Judge’s Opinions

Last week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that members of the intelligence community -- part of the deep state, the unseen government within the government that does not change with elections -- now have acquired so much data on everyone in America that they can selectively reveal it to reward their friends and harm their foes. Their principal foe today is the president of the United States.
Liberty is rarely lost overnight. The wall of tyranny often begins with benign building blocks of safety -- each one lying on top of a predecessor -- eventually collectively constituting an impediment to the exercise of free. . .

Over the past weekend, Trump administration officials offered harsh criticisms of the judicial interference with the enforcement of the president's immigration order. The Jan. 27 order suspended the immigration privileges of all refugees from Syria indefinitely and all immigrants from seven designated countries for 90 days.
After a federal district judge in Seattle enjoined the federal government from enforcing the executive order and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction, President Donald Trump's folks pounced.
They argued that we have an imperial judiciary that thinks it has the final say on public. . .

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives crafted a partisan compromise bill that endorsed and reinforced the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. This was done notwithstanding claims to the contrary by President Donald Trump and the House Republican leadership, who want us to believe that this bill, if it becomes law, will effectively repeal and replace Obamacare.
Obamacare is a stool with four problematic legs. The constitutional leg is the premise that the federal government has the lawful power to regulate the delivery of health care. The legal leg is the premise that the federal government is obliged to. . .

Last week, in a public courtroom in the federal courthouse in Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota -- after suing President Donald Trump, alleging injury caused by his executive order that suspended the immigration of all people from seven foreign countries -- asked a federal judge to compel the president and all those who work for him to cease enforcing the order immediately. After a brief emergency oral argument, the judge signed a temporary restraining order, which barred the enforcement of the president's order everywhere in the United States.
The president reacted with anger, referring to the judge as. . .

This past weekend, we all saw massive public outrage in major cities throughout the country. It was directed at the Jan. 27 issuance of an executive order, signed by President Donald Trump, addressing immigration. With the executive order, the president ordered the suspension of entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, as well as anyone from Syria for an indefinite period and anyone from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days.
The crowds of protesters, which included members of Congress, called the president a tyrant. The president argued that he was lawfully protecting. . .

Within four hours of becoming president of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to limit immediately the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in ways that are revolutionary.
With the stroke of a pen, the president assaulted the heart of the law that was the domestic centerpiece of his predecessor's administration. How did this happen? How can a U.S. president, who took an oath to enforce the laws faithfully, gut one of them merely because he disagrees with it?
Here is the back story.
When Obamacare went through Congress. . .

On Jan. 3, outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order directing the National Security Agency -- America's 60,000-person-strong domestic spying apparatus -- to make available raw spying data to all other federal intelligence agencies, which then can pass it on to their counterparts in foreign countries and in the 50 states upon request. She did so, she claimed, for administrative convenience. Yet in doing this, she violated basic constitutional principles that were erected centuries ago to prevent just what she did.
Here is the back story.
In the aftermath of former President Richard Nixon'. . .

The criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton is back front and center now that the FBI has released proof that her failure to safeguard state secrets caused the secrets to fall into the hands of foreign governments, some of which wish the United States ill.
Even though the case against her -- which was closed and then reopened and then closed again -- is old news and she obviously is no longer a candidate to become president of the United States and has been staying below the radar for the past two months, recent developments have regenerated the case.
Here is the back. . .

Over the New Year's weekend, President Barack Obama's chief policy adviser and closest strategist, Valerie Jarrett, told a talk show host that her boss would have a happy legacy because there was an absence of scandal in his administration. When first I heard this preposterous claim, I thought I had misheard it. Yet it is apparently true that President Obama and his team somehow can overlook recent history and behave as if events with which we are all familiar never happened.
Here is the back story.
When Obama became president in 2009 and enjoyed significant Democratic. . .

1) In 2017, President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress will
    a. repeal Obamacare entirely.
    b. squabble among themselves and make only cosmetic changes to Obamacare.
    c. retain the core of Obamacare because President Trump will have a change of heart.
    d. repeal Obamacare and replace it with a combined soft free market and soft socialist version.
       
2) At the end of 2017
    a. more American troops will be deployed around the world than are today.
 . . .