Judge’s Opinions

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. . .

  Congressman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has invited me to the House of Representatives to watch Pope Francis address a joint session of Congress. This generous Methodist congressman has invited your traditionalist Roman Catholic columnist and cable TV guy to this grand event. I am going with joy because the pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth, and his presence in Congress is historically unique. But within me is fear and trembling over what he might say.
The papacy is an office created personally by Our Lord. Its occupants are direct descendants of St. Peter. Its role and authorities. . .

The bad news has continued to cascade onto the Hillary Clinton for President campaign, and none of it has anything to do with Clinton's opinions on issues. It all is about her fitness for office.
Since Labor Day, we have learned that the folks into whose hands Clinton reposed her computer server for safe keeping do not believe it has been wiped clean of all emails, as her lawyer told a federal judge it was. That means the 33,000 emails she thought she destroyed probably still could be recovered. What will they reveal?
And we learned earlier. . .

Shortly before the Labor Day weekend, a federal judge in Kentucky ordered the Rowan County clerk incarcerated for violating his orders. Five days later, he released her.
The judge found that the clerk, Kim Davis, interfered with the ability of same-sex couples in her county to marry by refusing to issue them applications for marriage licenses. Davis argued that she was following her conscience, which is grounded in a well-known Christian antipathy to same-sex marriages, which, in turn, is protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Here is the backstory.
Davis is the clerk. . .

The tone of the debate over the nation's immigration laws has taken an ugly turn as some office-seekers offer solutions to problems that don't exist.
The natural rights of all persons consist of areas of human behavior for which we do not need and will not accept the need for a government permission slip.
We all expect that the government will leave us alone when we think, speak, publish, worship, defend ourselves, enter our homes, choose our mates or travel. The list of natural rights is endless.
We expect this not because we are Americans. . .

What if former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years?
What if, while she was secretary of state, she ran two secret wars, one in Libya and one in Syria? What if there already were wars in each of those countries, so she used those wars as covers for her own?
What if President Obama gave permission for her to do this? What if the president lacks the legal authority to authorize anyone to fight secret wars? What if she obtained the consent of a dozen members of Congress from. . .

While the scandal surrounding the emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton during her time as U.S. secretary of state continues to grow, Clinton has resorted to laughing it off. This past weekend she told an audience of Iowa Democrats that she loves her Snapchat account because the messages automatically disappear. No one in the audience laughed.
Clinton admits deleting 30,000 government emails from her time in office. She claims they were personal, and that because they were also on a personal server, she was free to destroy them. Yet, federal law defines emails used during the course. . .

The dust-up between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over presidential fidelity to the Constitution -- particularly the Fourth Amendment -- was the most illuminating two minutes of the Republican debate last week.
It is a well-regarded historical truism that the Fourth Amendment was written by victims of government snooping, the 1770s version. The Framers wrote it to assure that the new federal government could never do to Americans what the king had done to the colonists.
What did the king do? He dispatched British agents and soldiers into the colonists' homes and businesses ostensibly. . .

The recent broadcast of videotapes taken of persons employed at Planned Parenthood -- the prolific and notorious abortion provider -- has brought the issue of abortion to the national consciousness again and front and center to the Republican presidential primary campaign. The tapes were made secretly by a pro-life group determined to show to the world the dark side of Planned Parenthood's use of federal funds.
What the world saw was terrifying and damning. The tapes are difficult to watch, just as any discussion of human slaughter is difficult to watch. If you have seen these tapes, you witnessed. . .

In a column I wrote in early July, based on research by my colleagues and my own analysis of government documents and eyewitness statements, I argued that in 2011 and 2012 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waged a secret war on the governments of Libya and Syria, with the approval of President Obama and the consent of congressional leadership from both parties and in both houses of Congress.
I did err in that column with respect to an arms dealer named Marc Turi. I regret the error and apologize for it. I wrote that Turi sold arms to Qatar. . .