Andrew P. Napolitano

Unchecked government spending has consequences for all

Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who thinks you're crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you realize that the money wasn't yours and you owe it back.

February 14, 2018

A lawful means for foreign surveillance on U.S. soil has ordinary Americans in its sights

We remain embroiled in a debate over the nature and extent of our own government's spying on us. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted in 1978 as a response to the unlawful government spying of the Watergate era, was a lawful means for the government to engage in foreign surveillance on U.S. soil, but it has morphed into unchecked government spying on ordinary Americans.

February 7, 2018

‘Foreign intelligence surveillance’ has become surveillance of all Americans

I have argued for a few weeks now that House Intelligence Committee members have committed misconduct in office by concealing evidence of spying abuses by the National Security Agency and the FBI. They did this by sitting on a four-page memo that summarizes the abuse of raw intelligence data while Congress was debating a massive expansion of FISA.

January 31, 2018

Why the House Intelligence Committee must reveal what it knows about NSA and FBI intelligence abuses

During the past three weeks, Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law vast new powers for the NSA and the FBI to spy on innocent Americans and selectively to pass on to law enforcement the fruits of that spying.

January 24, 2018

Did Donald Trump change his mind about domestic spying?

Late last week, Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, repeated his public observations that members of the intelligence community — particularly the CIA, the NSA and the intelligence division of the FBI — are not trustworthy with the nation's intelligence secrets. Because he has a security clearance at the "top secret" level and knows how others who have access to secrets have used and abused them, his allegations are extraordinary.

January 17, 2018

To Trump: Preserve, protect, defend the Constitution as written

Hidden beneath the controversy stirred up last week by the publication of a book called "Fire and Fury," a highly critical insider's view of the Trump White House that the president has not only denounced on national television but also tried to prevent from being published and distributed, are the efforts of the Trump administration and congressional leadership to bypass the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

January 10, 2018

2018 Fantasy league game, office-pool style

A multiple-choice, current events challenge.

January 3, 2018

Merry Christmas in our hearts and words

What if Christmas is a core value of belief in a personal God who lived among us and His freely given promise of eternal salvation that no believer should reject or apologize for?

December 27, 2017

By procuring Trump transition team’s emails, the FBI can find lies in every inconsistency

Within hours of his victory in last year's presidential election, Donald Trump dispatched his lawyers to establish a nonprofit corporation to manage his transition from private life to the presidency. This was done pursuant to a federal statute that provides for taxpayer-funded assistance to the newly elected — but not yet inaugurated — president. The statutory term for the corporation is the presidential transition team, or PTT.

December 20, 2017

Denying rights to Akayed Ullah would set dangerous precedent

For the second time in two months, someone who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State has plotted to kill innocents in New York City and has executed his plot.

December 13, 2017

With Michael Flynn, Donald Trump could be in hot water

This is a tale of FBI power misused and presidential trust misplaced.

December 6, 2017

The longer the Russia probe drags on, the greater Donald Trump’s jeopardy

In August, when President Trump's lawyers persuaded him to refrain from attacking independent counsel Robert Mueller publicly — he had many times called Mr. Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt" — they also told him that the investigation was not aimed at him and not to worry because it would be over by Thanksgiving.

November 29, 2017

Government continues to tax, borrow and spend because parties don’t recognize limits

Should the government borrow against the future? Should it guarantee higher taxes for your children and grandchildren in return for lower taxes for you?

November 22, 2017

Investigation of Hillary Clinton and her shortcomings not yet complete

The Department of Justice will soon commence an investigation to determine whether there should be an investigation (you read that nonsense correctly) of a scandal involving the Clinton Foundation and a company called Uranium One. It appears that FBI decisions made during the time that Hillary Clinton was being investigated for espionage will also be investigated to see whether there should be an investigation to determine whether she was properly investigated. (Again, you read that nonsense correctly.)

November 15, 2017

Government steals liberty and doesn’t give safety

What if the government doesn't really deliver for us? What if its failures to protect our lives, liberties and property are glaring? What if nothing changes after these failures?

November 8, 2017

Russia collusion inquiry employs witness-squeezing

Earlier this week, the government revealed that a grand jury sitting in Washington, D.C., indicted a former Trump presidential campaign chairman and his former deputy and business partner for numerous felonies.

November 1, 2017

‘Universal jurisdiction’ is a convenient fiction

I am in Switzerland this week interacting with and lecturing to students and faculty at the University of Zurich. The subject of our work is the U.S. Constitution and its protections of personal liberty.

October 25, 2017

Obamacare subsidies are problematic

Late last week, President Trump signed an executive order directing the secretaries of the Treasury and health and human services to cease making payments to health care insurance companies in behalf of the more than 6 million Americans who qualify for these payments under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

October 18, 2017

NFL protest may be in bounds of the law

Sometimes the public expression of unwanted ideas reaches directly into our living rooms. When President Trump attacked a half-dozen or so professional football players who, instead of standing during the traditional playing of the national anthem prior to football games, "took a knee" by kneeling on one or both of their knees during the anthem, hundreds more players on national television took a knee in defiance of the president.

October 11, 2017

Government must keep the nation safe

Here we go again. The United States has been rattled to the core by an unspeakable act of evil perpetrated by a hater of humanity. A quiet, wealthy loner rented a hotel suite in Las Vegas, armed it with shooting platforms and automatic weapons, knocked out two of the windows, and shot at innocents 32 floors below. Fifty-nine people were murdered, and 527 were injured.

October 4, 2017