On the heels of his worst week in office, during which his crude comments about race were widely perceived as defending racism and hatred -- comments that sent some of his natural domestic allies fleeing -- President Trump could not bring himself to articulate a mea culpa. Published August 23, 2017
Last weekend, serious violence broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia, when a group of white supremacist demonstrators was confronted by a group of folks who were there to condemn the message the demonstrators had come to advance. The message was critical of the government for removing a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public place. Published August 16, 2017
Earlier this week, the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) told the mayor of Chicago that it would cease funding grants to the Chicago Police Department that had been approved in the Obama administration because Chicago city officials were not cooperating with federal immigration officials. Published August 9, 2017
What if the federal government captures in real time the contents of every telephone call, email and text message and all the fiber-optic data generated by every person and entity in the United States 24/7/365? What if this mass surveillance was never authorized by any federal law? Published August 2, 2017
During the past two weeks, President Trump has made no secret of his unhappiness at the management of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Actually, Mr. Trump seems most agitated at the growing parts of the Justice Department that are not under Mr. Sessions' management. Published July 26, 2017
Last week, The New York Times revealed that in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son; Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and chief confidant; Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's then-campaign chief executive; and others met secretly at Trump Tower with a former Russian prosecutor and a former Soviet counterintelligence agent to discuss what negative (most likely computer-generated) information the Russians might have to offer them about Hillary Clinton. Published July 19, 2017
Earlier this week, after nearly uniform rejections by judges all across the country, President Trump achieved a court victory in the persistent challenges to his most recent executive order restricting the immigration of people into the United States from six predominately Muslim countries. Published June 28, 2017
I was surprised last weekend when one of President Trump's lawyers told my colleague Chris Wallace twice on "Fox News Sunday" that the president is being investigated by the FBI and then told him twice that he is not. This same lawyer repeated the "not being investigated" argument on a half-dozen other Sunday shows but did not repeat the "is being investigated" remark. Published June 21, 2017
Last week, when former FBI Director James Comey gave his long-awaited public testimony about his apparently rough-and-tumble relationship with President Trump, he painted a bleak picture. The essence of Mr. Comey's testimony was that the president asked him to drop an investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn -- Mr. Trump's former national security adviser -- and then asked him to do so in return for keeping his job as FBI director and then fired him for not obeying his order. Published June 14, 2017
Last weekend, the FBI arrested an employee of a corporation in Augusta, Ga., that had a contract with the National Security Agency (NSA) and charged her with espionage. Espionage occurs when someone who has been entrusted to safeguard state secrets fails to do so. In this case, the government alleges that the person to whom state secrets had been entrusted is 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner, who had a top-secret national security clearance. Published June 7, 2017
After the Watergate era had ended and Jimmy Carter was in the White House and the Senate's Church Committee had attempted to grasp the full extent of lawless government surveillance in America during the LBJ and Nixon years, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA declared that it provided the sole source for federal surveillance in America for intelligence purposes. Published May 31, 2017
The bad news for President Trump keeps coming his way, notwithstanding a generally bravura performance on the foreign stage this past week in Riyadh, Jerusalem and Vatican City. Yet while he is overseas, his colleagues here in the United States have been advising him to hire criminal defense counsel, and he has apparently begun that process. Can the president be charged with obstructing justice when he asks that federal investigations of his friends be shut down? Published May 24, 2017
In a period of seven days this month, President Trump fired James Comey as director of the FBI and was accused of sharing top-secret intelligence data with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador to the United States, the latter a known Russian spy. Published May 17, 2017
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives crafted a partisan compromise bill that endorsed and reinforced the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. This was done notwithstanding claims to the contrary by President Trump and the House Republican leadership, who want us to believe that this bill, if it becomes law, will effectively repeal and replace Obamacare. Published May 10, 2017
Late last week, President Trump told CBS News that domestic surveillance of American citizens should be the "No. 1" topic of inquiry until we can find out "what the hell is going on" with it. Also late last week, the National Security Agency (NSA) -- the federal government's 60,000-person-strong domestic spying agency -- announced that it would voluntarily hold back on its more aggressive uses of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Published May 3, 2017
Last weekend, The New York Times published a long piece about the effect the FBI had on the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign. As we all know, Donald Trump won a comfortable victory in the Electoral College while falling about 3 million votes behind Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. Published April 26, 2017
What if our belief in self-government is a belief in a myth? What if the election of one political party over the other to control Congress changes only appearances? Published April 19, 2017
The history of the world is the history of violence. I had planned to write this column about the most critical act of violence in human history and its superhuman aftermath -- the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Published April 12, 2017
The issue of federal government surveillance of Americans has largely occupied Washington politicians and the media since President Trump first accused his predecessor's administration of spying on him while he and his colleagues worked at Trump Tower in New York City during the presidential election campaign and during the presidential transition. Published April 5, 2017
The political fiasco that unfolded last week as President Trump and the Republican House leadership failed to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, is attributable as much to the failure of politics as it is to the failure of politicians to understand the constitutional role of the federal government. Published March 29, 2017
