wednesday introduced articles of impeachment against conservative Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Why it matters: It's a long-shot element of a broader legislative push by House Democrats to rein in the court after a spate of decisions in June that incensed liberals. Driving the news: The resolutions accuse Thomas and Alito of refusing to recuse from cases in which they had a "personal bias or prejudice concerning a party," as well as "failure to disclose" income, gifts and other financial info. The articles targeting Thomas include...

Despite all the recent talk about “our democracy,” the United States today is not a democracy. This is easy to understand. The concept of democracy says that the people governed are the government. In a large civilization, this means not a direct democracy but a representative democracy, which sees the people’s elected representatives make the laws. Today, though, most of the “laws” that govern the people do not come from their elected representatives. Instead, executive branch agencies promulgate them contrary to Article I of the US Constitution. That provides “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress...

The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday in Fischer v. U.S. struck down one of the most common charges against January 6 defendants. “Obstruction of an official proceeding” had been used in hundreds of cases, and those convictions are now invalid. But the biggest impact of the decision may occur elsewhere. For years, calling January 6 an “insurrection” has been a litmus test for press, pundits and politicians. Members of Congress such as Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) claimed a conspiracy of “armed and organized insurrectionists.” The claim is legally absurd but politically advantageous. It now seems like the insurrection increasingly looks more...

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) are calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to determine if Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas violated federal ethics and tax laws. In the letter sent to Garland last week, the senators point to news reports revealing that Thomas did not disclose luxury trips or gifts over the past 20 years. Whitehouse and Wyden suggested that Thomas could be in violation of the Ethics in Government Act, which criminalizes a public servant for “knowingly and willfully” failing to file or report gifts and income from outside sources. “The...

A deputy US Marshal shot a would-be carjacker who pulled a gun on him while he was guarding Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s home in Washington, DC, authorities said. Two deputies were parked outside Sotomayor’s home in northwest DC on July 5 when Kentrell Flowers, 18, allegedly walked up to one of their cars around 1:15 a.m. and pointed a gun at the bodyguard, the US Marshals Service told The Post.