Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? We pay its taxes, obey its laws and regulations, finance its wars and submit to its surveillance. We are told that all of this is necessary for personal safety, collective prosperity and national...
America has a deadly addiction to war. Since 1950, presidents of both political parties have sent American troops into conflicts across the globe, killed countless people, sacrificed the lives and limbs of American servicemen and women, and wasted trillions of...
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) The US Constitution was ratified to create and to restrain the government. It established boundaries beyond which the government may not venture,...
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."--Voltaire (1694-1778) A government that claims the authority to kill persons after they have been subdued, disarmed, tried, convicted and...
That it is better 100 guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent person should suffer. -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) The hardest decision a government prosecutor may ever face is also one of the most important tests of the rule of law: What do you do when...
Thomas Cromwell was the Lord Chancellor of England for much of the reign of King Henry VIII. He engineered the convictions and executions of many whom Henry wanted out of the way, including his two predecessors in office -- one of whom was St. Thomas More -- and even...
History yields people whose influence extends far beyond their earthly lives. They become teachers to generations they never met, spiritual companions to people whose names they never knew, and reminders that faith is not merely a set of propositions to be accepted...
The freedom of speech and of the press is not a gift bestowed by a president, Congress or a federal agency. It is a natural right of all persons. The First Amendment does not create that right; it prohibits the government from infringing upon it. The ability to think,...
A failed war does not end when the drones stop flying. It creates a new danger: A government that refuses to admit defeat and a president who, having failed abroad, seeks muscular victories elsewhere. The war against Iran is a case study in the limits of military...
The recent suppression of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s torture-tainted confessions at Guantanamo Bay is far more than a victory for a defendant. It is a victory for the Constitution. The United States government today alleges that Mohammed was the mastermind of the Sept....
There is a point in the decline of republics when the problem is no longer that government breaks its own laws. Governments will always behave unlawfully. The deeper problem comes when the constitutional machinery designed to prevent those acts stops functioning --...
When a government agency comes to an internet service provider demanding information about Americans because of what they have said on social media, the provider should discard the demand, close the door or hang up the phone. The government is not entitled to rummage...
"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. … They conferred against the Government the right to be let alone -- most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”-- Justice Louis D....
The war in Iran is unlawful and unconstitutional, but in post-World War II America, it is normal. Here is the backstory. When President Donald Trump decided to begin bombing Iran last June, he did not state a coherent or lawful reason for doing so. His director of...
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is not qualified to be the attorney general of the United States because he has demonstrated a hopeless conflict between the rule of law -- which he has taken an oath to support -- and his sense of personal loyalty to President...
One of the defining failures of modern American government has been the steady erosion of Congress's constitutional authority over war. The Constitution grants Congress -- not the president -- the power to declare war. Congress decides to go to war. The president...
The question recently asked by a federal judge in Miami -- can the president sue an entity in the executive branch of the federal government and benefit from the resolution of that lawsuit? -- seems to beg the question. How could anyone sue an entity he...
Which is better -- to be ruled by one tyrant 3,000 miles away or by 3,000 tyrants one mile away? -- Rev. Mather Byles (1706-1788) Does it really matter if the instrument curtailing liberty is a monarch or a popularly elected legislature? This conundrum, along with the...
Since its inception, the government of the United States has inexorably exceeded its powers under the Constitution. All three branches have been complicit in a consistent pattern of constitutional indifference. Congress has regulated in areas of governance nowhere...
The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, embraces two value sets. The first is natural rights, and the second is limited government. After 250 years, neither value has survived, and the opposite of each currently prevails in America. Thomas Jefferson drafted...
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