Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wrote “The President [of the Galaxy] in particular is very much a figurehead—he wields no real power whatsoever. […] His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.” This week, Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) seemed to be taking the Hitchhiker’s Guide as a guide for government. When asked about the alarming physical and mental decline of President Joe Biden, Goldman suggested that it really does not matter. In responding to a call for Biden’s removal under the 25th Amendment, Goldman suggested that the Republic is safe because it is safely in the hands of people around Biden. It is an argument that flips the 25th Amendment on its head and embraces the idea of a figurehead president. Continue reading “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Government: Rep. Goldman Insists that the Country is Safe in the Hands of Others”
Category: Constitutional Law
President Joe Biden delivered an address from the White House last night on the presidential immunity decision by the Supreme Court. While pledging that he will defend the rule of law, President Biden misrepresented what that law is in the aftermath of Trump v. United States. While we have often discussed false constitutional claims by the President as well as other false statements, an address of this kind is particularly concerning in misleading citizens on the meaning of one of the most important decisions in history.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the Supreme Court’s historic presidential immunity decision. I am not someone who has favored expansive presidential powers. As a Madisonian scholar, I favor Congress in most disputes with presidents. Yet, the reaction to the Court’s decision has been baffling from academics who did not raise a whimper of opposition when President Barack Obama killed an American citizen without a trial or a charge. When former Attorney General Eric Holder announced the “kill list” policy (that included the right to kill any American citizen), he was met with applause, not condemnation. Moreover, even the government conceded before the Supreme Court that official acts did deserve protection from prosecution. The issue was only where to draw that line. The Court found that there was absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial, or private, actions.
I felt that there were good-faith arguments on both sides of this issue. The reaction, however, of politicians and pundits is to again denounce and even threaten the justices. Rage has again replaced reason as commentators misrepresent the opinion and race to the bottom in reckless rhetoric. It is not clear what these paper-bag pundits are more upset about: the fact that the Court ruled in favor of immunity or that the Court again failed to yield to years of harassment and threats from the left. What they fail to understand is that this is precisely the moment that the Court was designed for.
Here is the column: Continue reading “Age of Rage: Critics Unleash Threats and Abuse on the Court Following the Presidential Immunity Decision”
Below is my column in the Hill on the Supreme Court decision on Friday in Fischer v. U.S. to reject hundreds of charges in January 6th cases for the obstruction of legal proceedings. For many cases, that will leave relatively minor offenses like trespass or unlawful entry. It is only the latest blow to efforts to portray the riot as a massive conspiracy to overthrow the government. While portrayed by pundits and press in strictly ideological terms, it actually produced an interesting line up with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson voting with the majority and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voting in dissent.
Here is the column:
The debate last night was chilling for many citizens as President Joe Biden clearly struggled to stay focused and responsive. It appeared to put on display what Special Counsel Robert Hur saw in his interview before concluding that Biden’s loss of mental capacity would make a prosecution difficult. What may be equally troubling for Democrats and the media is a poll that came out just before the debate that shows more swing-state voters see former President Donald Trump rather than President Joe Biden as protecting democracy.Continue reading “Post Poll: More Citizens Trust Trump Over Biden to Protect Democracy”
Below is my column in USA Today on why the opponents of President Joe Biden should make free speech the focus of this election. With the Supreme Court taking an off ramp in Murthy v. Missouri on Internet censorship, the free speech community is left, for now, with the political process to protect free speech. It is a potentially unifying issue for many Americans who are alarmed by the current anti-free speech movement. I have previously written that the Biden Administration has chilling analogies to the Adams Administration in the weaponization of the legal system and the crackdown on free speech. What should most concern Biden is the possibility of another aspect of history repeating itself: a defeat like the one in 1800.
Here is the column: Continue reading “Want to Defeat Joe Biden? Look to the 1800 Election and Make Free Speech the Key Issue in 2024”
Below is my column in The Hill on last week’s cases and the sharp contrast to the handling of the Trump case in Manhattan. Two of these cases hold particular resonance with some of us who criticized Bragg’s prosecution.
