Judge’s Opinions

1) In 2018,
a. the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives.
b. the Republicans will retain control of the Senate.
c. President Donald Trump will provoke the use of the 25th Amendment by his Cabinet to remove him temporarily from office.
d. the key issue in the congressional races will be whether or not to impeach President Trump.
2) At the end of 2018,
a. more American troops will be deployed around the world than are today.
b. the United States will be directly involved in a land war in North Korea.
c. the United States will. . .

Within hours of his victory in last year's presidential election, Donald Trump dispatched his lawyers to establish a nonprofit corporation to manage his transition from private life to the presidency. This was done pursuant to a federal statute that provides for taxpayer-funded assistance to the newly elected — but not yet inaugurated — president. The statutory term for the corporation is the presidential transition team, or PTT.
In addition to paying the PTT's bills, the General Services Administration, which manages all nonmilitary federal property, provided the PTT with government computers, software and a computer service. . .

For the second time in two months, someone who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State has plotted to kill innocents in New York City and has executed his plot.
According to police, at the height of the Monday morning rush hour this week, in an underground pedestrian walkway that I have used many times, in the middle of Manhattan, a permanent legal resident of the United States named Akayed Ullah detonated a bomb he had strapped to his torso in an effort to kill fellow commuters and disrupt massively life in New York.
The bomb was inartfully constructed, and. . .

This is a tale of FBI power misused and presidential trust misplaced.
Last week, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's confidant on matters pertaining to national security from June 2015 to February 2017 and his short-lived national security adviser in the White House, pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington, D.C., to a single count of lying to the FBI. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Flynn, who had faced nearly 60 years in federal prison had he been convicted of charges related to all the matters about which there is said to. . .

In August, when President Donald Trump's lawyers persuaded him to refrain from attacking independent counsel Robert Mueller publicly — he had many times called Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt" — they also told him that the investigation was not aimed at him and not to worry because it would be over by Thanksgiving.
These are the same lawyers who revealed a fissure in the strategy of the president's legal team. On one side are presidential lawyers who want to cooperate fully with Mueller because they are convinced that the president has nothing. . .

Should the government borrow against the future? Should it guarantee higher taxes for your children and grandchildren in return for lower taxes for you?
If government's moral legitimacy depends on the consent of the governed, as Thomas Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence, can the federal government morally compel those who haven't consented to its financial profligacy — because they are not yet born — to pay higher taxes?
These questions are at the base of the debate — such as it is — in Congress these days over the so-called Republican tax reform. . .

What if the government doesn't really deliver for us? What if its failures to protect our lives, liberties and property are glaring? What if nothing changes after these failures?
What if the National Security Agency — the federal government's domestic spying apparatus — has convinced Congress that it needs to cut constitutional corners in order to spy on as many people in America as possible? What if Congress has bought that argument and passed a statute that put a secret court between the NSA and its appetite for all electronically transmitted data in America? What if. . .

Earlier this week, the government revealed that a grand jury sitting in Washington, D.C., indicted a former Trump presidential campaign chairman and his former deputy and business partner for numerous felonies.
Both were accused of working as foreign agents and failing to report that status to the federal government, using shell corporations to launder income and obstruction of justice by lying to the federal government.
The financial crimes are alleged to have occurred from 2008 to 2014, and the obstruction charges from 2014 to 2017. At the same time it announced the above, the government revealed that a low. . .

I am in Switzerland this week interacting with and lecturing to students and faculty at the University of Zurich. The subject of our work is the U.S. Constitution and its protections of personal liberty.
In most countries, government has begrudgingly granted snippets of personal liberty to keep those who are demanding it at bay. Throughout history, kings and other tyrants have, from time to time, given in to pressures from folks to recognize their natural rights. These instances of "power granting liberty," as the practice has come to be known, usually have come about to avoid further. . .

Late last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the secretaries of the treasury and health and human services to cease making payments to health care insurance companies in behalf of the more than 6 million Americans who qualify for these payments under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Obamacare is the signature legislation of former President Barack Obama, enacted in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012. Its stated goal was to use the engine of the federal government to make health insurance available and affordable to everyone in America. . .