In an effort to draw attention away from the intelligence failures that permitted the attacks of 9/11 and create the impression that it was doing something -- anything -- to avoid a repeat, the federal government tampered seriously with freedoms expressly guaranteed in the Constitution. Its principal target was the right to privacy, which is protected in the Fourth Amendment.
At President George W. Bush's urging, Congress passed the Patriot Act in October 2001. This 315-page statute passed the House of Representatives with no debate, and there was very limited debate in the Senate. I have asked many. . .
What if the government's goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents and diplomats and bureaucrats behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls Congress?
What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day?
What if the leadership of both major political parties believes that our rights are not natural to. . .
The tragedy in Paris last Friday has regrettably been employed as a catalyst for renewed calls by governments in western Europe and even in the United States for more curtailment of personal liberties. Those who accept the trade of liberty for safety have argued in favor of less liberty. They want government to have more authority to intrude upon the daily lives of more innocent people. Their targets are the freedoms of speech and travel and the right to privacy. Their goal is public safety, but their thinking is flawed.
The clash between liberty and safety is as old as. . .
Earlier this week, a federal appeals court in New Orleans upheld an injunction issued by a federal district court in Texas against the federal government, thereby preventing it from implementing President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration. Critics had argued and two federal courts have now agreed that the orders effectively circumvented federal law and were essentially unconstitutional.
Though the injunction on its face restrains officials in the Department of Homeland Security, it is really a restraint on the president himself. Here is the back story.
President Obama has long wished to overhaul the nation's immigration. . .
The self-inflicted wounds of Hillary Rodham Clinton just keep manifesting themselves. She has two serious issues that have arisen in the past week; one is political and the other is legal. Both have deception at their root.
Her political problem is one of credibility. We know from her emails that she informed her daughter Chelsea and the then-prime minister of Egypt within 12 hours of the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, that he had been killed in Benghazi by al-Qaida. We know from the public record that the Obama administration'. . .
The New York Times' Maureen Dowd captured the moment last weekend when she referred to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as "the midwife to chaos" in Libya. Dowd apparently came to that conclusion after watching Clinton bobbing and weaving and admitting and denying as she was confronted with the partial record of her failures and obfuscations as secretary of state, particularly with respect to Libya.
The public record is fairly well-known. In March 2011, President Barack Obama declared war on Libya. He did this at the urging of Clinton, who wanted to overthrow Libyan strongman. . .
At long last, Hillary Clinton testifies on the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and her emails as secretary of state. Here are some suggested questions. Although these suggestions are based on the public record, we need to assume that the members of the House Benghazi Committee have seen far more than the public has. I have framed the questions in traditional cross-examination style, though I doubt that the politicians on the committee will have the self-discipline to adhere to it.
The theory of cross-examination -- particularly of a high-profile, intelligent, belligerent or ruthless witness -- is for. . .
Why is Hillary Clinton so unhappy? According to her, when she and her husband left the White House, they were dead broke. Yet they left with a truckload of valuable furniture, dinnerware and flatware that was the property of the federal government, for which they were never prosecuted.
They also left with contracts for lectures and speeches worth between $20 million and $30 million in the ensuing years. And they have done quite well financially. According to The Washington Post, between the time Bill Clinton left office in 2001 and January 2013, when Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of. . .
While the FBI continued to analyze the emails Hillary Clinton thought she deleted and her advisers pressed her to hire a Republican criminal defense attorney in Washington, a madman used a lawfully purchased handgun to kill a professor and eight students at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon. Looking to change the subject away from her emails, Clinton was quick to pounce.
She who has ripped into Republicans for seeking political gain from the four American deaths in Benghazi, Libya, now seeks her own political gain from the dozens of murdered children and young adults in Newtown, Connecticut, and Roseburg. . .
What if things are not always as they seem?
What if the enormously popular Pope Francis is popular precisely because he is less Catholic than his two immediate predecessors? What if his theory of his stewardship of Catholicism is to broaden the base of the Church by weakening her doctrine so as to attract more people by making it temporally easier to be Catholic?
What if the pope really believes that rather than resist modernism -- with its here today and gone tomorrow fancies -- the Church should give in to it and even become a part of it so as to. . .