Here is the column: Continue reading “The Land that Law Forgot: The Supreme Court and the New York Legal Wasteland”
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage is now released! It is available on Amazon and local bookstores. Absent breaking news, I will do my first television interview tonight on Special Report with Bret Baier (6-7 ET). As always, I am deeply appreciative to everyone who has purchased early copies of the first edition of this work.
Continue reading “The Indispensable Right Is Now Available!”
As the first edition goes out this week, the Wall Street Journal has published its review of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Tunku Varadarajan takes a deep dive into the book and its historical, philosophical, and cultural exploration of this quintessentially American right. I am profoundly grateful for this thorough and positive review of the book.
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage is about to hit the shelves around the country. The pre-ordered copies of the first edition will be mailed in days with a formal release date of June 18th. I wanted to thank everyone who has pre-ordered the book and the generous comments of reviewers.
The book has been 30 years in the making. The book explores our struggle with free speech and why we continue to grapple with the meaning of this core, defining right. It does so in part through the stories of courageous figures who refused to yield to the demands of others to be silent, even at the risk of their own lives. The book seeks to reexamine the essence of this right and how, after a brief moment of clarity at our founding, we abandoned its true foundation as a natural or autonomous right. Many agree with Justice Louis Brandeis that free speech is indispensable but not why it is indispensable. That lack of proper foundation has left the right vulnerable to continual tradeoffs and contractions, particularly in what is now arguably the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history.
Here is an excerpt from the book for those interested in obtaining a copy:
Continue reading “Here is an Excerpt From The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage”
Below is my column in The Hill on the latest calls to protect democracy with distinctly undemocratic measures. Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton insisted that the 2024 election was our D-Day, suggesting that voters would have to fight the GOP like the Nazis in World War II. Clinton previously called on Europe to censor American citizens when Twitter sought to dismantle its censorship program and called her defeat in the 2016 election “illegitimate.” Yet, for many civil libertarians, the “defenders of democracy” are the very threat to democracy going into the 2024 election.
Here is the column: Continue reading “Can Democracy Survive the “Defenders of Democracy”?”
We have been discussing the dubious constitutional basis for President Joe Biden withholding the audio tapes of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur. I have previously written that the claim of privilege makes little sense when the transcript of the interview has already been released. It seems curious that Biden is claiming to be the president “who cannot be heard” in withholding the audio version. It just got wackier as the Justice Department seeks to create a new type of “Deepfake privilege” that would effectively blow away all existing limits on the use of the privilege when it comes to audio or visual records of a president. Continue reading “The Deepfake Privilege? The Justice Department Makes Startling Claim to Withhold the Biden-Hur Audiotape”
Below is a slightly expanded version of my column in the New York Post on the verdict in the Trump trial. The Manhattan case, in my view, was a raw political use of the criminal justice system. It is only the latest example of the use of the justice system for political purposes and harkens back to the Adams Administration at the start of our Republic. I discuss that period in my book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (which is available this month).
Here is the column: Continue reading “The Ghost of John Adams: How the Trump Trial Harkens Back to a Dark Period of American Law”
“Democracy is on the ballot.” That mantra of President Joe Biden and other Democrats has suggested that “this may be our last election” if the Republicans win in 2024. A few of us have noted that the Democrats seem more keen on claiming the mantle of the defenders of democracy than actually practicing it. Democrats have sought to disqualify Donald Trump and dozens of Republicans from ballots; block third party candidates, censor and blacklist of those with opposing views; and weaponize the legal system against their opponents. Most recently, in California, democracy is truly on the ballot and the Democrats are on the wrong side. Continue reading ““Democracy is on the Ballot”: California Democrats Seek to Prevent Voters from Approving New Taxes”
The government often waits until Friday night when it wants to file something controversial in seeking to reduce media coverage and public attention. Special Counsel Jack Smith followed this practice this week in quietly filing a motion to gag former president Donald Trump in his Florida case. Smith took the action after Trump suggested that the warrant used on his Palm Beach home included a provision allowing the use of lethal force. While the provision is standard in such warrants, Trump has portrayed the inclusion of the boilerplate language as a threat to his life and the lives of his family. Nevertheless, I believe that the gag order, like Smith’s past demands, is over-broad and a violation of the free speech rights of the former president. Continue reading “Special Counsel Jack Smith Demands a New Gag on Trump”