The Lichfield Group

This article appeared in the July 26, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

I have known Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts for 25 years. I had the privilege of working with the Mozart-like prodigy at the Justice Department during the Reagan administration.

This article appeared in the July 21, 2005 issue of the Hawaii Reporter.

The customarily unerring U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye stumbled in marshalling a defense of the Akaka Bill to constituent George L. Berish of Honolulu in a letter dated June 13, 2005. The senior Senator from Hawaii mischaracterized the ending of the Monarchy in 1893, the right of revolution, and the Native Hawaiian flowering after annexation in 1898.

This article appeared in the July 19, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

President George W. Bush should embrace India as the key strategic partner of the United States in Asia. President Richard M. Nixon’s opening to China to obtain an ally against the Soviet Union has exhausted its advantages.

This article appeared in the July 18, 2005 issue of the Hawaii Reporter.

Attorney General Mark J. Bennett’s high-voltage polemic against my adamant opposition to the Akaka Bill — “The Akaka Bill is Fair, Just, Long Overdue and Constitutional” — displays an alarming ignorance of Jim Crow, American history, and constitutional law. In the manner of Al Jazeera and Middle East tyrants, Hawaii’s premier legal officer tacitly deplores the democratization of Hawaii under the umbrella of the United States Constitution after the Hawaiian Monarchy was replaced by a republic in 1893. As Goethe warned, nothing is as dangerous as ignorance in action. [The original article that Bennett was responding to was: “New Racism in New Bottles”]

This article appeared in the July 15, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

On the heels of apologizing for its old racism in thwarting anti-lynching laws, the U.S. Senate is poised to initiate a new racism celebrated in the so-called “Akaka Bill.” It would summon into being for the first time a race-based Native Hawaiian sovereignty operating outside the U.S. Constitution. Only persons with at least “one drop” of Native Hawaiian blood would enjoy the right to create the new sovereign entity with its sweeping immunities from federal and state laws.

This article appeared in the July 12, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

The U.S. Supreme Court is too important for mediocrities. The justices chronically write ill-reasoned opinions that sow rather than dispel confusion. Insipid minds incline toward major constitutional blunders.

This article appeared in the July 10, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

Contrary to an insinuation of H.L. Mencken, there is a simple eminent domain answer to the complex dispute over televising the Washington Nationals, and it is right.

This article appeared in the July 6, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s Supreme Court career epitomizes the judicial lawlessness that has regularly stained constitutional law since Chief Justice Earl Warren’s stewardship from 1954-1969. She celebrated standards of interpretation pivoting on discernments unrelated to law or legal education in which judges are no more expert than philosophers, poets, or playwrights. The nation’s maiden female justice also viscerally embraced gender discrimination claims to avenge the authentic prejudice that had blunted her professional ambitions.