Can an idea be dangerous? Can a dangerous idea be expressed? Can the government punish ideas it deems to be dangerous? These are not questions one regularly asks in America because of our rich tradition of protecting the freedom of speech from infringement by the...
When James Madison was a member of Congress in 1791 and charged with drafting the Bill of Rights, he made two grammatical demands. One was that the word "the" precede "freedom of speech" in the First Amendment, and the other was a command in the Ninth Amendment that...
In the last days of East Germany, when government officials detected that their power was unraveling, they ratcheted up enforcement of the nation's reporting laws. The reporting laws made it a felony to know of a crime and fail to report it. It was also a crime to...
Americans need to be aware of the unbridled propensity of federal intelligence agencies to spy on all of us without search warrants as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. These agencies believe that the Fourth Amendment – which protects the...
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." ~ First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution When James Madison set about to draft the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution – he was articulating what lawyers and philosophers...
As the pre-trial hearings in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others who are charged with masterminding the 9/11 attacks proceed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, the government continues to stumble with its own witnesses. In hearings last week,...
Just as a fictional emperor paid his tailors a fortune for clothes that no one could see, and then marched naked in a grand public procession while his subjects roared with laughter, so, too, is President Joe Biden attempting to march clothed with the Constitution he...
When the Trump administration obtained an indictment of Edward Snowden for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, many of us who believe that the Fourth Amendment means what it says were deeply critical of the government, and we remain so today. Snowden is the former...
The Biden administration is killing people, openly in Ukraine and Gaza and secretly around the world. It has continued to use the killing machinery crafted by President George W. Bush, expanded by President Barack Obama and employed by President Donald Trump. These...
When President George W. Bush formulated the concept of an American Devil's Island in Cuba, he did so heedless of the damage to the Constitution his experiment in torture and confinement without end would bring about. Bush made the case that torture and confinement at...
