Judge’s Opinions

​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 have been between 3,000 and 5,000 reports of large drones -- some about the size of a pickup truck. They have three or four arms, at the ends of which are very bright lights.

​The drone I saw over the northwest tip of the state appeared to come toward me and . . .

During the course of an FBI written response to a Freedom of Information Act request asking about the trade names and suppliers of surveillance software the FBI had purchased, the government has yet again quietly acknowledged its antipathy to constitutional provisions that all of its employees have sworn to uphold.

​Since we are dealing with software used to spy on Americans in the U.S. and abroad, the constitutional right being transgressed is the right to privacy.

​This is the ancient natural right to be left alone, which the Supreme Court took 175 years to recognize as being protected by. . .

​My initial reaction to the issuance of a full pardon by President Joe Biden to his son Hunter was emotional. What father wouldn’t pardon his own son, if he could?

​I suspect that the president has harbored these paternal thoughts even while he denied numerous times that he was planning on doing so. We have come to expect lying in politicians. When the president denied that he planned to pardon his son, he had every reason to believe that he’d be a candidate for reelection -- and he wanted his son’s known sordid behavior off the. . .

​“Government requires make-believe. Make believe that the king is divine, make believe that he can do no wrong or make believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Make believe that the people have a voice or make believe that the representatives of the people are the people. Make believe that governors are the servants of the people. Make believe that all men are created equal or make believe that they are not.”

​-- Edmund S. Morgan (1916-2013)

What if the government. . .

The war in Ukraine is an American war for which the United States government should be ashamed and blamed.

​It was initiated by President Joe Biden and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, both of whom advised Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that if he rejected a peace treaty that his own government had freely negotiated and agreed to in 2022 with Russian negotiators, Ukraine could join NATO. The treaty was more than 100 pages in length, each page of which had been initialed by both sides, and its essence accepted by the Kremlin and by Kyiv -- until Biden. . .

​Here’s a pop quiz: When can an Army colonel overrule the Secretary of Defense? It happened last week for probably the first time in modern history. The short answer is: Even in the military, the Secretary of Defense cannot change the rules and procedures for criminal prosecutions and tell military judges how to try cases.

​Here is the backstory.

​For years, the feds told us that Osama bin Laden was the 9/11 mastermind. Then, after they murdered bin Laden in his home in Pakistan in 2011, they decided that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the real mastermind and they. . .

What if you were allowed to vote only because it didn’t make a difference? What if no matter how you voted, the elites always got their way? What if the concept of one person/one vote was just a fiction created by the government to induce your compliance?

​What if democracy as it has come to exist in America today is dangerous to personal freedom? What if our so-called democracy erodes the people’s understanding of natural rights and the reasons for government and instead turns political campaigns into beauty contests? What if American democracy allows the government. . .

My family and friends are angry with me because I won’t tell them for whom I plan to vote for president.

​I have not voted for the Republican or Democrat for president since 1984, when I happily voted for Ronald Reagan. Since those days, the Democrats have gravitated to principles of big government that would make FDR blush, and the Republicans have abandoned all principles.

​I will give the Democrats credit. They do not believe that the Constitution restrains the federal government. They say so, and they act upon it. They believe that the Congress is. . .

​Can the president fight any war he wishes? Can Congress fund any war it chooses? Are there constitutional and legal requirements that must first be met before war is waged?

​These questions should be addressed in a national debate over the U.S. military involvement in Ukraine and Israel. Sadly, there has been no debate. The media are mouthing what the CIA is telling them, Congress is in lock-step, and only a few websites and podcasts -- my own, “Judging Freedom” on YouTube, among them -- are challenging the government’s reckless, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional wars.

​The Supreme Court has. . .

In 1791, when Congressman James Madison was drafting the first 10 amendments to the Constitution -- which would become known as the Bill of Rights -- he insisted that the most prominent amendment among them restrain the government from interfering with the freedom of speech. After various versions of the First Amendment had been drafted and debated, the committee that he chaired settled on the iconic language: “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.”

​Madison insisted upon referring to speech as “the” freedom of speech, not for linguistic or stylistic reasons, but to. . .