Judge’s Opinions

"The constitutionally guaranteed 'freedom to be intellectually ... diverse or even contrary,' and the 'right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order,' encompass the freedom to express publicly one's opinions about our flag, including those opinions which are defiant or contemptuous."
— Supreme Court of the United States in Street v. New York (1969)
Sometimes the public expression of unwanted ideas reaches directly into our living rooms. When President Donald Trump attacked a half-dozen or so professional football players who, instead of standing during the traditional. . .

Here we go again. The United States has been rattled to the core by an unspeakable act of evil perpetrated by a hater of humanity. A quiet, wealthy loner rented a hotel suite in Las Vegas, armed it with shooting platforms and automatic weapons, knocked out two of the windows, and shot at innocents 32 floors below. Fifty-nine people were murdered, and 527 were injured.
The killer used rifles that he purchased legally and altered illegally. He effectively transformed several rifles that emit one round per trigger pull and present the next round in the barrel for immediate use. . .

The weird odyssey of President Donald Trump's travel bans continues. The original ban, signed as an executive order Jan. 27, barred absolutely all immigrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The countries had actually been chosen by the State Department of former President Barack Obama. Obama never signed a ban, but Trump did.
The first travel ban never took effect, as the federal courts in Brooklyn, Seattle and Honolulu in which it was challenged by people from the affected countries who had visas to enter the United States enjoined it almost immediately. When the Department of Justice. . .

The Donald Trump I know is a smart guy who often thinks a few steps ahead of those whose will he is trying to bend. But I lately wonder whether he grasps the gravity of the legal peril that is beginning to show up around him. In the past week, we learned of an unfiltered public confession of frustration and weakness among his lawyers and we learned that his former chief confidant and campaign manager is about to be indicted. This is very bad news for President Trump.
Here is the back story.
Trump has hired two experienced Washington criminal. . .

Like many Americans during the past three weeks, I've been bombarded by news about the destructive power of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida. The stories are of misery, death and destruction.
The misery, death and destruction are acutely difficult to accept because they have been visited upon innocents. I say that knowledgeable of the ancient argument that our personal and collective sinfulness has merited our pain. Yet that raises this question: Does anyone really deserve personal ruination because of personal sin, particularly from a God whose Son said he came to call sinners and. . .

Earlier this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that in six months, the Department of Justice will begin the long process for deportation proceedings against 800,000 young people who came to America as babies and young children in the care of their parents and others because those entries into this country were and remain unlawful.
When President Barack Obama signed numerous executive orders attempting to set forth the conditions under which illegally immigrated adults whose children were born here could lawfully remain here, he was challenged in federal court and he lost. Sessions believes that the government would lose. . .

Amid the bad news this summer of racial tensions in Charlottesville and biblical-like floods in Houston and preening saber rattling between Pyongyang and Washington, a dangerous below-the-radar trend has been developing about which all who believe that the Constitution means what it says should be concerned. It is the reckless influence upon local law enforcement coming from the Trump administration.
Here is the back story.
When the states joined the union, they gave certain powers to the federal government, and they kept others to themselves.
The powers surrendered are articulated in the Constitution, and the 10th Amendment. . .

On the heels of his worst week in office, during which his crude comments about race were widely perceived as defending racism and hatred — comments that sent some of his natural domestic allies fleeing — President Donald Trump could not bring himself to articulate a mea culpa.
Instead, he purported to defend as "some very fine people" the monsters who shouted "Jews will not replace us" and "blood and soil" (a virulent Nazi slogan calling for lands where only Aryans may live) as they clashed with those who rejected their messages in Charlottesville. . .

Last weekend, serious violence broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia, when a group of white supremacist demonstrators was confronted by a group of folks who were there to condemn the message the demonstrators had come to advance. The message was critical of the government for removing a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public place.
For some, Lee is associated with the military defense of slavery. For others, he is associated with the military defense of the right of states to leave the union — a union they voluntarily joined. For the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, the removal. . .

Earlier this week, the Trump Department of Justice told the mayor of Chicago that it would cease funding grants to the Chicago Police Department that had been approved in the Obama administration because Chicago city officials were not cooperating with federal immigration officials.
The DOJ contended that Chicago officials were contributing to lawlessness by refusing to inform the feds of the whereabouts of undocumented foreign-born people, thereby creating what the feds derisively call a "sanctuary city," and Chicago officials have argued that their police officers and clerical folks are not obligated to work for the feds.
Who. . .