When the IRS announced two weeks ago that it would not enforce a section of federal law commonly called the Johnson Amendment, many clerics rejoiced. The Johnson Amendment -- named for its author, then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson -- strikes a bargain with charities. You...
Last week, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., invalidated a plea agreement for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been incarcerated at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 20 years. Mohammed has been charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder in...
“Those bastards didn’t send back my article! Now I have to re-type the whole piece before I can submit it somewhere else!” I growled standing by the apartment cluster mailbox on a sultry afternoon of July 3, 1979. “Did they just throw away or steal the stamps from the...
“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy ...She might become the dictatress of the world,But she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.”-- John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) In the middle of his term as Secretary of State, the future president...
We have seen this before. A foreign entity attacks American persons or property and the government warns that its sleeper cells have infiltrated the United States and it is somehow necessary to expand the powers of the government and shrink protections for civil...
RPI Director Daniel McAdams joins RPI Board Member Judge Andrew Napolitano's "Judging Freedom" program to discuss how Congress skirts its Constitutional obligations while exceeding its Constitutional authority. They also discuss the riots in Los Angeles and the use of...
A recent Supreme Court oral argument about the liability of the FBI for invading and terrorizing the wrong home has brought to mind the dark and dangerous history of law enforcement. The practice of British agents rummaging through the private possessions on the...
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 tariffs President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday are massive in size and scope, Indeed, some early analysis indicates Trump has raised the United States average tariff rate to higher than did the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 that contributed to the...
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...
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