Judge Andrew P. Napolitano from Creators Syndicate

Storm Clouds Gathering for 05/16/2013

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Government is bad for personal freedom. That argument is premised upon the truism that everything government does interferes with freedom because it either prohibits or compels. Everything it owns it has taken from others. Much of what it says is divorced from the truth. President Obama, like President George W. Bush, has argued that his first job is to keep America safe, and if he impairs pers ...

Updated: Thu May 16, 2013

Why We Should Mistrust the Government for 05/09/2013

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that "our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule" has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the governm ...

Updated: Thu May 09, 2013

More Holes in the Fourth Amendment for 05/02/2013

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Here they go again. The Obama administration has asked its allies in Congress to introduce legislation that would permit the feds to continue their march through the Fourth Amendment when it comes to obtaining private information about all of us.

The Fourth Amendment, which guarantees the right to be left alone, was written largely in response to legislation Parliament enacted in the col ...

Updated: Thu May 02, 2013

Boston and Freedom for 04/25/2013

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The government's fidelity to the Constitution is never more tested than in a time of crisis. The urge to do something — or to appear to be doing something — is nearly irresistible to those whom we have employed to protect our freedom and to keep us safe. Regrettably, with each passing violent crisis — Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11, Newtown and now the Boston Marathon &m ...

Updated: Thu Apr 25, 2013

Taxation Is Theft for 04/18/2013

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

With a tax code that exceeds 72,000 pages in length and consumes more than six billion person hours per year to determine taxpayers' taxable income, with an IRS that has become a feared law unto itself, and with a government that continues to extract more wealth from every taxpaying American every year, is it any wonder that April 15th is a day of dread in America? Social Security taxes and inc ...

Updated: Thu Apr 18, 2013

Drones, Guns and the President for 04/11/2013

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? How can the president claim the lawful power to kill whomever he wishes and at the same time ask Congress to incapacitate our ability to defend ourselves against those who might seek to kill us?

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul struck a raw nerve in the weak underbelly of the Obama administration last month with his 13-hour filibu ...

Updated: Thu Apr 11, 2013

Drones, Guns and the President for 04/11/2013

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul struck a raw nerve in the weak underbelly of the Obama administration last month with his 13-hour filibu ...

Updated: Thu Apr 11, 2013

When the Government Goes Bankrupt for 04/04/2013

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

What happens when the government goes bankrupt? This question is one that sounds like a hypothetical exercise in a law school classroom from just a few years ago, where it might have been met with some derision. But today, it is a realistic and terrifying inquiry that many who have financial relationships with governments in America will need to make, and it will be answered with the gnashing o ...

Updated: Thu Apr 04, 2013

Hope for the Dead for 03/28/2013

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

What does freedom have to do with rising from the dead?

When America was in its infancy and struggling to find a culture and frustrated at governance from Great Britain, the word most frequently uttered in speeches and pamphlets and letters was not safety or taxes or peace; it was freedom.

Two acts of Parliament broke the bonds with the mother country irreparably. The first was th ...

Updated: Thu Mar 28, 2013

No More Asking for Permission To Speak for 03/21/2013

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

In 1798, when John Adams was president of the United States, the feds enacted four pieces of legislation called the Alien and Sedition Acts. One of these laws made it a federal crime to publish any false, scandalous or malicious writing — even if true — about the president or the federal government, notwithstanding the guarantee of free speech in the First Amendment.

The feds ...

Updated: Thu Mar 21, 2013

What if Nanny Is a Thug? for 03/14/2013

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

What if a dictator in America used the force of law to tell you what to eat? What if the same dictator told you what to drink? What if the dictator told you the sizes of the containers in which you could purchase a lawful beverage? What if the dictator just made up the rules according to his own personal taste? What if the product he regulated was lawful, sold nearly everywhere and consumed by ...

Updated: Thu Mar 14, 2013

The Right to Self-Defense for 03/07/2013

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

In all the noise caused by the Obama administration's direct assault on the right of every person to keep and bear arms, the essence of the issue has been drowned out. The president and his big-government colleagues want you to believe that only the government can keep you free and safe, so to them, the essence of this debate is about obedience to law.

To those who have killed innocents ...

Updated: Thu Mar 07, 2013

Obama's False Alarms for 02/28/2013

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

In an effort to remove the hot-potato issue of excessive government spending from the 2012 presidential campaign, and calling the bluff of congressional Republicans who always seem to favor domestic spending cuts but increased military spending, President Obama suggested the concept of "sequester" in late 2011.

His idea was to reduce the rate of increased spending by 2 percent ...

Updated: Thu Feb 28, 2013

Benedict the Brave for 02/21/2013

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

When Jesus established the papacy, the gospels report that he told St. Peter: "Amen I say to you: You are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." These words are emblazoned in Latin across the front of St. Peter's Basilica. St. Peter's successors have incorporated his name to describe their work, the Petrine ministry, and ...

Updated: Thu Feb 21, 2013

Obama's Secret Court for Killing for 02/14/2013

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

President Obama willingly admits he dispatched CIA agents to kill an American and his teenage son and the son's American friend while they were in a desert in Yemen in 2011. He says he did so because the adult had encouraged folks to wage war on the United States and the children were just "collateral damage." He says further that he'll do this again when he is convinced that killing ...

Updated: Thu Feb 14, 2013

Obama Gives Himself Permission To Kill for 02/07/2013

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

After stonewalling for more than a year federal judges and ordinary citizens who sought the revelation of its secret legal research justifying the presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas — even Americans — claiming the research was so sensitive and so secret that it could not be revealed without serious consequences, the government sent a summary of its legal memos to an ...

Updated: Thu Feb 07, 2013

Immigration and Freedom for 01/31/2013

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

As President Obama and Congress grapple for prominence in the debate over immigration, both have lost sight of the true nature of the issue at hand.

The issue the politicians and bureaucrats would rather avoid is the natural law. The natural law is a term used to refer to human rights that all persons possess by virtue of our humanity. These rights encompass areas of human behavior where ...

Updated: Thu Jan 31, 2013

Guns and the President for 01/24/2013

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Here is an uncomfortable pop quiz: Who has killed more children, Adam Lanza or Barack Obama? We'll hold off on the answer for a few paragraphs while we look at the state of governmental excess — including killing — in America. But you can probably guess the correct answer from the manner in which I have posed the question.

We all know that the sheet anchor of our liberties is ...

Updated: Thu Jan 24, 2013

Guns and the Government for 01/17/2013

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

If you have listened to President Obama and Vice President Biden talk about guns in the past month, you have heard them express a decided commitment to use the powers of the federal government to maintain safety in the United States. You also have heard congressional voices from politicians in both parties condemning violence and promising to do something about it. This sounds very caring and i ...

Updated: Thu Jan 17, 2013

Guns and Freedom for 01/10/2013

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty. It is specifically insulated from governmental interference by the Constitution and has historically been the linchpin of resistance to tyranny. And yet, the progressives in both political parties stand ready to use the coercive power of the government to in ...

Updated: Thu Jan 10, 2013