ArcaMax

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive."
--Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

The case of the Gitmo plea agreement keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.

A few weeks ago, we learned that a plea agreement had been entered into by way of a signed contract between the retired general in the Pentagon who is...Read more

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

--First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

When James Madison agreed to be the scrivener at the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787, he could not have known that just four years later he'd be the chair of the House of Representatives ...Read more

It is always dangerous to human freedom and due process when politics interferes with criminal prosecutions. Yet, present-day America is replete with tawdry examples of this.

The recent exposures of the political machinations of the Chief Justice of the United States in the presidential immunity case is just one sad example of the highest judge...Read more

In 1966, two famous Russian literary dissidents, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, were tried and convicted on charges of disseminating propaganda against the Soviet state. The two were authors and humorists who published satire abroad that mocked Soviet leaders for failure to comply with the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which guaranteed the ...Read more

"Those who have sown the wind shall reap the whirlwind."

-- Hosea 8:7

The federal antipathy to compliance with the Constitution is well known and well documented. Presidents have declared war in contravention of the constitutional command that only Congress may do so. Congress itself has enacted legislation in areas that the drafters of...Read more

"America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy ...

She might become the dictatress of the world,

But she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit."

-- John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)

In the middle of his term as Secretary of State, the future president John Quincy Adams addressed a joint session of Congress. What ...Read more

"Every move you make

And every vow you break

Every smile you fake

Every claim you stake

I'll be watching you."

-- "Every Breath You Take," song by The Police

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to privacy. Like other amendments in the Bill of Rights, it doesn't create the right; it limits government ...Read more

Among the lesser-known holes in the Constitution cut by the Patriot Act of 2001 was the destruction of the "wall" between federal law enforcement and federal spies. The wall was erected in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which statutorily limited all federal domestic spying to that which was authorized by the Foreign ...Read more

In the months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating them on Osama bin Ladin. Then, after it murdered bin Ladin, the government decided that the true mastermind was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

By the time of bin Ladin's death, Mohammed had already been tortured by CIA agents for three years at various black ...Read more

Sometime before he withdrew from the presidential race, President Joe Biden secretly reaffirmed his own self-willed and self-created authority to kill persons in other countries, so long as the CIA and its military counterparts have "near certainty" that the target of the homicide is a member of a terrorist organization. That standard was ...Read more

"Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction."

-- Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

In December 1776, just six months after the Declaration of Independence had been signed and a year and a half into the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine sensed a desperation throughout the colonies. It prompted him to write a candid and now iconic ...Read more

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion,

and only one person were of the contrary opinion,

Mankind would be no more justified

In silencing that one person,

Than he, if he had the power,

Would be justified in silencing mankind."

-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

The world is filled with self-evident truths -- truisms -- that ...Read more

In his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 called the right to be left alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. He was referring to the right to be left alone from the government -- a right that today we call privacy.

Olmstead was involved in ...Read more