The Lichfield Group

This article appeared in the October 17, 2006 issue of the Washington Times.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit last week refused to disturb a panel opinion in Petruska v. Gannon University (Sept. 6, 2006), which crowned religious organizations with a constitutional right to practice racial, gender or national origin discrimination in hiring persons to espouse their creed. The ruling contributes to a rising tide of extravagant interpretations of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to defeat secular laws. They are second cousin to the belief that to teach Darwinism is sacrilegious. They should be repudiated by the United States Supreme Court.

This article appeared in the October 10, 2006 issue of the Washington Times.

Elected state attorneys general should be disparaged for contriving preposterous lawsuits to advance their vaulting political ambitions. The global warming litigating lark of California's Bill Lockyer is symptomatic.

The state attorney general craves higher office. He knows global warming awakens popular alarm. If he can be perceived to be slaying global warming dragons, voters will rally to his political banner. Thus was born the clownish case of People of the State of California, ex rel. Bill Lockyer, Attorney General v. General Motors Corp., et al., filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Sept. 20. 2006).

This article appeared in the October 3, 2006 issue of the Washington Times.

Congress faced a choice last week between constitutional courage and cowardice. It chose cowardice, and renounced the Founding Fathers. Those who risked and gave that last full measure of devotion at Valley Forge, Gettysburg and Normandy would be ashamed. The Republic is withering in foolish imitation of Rome.

The House and Senate either collectively or individually voted to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for alleged enemy combatants or war criminals; to establish military tribunals shorn of customary due process safeguards for the trial of war crimes; and, to authorize the president to spy on American citizens on American soil on his say-so alone. No convincing evidence demonstrated these extraordinary encroachments on freedom would make Americans safer. (President Bush, for instance, adduced no evidence that five years of warrantless spying by the National Security Agency on in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has foiled even one terrorist plot). All pivoted on the counterfactual proposition that the omniscient and righteous Mr. Bush only targets, detains or prosecutes terrorists. They do not deserve rights because their guilt is known to the president. The precedent of the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland" should be aped, not overruled: sentence first, verdict afterward.

This article appeared in the October 8, 2006 issue of the Lexington Hearld-Leader.

Kentucky should emulate the U.S. Supreme Court and replace judicial elections for eight-year terms with lifetime appointments to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

An appointed state Supreme Court would sport superior credentials, administer superior justice and command superior public confidence.

Appointed justices would remove the temptation confronted by an elected judiciary to bend the law to appease public prejudices. Federal judges with lifetime tenure ended Jim Crow. Their rulings made possible the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Elected judges would not have been so courageous.