Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is siding with many Democrats in criticizing conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia over comments he made about African American student achievement during oral arguments earlier this week of the affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas. "I thought his remarks were very tough,"Trump said of Scalia in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that aired Sunday. "They were very, very tough to a certain community," the Republican front-runner continued. "I thought it was very tough to the African-American community." Scalia's remarks, made Wednesday, drew accusations of racism from Democrats and liberal activists who...

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the charismatic personal-injury lawyer who would be president -- or, perhaps, vice president -- has done wonders for the image of the lawsuit industry. In more than a decade as his state's most talented trial lawyer, Edwards won an estimated $150 million in jury awards and settlements for powerless people who had been horribly injured by reckless and negligent (and, perhaps, not so negligent) corporations and doctors. He cared passionately for his clients, believed deeply in his cases, and was apparently untainted by the ethical sleaze exhibited by some of the lawyers who have...

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the charismatic personal-injury lawyer who would be president -- or, perhaps, vice president -- has done wonders for the image of the lawsuit industry. In more than a decade as his state's most talented trial lawyer, Edwards won an estimated $150 million in jury awards and settlements for powerless people who had been horribly injured by reckless and negligent (and, perhaps, not so negligent) corporations and doctors. He cared passionately for his clients, believed deeply in his cases, and was apparently untainted by the ethical sleaze exhibited by some of the lawyers who have...

The Court's Gone Too Far in Purging Religion From the Square Clowns like Roy Moore would have a harder time rallying support if the justices displayed more common sense. by Stuart Taylor Jr. .... One way to get elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, it appears, is to thumb your nose at the U.S. Supreme Court. That's how an obscure circuit judge named Roy S. Moore got the job in November 2000. Now Moore has made an even bigger splash by clownishly defying (until recently) federal court orders requiring removal of the 5,280-pound granite monument to the...

We should be making it easier, not harder, for intelligence agencies to protect us A civil-libertarian backlash against the USA PATRIOT Act is gathering steam. More than 140 cities and communities in 27 states have passed resolutions opposing it, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU itself has intensified its nonstop barrage, filing a lawsuit on July 30 challenging the constitutionality of one of the act's most far-reaching provisions, and airing TV ads that warn of government spies secretly searching homes. Some librarians say they are destroying records to prevent the feds from tracking patrons' book borrowing...

UnPATRIOTic By Stuart Taylor Jr., National Journal A civil-libertarian backlash against the USA PATRIOT Act is gathering steam. More than 140 cities and communities in 27 states have passed resolutions opposing it, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU itself has intensified its nonstop barrage, filing a lawsuit on July 30 challenging the constitutionality of one of the act's most far-reaching provisions, and airing TV ads that warn of government spies secretly searching homes. Some librarians say they are destroying records to prevent the feds from tracking patrons' book borrowing and Internet browsing. Even Congress, which overwhelmingly...

Did the Bush administration deliberately mislead the nation and the world when President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and others so confidently suggested, as their casus belli, that Saddam Hussein had hundreds of tons of banned chemical and biological weapons and a program to build a nuclear bomb? What if Saddam destroyed most, or all, of his weapons of mass destruction years ago? That suspicion is taking root in much of the world. I think it is wrong. But I also fear that the administration may have done grave damage to its own credibility abroad by overstating the quality...