America’s longest current criminal prosecution is in its 15th year, on its fifth judge, and still has no trial date. The defendants are Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four alleged mass murder co-conspirators. Mohammed is the second person that the government has...
Some of the recent legal challenges to the use of surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security upon Americans have resulted in the revelation of truly terrifying behavior by the government, in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. We now...
This week, President Donald Trump announced that he plans to give away tax dollars without congressional or judicial authorization to his friends and allies whom he believes were mistreated by the Biden administration. Can he legally do...
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punishedunless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” -- Voltaire (1694-1778) Last week, when the Pentagon resumed its attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, the media...
In 200-plus years of interpreting the free speech clause of the First Amendment, the courts have narrowed and expanded its scope. The Supreme Court employed a particularly narrow approach during much of the last century, through two world wars and then the Red Scare...
The Fourth Amendment protects all persons from warrantless government searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects. It requires that warrants be supported by probable cause of crime and specifically describe the place to be searched and the...
In a famous Supreme Court one-liner, reminding the legal community of the finality of the court’s rulings, the late Justice William J. Brennan Jr. is reputed to have said that the Constitution means whatever any five of us say it means. This reflects the basic math...
The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. ... They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be...
Is personal freedom a reality or a myth? Does the government execute the will of the governed or the will of those who finance its officials? Does the Bill of Rights restrain the government? Are the levers of government power pulled by those the governed have elected...
“That God, which ever lives and loves,One God, one law, one element,And one far-off divine eventTo which the whole creation moves.” -- Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) When American colonists were oppressed by British monarchs, the word most frequently uttered in...
War is the most horrific series of events upon which any government can engage. It is systematic, industrialized, indiscriminate killing. It kills innocent adults and little girls. It often ruins the post-war lives of the killers. It is young men violently fighting...
Last week, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to rescind the broadcast licenses of media entities that do not relate events in Iran or Ukraine as the Trump administration would like them to be related. He also attacked The Wall Street...
During the first Trump administration, the FBI quietly spent $5 million on Pegasus, an Israeli-developed software product known generically as zero click. Zero click permits the user to download the contents of another mobile or desktop device without tricking the...
Over the past weekend, some apologists for President Donald Trump’s recently ordered attacks on Iran argued that because Trump's plans call for a quick strike, the attacks do not constitute a war. George Orwell is vindicated yet again. These apologists believe...
When President Donald Trump first announced that he had ordered the Pentagon to attack fishing boats and speedboats on the high seas which he said carried dangerous drugs destined for willing buyers in the United States, many of us who monitor the government for its...
“Freedom has more often been lost in small steps by progressive incrementalism, than it has been by catastrophic upheavals such as violence or war.” -- James Madison (1751-1836) Last week, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana,...
Last fall during the opening of the United Nations in New York City, I recognized the face of a federal officer from his days working in law enforcement in New Jersey and mine as a trial judge. We chatted and I asked him what he was doing. He told me he worked for...
Legal scholars have many lenses through which to examine the Constitution. Lawyers need to master about 150 Supreme Court decisions in order to have a sufficient understanding of the government. But most of what lawyers have studied is theory -- how the Constitution...
Last week, a half-dozen masked and unidentifiable Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed a 37-year-old federal employee, a nurse, by spraying pepper spray into his eyes, pushing him to the ground, stealing his lawfully owned and carried handgun, and then...
In recent days, the government in America has not only failed to protect the freedom of speech, it has attacked it. Like authoritarians throughout history, it has sought to silence the speech it hates and fears. But most authoritarians did not have a Constitution that...
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