The Lichfield Group

This article appeared in the August 23, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

Through deafening silence, President George W. Bush is squandering an opportunity to influence the United States Supreme Court beyond the simple appointment Judge John Roberts to fill the seat of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The President should be employing the White House as a bully pulpit to persuade the public that the Supreme Court should interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning as mandated by the rule of law and separation of powers, not to achieve particular results. Otherwise, in the manner of Humpty Dumpty, the Justices can make the Constitution mean whatever they want it to mean. They can issue moral encyclicals cramming their conceptions of virtue down the throats of the American people. The President should be enthusiastically embracing the original meaning philosophy of Judge Roberts reflected in his voluminous writings in the executive branch and on the bench.

This article appeared in the August 9, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

The United States should follow the instruction of Great Britain in punishing speech likely to motivate terrorism. President George W. Bush should propose legislation making criminal the condoning or glorifying of terrorism against the United States whether uttered domestically or abroad, for example, Bobby Fisher’s notorious glee at the September 11, 2001 abominations. Reasonable suspicion of sympathy with terrorism should justify excluding or deporting aliens. And naturalization should require the applicant’s oath or affirmation to cooperate with law enforcement and national security authorities in the investigation or foiling of terrorist crimes.

This article appeared in the August 7, 2005 issue of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D, Hawaii) is an honorable man. His intentions in championing the Akaka Bill to give birth to an exclusive Hawaiian governing entity operating outside the limitations of the U.S. Constitution are not sinister. But the senator’s multiple mistakes in defending the creation of a race-based government disserve the goal of an enlightened political decision. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, let facts speak to a candid state and national audience.

This article appeared in the August 2, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

The United States Supreme Court regularly transforms its “judicial power” to interpret the Constitution into liberal politics by other means. As the Nestor-like Robert H. Bork trenchantly observes in a new publication, “A Country I Do Not Recognize,” the court chronically expounds sophomoric blather anchored in the signature 1962 “Port Huron Statement” of New Left nihilists: “The goal of man and society should be … finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic,” through a “politics of meaning.”