Author: Andrew P. Napolitano

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” — Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution In 2008, the Supreme Court laid to rest the once-simmering dispute over the meaning of the Second Amendment. In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court articulated the modern existence of the ancient personal right to keep and bear arms as a pre-political right. A pre-political right is one that pre-exists the political order that was created to protect it. Thus, the court held, … Continue reading →

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1) The Republican nominee for president in 2016 will be Donald Trump by unanimous acclamation of the Republican National Convention. Ted Cruz by unanimous acclamation of the convention. Mitt Romney after a contested, bitter, brokered convention. none of the above. 2) The Democratic nominee for president in 2016 will be Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders. Al Gore after a contested, bitter, brokered Democratic National Convention. not Hillary Clinton, because she will be indicted by a federal grand jury for various crimes. 3) The voters will elect in a landslide whoever promises to give them the biggest piece of the federal pie. … Continue reading →

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As if to promise a Christmas present, Congress has just finished approving the finances of the federal government for the next few months. Santa Claus would have done a better job. During early 2016, Congress will pay the government’s bills by borrowing money from individual and institutional lenders. Those folks will lend the feds all the money the feds need because the law requires the feds to pay them back. The “pay them back” ideology is a very curious one. It is true that the full faith and credit of the federal government guarantees the payment of the government’s debts. … Continue reading →

The post Not Even the Government Should Discourage Us appeared first on LewRockwell.

While the country has been fixated on Donald Trump’s tormenting his Republican primary opponents and deeply concerned about the government’s efforts to identify any confederates in the San Bernardino, California, killings, a team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents continues to examine Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state in order to determine whether she committed any crimes and, if so, whether there is sufficient evidence to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. What began as an innocent Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, a D.C.-based public advocacy group promoting transparency in the executive branch, has now … Continue reading →

The post Is Hillary Headed for the Big House? appeared first on LewRockwell.

If you were looking for a needle in a haystack, simple logic would tell you that the smaller the haystack the likelier you are to find the needle. Except for the government. Since Edward Snowden revealed the federal government’s unlawful and unconstitutional use of federal statutes to justify spying on all in America all the time, including the members of Congress who unwittingly wrote and passed the statutes, I have been arguing that the Fourth Amendment prohibits all domestic spying, except that which has been authorized by a search warrant issued by a judge. The same amendment also requires that … Continue reading →

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In an effort to draw attention away from the intelligence failures that permitted the attacks of 9/11 and create the impression that it was doing something — anything — to avoid a repeat, the federal government tampered seriously with freedoms expressly guaranteed in the Constitution. Its principal target was the right to privacy, which is protected in the Fourth Amendment. At President George W. Bush’s urging, Congress passed the Patriot Act in October 2001. This 315-page statute passed the House of Representatives with no debate, and there was very limited debate in the Senate. I have asked many members of … Continue reading →

The post The Spies Who Ruin Us appeared first on LewRockwell.

What if the government’s goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents and diplomats and bureaucrats behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls Congress? What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day? What if the leadership of both major political parties believes that our rights are not natural to our humanity … Continue reading →

The post What To Be Thankful for appeared first on LewRockwell.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court in New Orleans upheld an injunction issued by a federal district court in Texas against the federal government, thereby preventing it from implementing President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration. Critics had argued and two federal courts have now agreed that the orders effectively circumvented federal law and were essentially unconstitutional. Though the injunction on its face restrains officials in the Department of Homeland Security, it is really a restraint on the president himself. Here is the back story. President Obama has long wished to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws to make it … Continue reading →

The post Is the President a Dictator? appeared first on LewRockwell.

While the FBI continued to analyze the emails Hillary Clinton thought she deleted and her advisers pressed her to hire a Republican criminal defense attorney in Washington, a madman used a lawfully purchased handgun to kill a professor and eight students at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon. Looking to change the subject away from her emails, Clinton was quick to pounce. She who has ripped into Republicans for seeking political gain from the four American deaths in Benghazi, Libya, now seeks her own political gain from the dozens of murdered children and young adults in Newtown, Connecticut, and Roseburg. … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 have evolved … Continue reading →

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 this week that … Continue reading →

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 of Rowan County, … Continue reading →

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, but because we are persons … Continue reading →

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 both … Continue reading →