Among the lesser-known holes in the Constitution cut by the Patriot Act of 2001 was the destruction of the “wall” between federal law enforcement and federal spies. The wall was erected in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which statutorily limited...
Last week the FBI arrested a Wisconsin state judge as she was walking into the courthouse where she works. The feds had alerted the media -- but not the judge -- to this event, and they arrived and recorded the arrest. The standard and preferred practice when...
The most profound and ominous aspect of the controversy surrounding the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García to El Salvador is that the Trump administration has figured out a way to circumvent the right of habeas corpus, not just for foreigners but also for the...
“No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of [the Constitution’s] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.”-- Ex Parte Milligan, Supreme Court of the United States, 1866....
The pundits are having a difficult time understanding how President Trump would fulfill his expressed desire to serve a third term as president. Some of them have fallen back on the possibility that he is joking and just trolling his critics. Others have come up with...
The U.S. Constitution was crafted in 1787 both to establish a new central government and to limit it. Some of the limitations are direct, some are subtle, and some are hidden. The chief instrument of limitation is the separation of powers, the brainchild of James...
The US Department of Justice said Thursday that its recently created “Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism” will be heading to four US cities as part of the Trump administration’s broad crackdown on college protests critical of Israel. The DOJ said the...
I have often thought that after Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson was our worst president. By worst is meant least faithful to the Constitution and most destructive of personal liberty. With the exception of Lincoln’s dictatorship -- during which the federal government...
The taxing power in the federal government resides in the Congress. The Constitution states that Congress has the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts” of the federal government. Indeed, in order to emphasize the location of...
The skies over New Jersey have been littered with strange flying objects during the past two weeks; and the feds are either hiding the truth from terrified folks on the ground or scratching their collective heads along with the rest of us. Since early December, there...
Disguising its power grabs in the self-righteous fervor of national security, the Deep State has mastered the art of the bait-and-switch. It works like this: first, the government foments fear about some crisis or threat to national security, then they capitalize on...
This is how it begins. This is how it always begins, justified in the name of national security. Mass roundups. Raids. Indefinite detentions in concentration camps. Martial law. The erosion of habeas corpus protections. The suspension of the Constitution, at...
Can the president fight any war he wishes? Can Congress fund any war it chooses? Are there constitutional and legal requirements that must first be met before war is waged? These questions should be addressed in a national debate over the U.S. military involvement in...
In 1791, when Congressman James Madison was drafting the first 10 amendments to the Constitution -- which would become known as the Bill of Rights -- he insisted that the most prominent amendment among them restrain the government from interfering with the freedom of...
With the end of the Biden Administration in sight, liberal pundits seem to be striving to prove that the only difference between a lawbreaker and a law-abiding citizen is the ability to get away with the crime. Popular figures on the left from Michael...
“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion,and only one person were of the contrary opinion,Mankind would be no more justifiedIn silencing that one person,Than he, if he had the power,Would be justified in silencing mankind.”-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) The...
In his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 called the right to be left alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. He was referring to the right to be left alone from the...
Can the president fight any war he wishes? Can Congress fund any war it chooses? Are there constitutional and legal requirements that must first be met before war is waged? Can the United States legally attack an ally? These questions should be front and center in a...
A recent column in The Economist magazine asking if America is dictator-proof got me to thinking if our constitutional guarantees are secure. Stated differently: Can the custodians of our constitutional norms be trusted to restrain a deliberate attempt to ignore,...
In the last days of East Germany, when government officials detected that their power was unraveling, they ratcheted up enforcement of the nation’s reporting laws. The reporting laws made it a felony to know of a crime and fail to report it. It was also a crime to...
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