In 2019, agents of the federal and state governments persuaded judges to issue 99% of all requested intercepts. An intercept is any type of government surveillance — telephone, text message, email, even in-person. These are intercepts that theoretically are based on probable cause of crime, as is required by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
The 2019 numbers — which the government released as we were all watching the end of the presidential election campaign — are staggering. The feds, and local and state police in America engaged in 27,431,687 intercepts on 777,840 people. They arrested. . .
During the darkest days of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, the British-born-turned-American political philosopher, wrote of his adopted country, "These are the times that try men's souls." He was referring to the hard choices that were facing the colonists.
History is filled with hard choices. They are often made hard by fear — fear of making the wrong choice, fear of chaos, fear of loss.
Paine argued that a true patriot could love his country and despise its government because he understood that government negates liberty, and liberty — not government — is. . .
Since the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the determination of President Donald Trump to fill her Supreme Court seat before Election Day with the traditionalist Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the concept of court packing has reared its head. The phrase "court packing" is a derogatory reference to legislation that alters the number of seats on the Supreme Court to alter its perceived ideological makeup.
The origins of modern court packing are from the depression era when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to expand the court from nine to 15 by adding a new justice for. . .
What if we all start a return to normal life now that the government says the worst of the pandemic is behind us? What if we all make conscious choices to move about as before or to stay sheltered, based on our own exercise of our own informed free wills and not on the basis of governmental edicts? What if each of us decides if it is healthier to breathe in fresh air from outside or recycled air from under a mask?
What if massive numbers of us make these decisions on our own?
What if the governors' edicts. . .
"If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned." — Justice George Sutherland (1862 to 1942)
Late last week, the Supreme Court of Michigan — the state's highest and final court — invalidated the pandemic executive orders of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as well as the statute on which she based those orders. The opinion was a sweeping victory for personal liberty in a free society and was exceptionally gratifying for those of us who believe that the U.S. and state. . .
"The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people." — Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980)
With President Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — is back in the news. Barrett expressed constitutional misgivings about Obamacare 10 years ago when she was a professor at Notre Dame Law School, and some folks who oppose her nomination have argued that should she be confirmed in the next month, she should not hear the Nov. 10 arguments. . .
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg served on the Supreme Court for 27 years until her death late last week. Her tenacious advocacy for the rights of those she perceived as legally disadvantaged, combined with her outsized intellect, moved the vector of the court's direction as few justices have in history. She championed the rights of women and members of the LGBTQ community.
Justice Ginsburg enjoyed a famous public friendship with the late Justice Antonin Scalia. She was a liberal Democrat. He was a conservative Republican. She believed in the "living Constitution." He believed that the meaning of. . .
A federal court in Pennsylvania this week has become the first in the nation to rule that the lockdown, social distancing and essential workplace regulations imposed by Gov. Tom Wolf are unconstitutional.
The judge found that the governor's orders were so inconsistent, so bereft of any rational basis or scientific model, and so ignorant of the Constitution the governor swore to uphold that he invalidated all of them.
Here is the backstory.
The whole purpose of the Constitution has been to establish a federal government and, at the same time, to limit it. Some of the limitations are. . .
I was appalled at the allegations against President Donald Trump leveled in a recent article in The Atlantic. The article claimed that the president referred to American soldiers killed in World War I and buried in France as "losers" and "suckers." It also offered that the president is disdainful in general of military personnel who have been captured by the enemy or killed in combat.
The article cited four anonymous sources, each of whom claimed to be physically close enough to the president to have heard him make these awful statements. Fox News and CNN have. . .
All states have laws that prohibit assault and destruction of others' property. States and the federal government also have laws that prohibit bystanders from encouraging others to engage in violence. The latter is known as incitement.
When violence has erupted in American streets between groups supporting President Donald Trump and those opposed to him — and he encouraged his supporters to be "much tougher" than the other side and to "hit back" — did his use of intemperate words incite violence?
The use of federal and state incitement laws has a long and sordid history. . .