Author: Andrew P. Napolitano

“No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” . – Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution The clash in American history between liberty and safety is as old as the republic itself. As far back as 1798, notwithstanding the lofty goals and individualistic values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the same generation — in some cases the same human beings — that wrote in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished speech critical … Continue reading →

The post The Regime Hates Due Process appeared first on LewRockwell.

Earlier this week, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress took the FBI to task for its failure to be transparent. In the House, it was apparently necessary to serve a subpoena on an FBI agent to obtain what members of Congress want to see; and in the Senate, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee accused the FBI itself of lawbreaking. Here is the back story. Ever since FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 he was recommending that the Department of Justice not seek charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a result of her failure … Continue reading →

The post What’s the FBI Hiding? appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Sept. 2, the FBI released a lengthy explanation of its investigation of Hillary Clinton and a summary of the evidence amassed against her. It also released a summary of Clinton’s July FBI interrogation. The interrogation was in some respects standard and in others very troubling. It was standard in that she was confronted with emails she had sent or received and was asked whether she recalled them, and her judgment about them was challenged. The FBI was looking for gross negligence in her behavior about securing state secrets. The failure to secure state secrets that have been entrusted to … Continue reading →

The post FBI Internal Fighting Over Hillary appeared first on LewRockwell.

When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked last week if she has misled the American people on the issue of her failure to safeguard state secrets contained in her emails, she told my Fox News colleague, Chris Wallace, that the FBI had exonerated her. When pressed by Wallace, she argued that FBI Director James Comey said that her answers to the American people were truthful. After Clinton recognized that even her strongest supporters doubted her statement, she attempted to walk it back. In doing so, she repeatedly lied again, but offered as an excuse a bizarre claim that … Continue reading →

The post Hillary Short-Circuited? appeared first on LewRockwell.

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks — the courageous international organization dedicated to governmental transparency — exposed hundreds of internal emails circulated among senior staff of the Democratic National Committee during the past 18 months. At a time when Democratic Party officials were publicly professing neutrality during the party’s presidential primaries, the DNC’s internal emails showed a pattern of distinct bias toward the candidacy of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a marked prejudice toward the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Some of the emails were raw in their tone, and some could fairly be characterized … Continue reading →

The post Lessons From the Deep State appeared first on LewRockwell.

This summer, we have all witnessed the heavy hand of government intervening in the freedom of speech, as the behavior of the Secret Service at both the Republican convention in Cleveland and the Democratic convention in Philadelphia was troubling and unconstitutional. Though the First Amendment was originally written only to restrain Congress (“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”), it is now uniformly interpreted to restrict all government in America from abridging the freedom of speech. The reason this freedom is referred to as “the” freedom of speech is to reflect the belief of the Framers … Continue reading →

The post The Secret Service Hates Free Speech appeared first on LewRockwell.

What if the folks who run the Department of Political Justice recently were told that the republic would suffer if Hillary Clinton were indicted for espionage because Donald Trump might succeed Barack Obama in the presidency? What if espionage is the failure to safeguard state secrets and the evidence that Clinton failed to safeguard them is unambiguous and overwhelming? What if President Obama never really liked his former rival whom he appointed as his secretary of state? What if he had no real interest in seeing her succeed him because he and his wife simply could never trust her? What … Continue reading →

The post What If the Fix Was In? appeared first on LewRockwell.

When FBI Director James Comey publicly revealed his recommendation to the Department of Justice last week that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not be prosecuted for espionage, he unleashed a firestorm of criticism from those who believe that Clinton was judged by different standards from those used to judge others when deciding whether to bring a case to a grand jury. The FBI investigation had a bizarre ending to it. FBI recommendations are never made public as this one was. Attorney General Loretta Lynch had been compromised by her politically disastrous but legally consequential meeting out of the view … Continue reading →

The post Hillary Is a Congenital Liar appeared first on LewRockwell.

Is it worth impairing the reputation of the FBI and the Department of Justice to save Hillary Clinton from a deserved criminal prosecution by playing word games? What has become of the rule of law — no one is beneath its protections or above its requirements — when the American public can witness a game of political musical chairs orchestrated by Bill Clinton at an airport in a bizarre ruse to remove the criminal investigation of his wife from those legally responsible for making decisions about it? How hairsplitting can the FBI be in acknowledging “extreme carelessness” while denying “gross … Continue reading →

The post Guilty as Not Charged appeared first on LewRockwell.

The 800-plus-page report of the House Select Committee on Benghazi was released earlier this week. It slams former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her willful indifference to her obligation to repel military-style attacks on American interests and personnel at the U.S. Consulate and a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. She particularly failed to save the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues, all under her care and control while she was secretary of state. The report also slams Clinton for her repeated lies about the cause of the attacks. After she told her daughter … Continue reading →

The post Whitewashing Hillary appeared first on LewRockwell.

The people in the government who want to control our personal choices are the enemies of freedom. And the enemies of freedom can be very clever and seductive. Last week, these folks, manifesting their lust to keep us dependent upon the government by rejecting the natural right to self-defense, coined a clever phrase: “No fly, no buy.” It sounds rational, yet it rejects core American values. The phrase was pounded home to average Americans during a one-sided 15-hour televised marathon on the floor of the Senate orchestrated by the gun control crowd. The essence of the argument was that stricter … Continue reading →

The post No Fly, No Buy? appeared first on LewRockwell.

While Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are battling in their final round in the Democratic primaries and Donald Trump is arguing that Clinton should be in prison for failing to safeguard state secrets while she was secretary of state, the same FBI that is diligently investigating her is quietly and perniciously seeking to cut more holes in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. That amendment — which requires the government to obtain a search warrant issued by a judge based upon some evidence of criminal wrongdoing, called probable cause, before the government can search persons, houses, papers or effects — … Continue reading →

The post Wake Up, America appeared first on LewRockwell.

Late last week, the inspector general of the State Department completed a yearlong investigation into the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server for all of her official government email as secretary of state. The investigation was launched when information technology officials at the State Department under Secretary of State John Kerry learned that Clinton paid an aide to migrate her public and secret State Department email streams away from their secured government venues and onto her own, non-secure server, which was stored in her home. The migration of the secret email stream most likely constituted the crime … Continue reading →

The post Hillary’s on the Ropes appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” – Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) Last week, this column chronicled the startling admissions of lying by White House senior adviser Ben Rhodes. Rhodes readily acknowledged to The New York Times that he lied to the public and to members of Congress during the negotiations that produced the recent Iranian nuclear deal so as to temper the “irrational” fear that some senators and representatives had of the mullahs who run the government in Iran. … Continue reading →

The post The Contagion of Government Lying appeared first on LewRockwell.

Here is a quick pop quiz. What happens if we lie to the government? What happens if the government lies to us? Does it matter who does the lying? Last year, the Obama administration negotiated an agreement with the government of Iran permitting Iran to obtain certain materials for the construction of nuclear facilities. It also permitted the release of tens of billions of dollars in Iranian assets that had been held in U.S. banks and that the courts had frozen, and it lifted trade sanctions. In exchange, certain inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities can occur under certain circumstances. During … Continue reading →

The post Government Is a Nest of Liars appeared first on LewRockwell.