Can the President Disrupt Free Speech?

While the country's attention was drawn to the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which purports to designate the ideology of antifa as a "domestic terrorist organization" and directs...

read more

A Trumpian Headache

President Donald Trump's use of the U.S. military to kill persons on speed boats in international waters, or in territorial waters claimed by other sovereign nations – all 1,500 miles from the U.S. – has posed grave issues of due process. The Constitution's guarantee...

read more

When Presidents Kill

During the past six weeks, President Donald Trump has ordered U.S. troops to attack and destroy four speed boats in the Caribbean Sea, 1,500 miles from the United States. The president revealed that the attacks were conducted without warning, were intended not to stop...

read more

Who Will Protect Us From the Protectors?

In the same week in which President Donald Trump announced that he was federalizing 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers and dispatching them to the streets of Portland, he quietly signed a Presidential National Security Memorandum that purports to federalize policing....

read more

Free Speech and Its Discontents

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... " – First Amendment to the U.S....

read more

Taking the Constitution Seriously

Last week, the President of the United States did not take the Constitution seriously. He ordered the murders of 11 people who were riding in a speedboat in the Caribbean Sea around 1,300 miles from the U.S. Afterward he said he did so because he believed that they...

read more

The Feds Defend Their Tortures Again

While the public's attention this summer has been drawn to masked ICE agents arresting folks without warrants, presidentially imposed sales taxes on goods emanating from foreign countries that have been invalidated by three federal courts, and the fruitless Kabuki...

read more

The Right to Be Left Alone

What if the federal government captures in real time the contents of every telephone call, email and text message and all the fiber-optic data generated by every person and entity in the United States 24/7? What if this mass surveillance was never authorized by any...

read more

No Due Process at Gitmo

Last week, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., invalidated a plea agreement for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been incarcerated at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 20 years. Mohammed has been charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder in...

read more

Searching for Monsters

"America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy ... She might become the dictatress of the world, But she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit." ~ John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) In the middle of his term as Secretary of State, the future president...

read more