"The Commission knows a good deal about competition policy, but nothing special about the separation of powers."   Believe it or not, that sarcastic rebuke came from none other than Justice Elena Kagan, writing last week for a unanimous United States Supreme Court striking the latest blow against the federal administrative state…

Alvin Bragg, the local district attorney in Manhattan who has led the effort to indict former President Donald Trump, is an elected official. He ran for his current office in 2021. In that campaign, he won a Democratic primary crowded with fellow Democrats who promised that, if elected, they would go after Trump. Now, having been elected, Bragg is…

Paraphrasing Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” our nation’s courts are keeping their heads while others about them seem to be losing theirs.   Amid a zeitgeist of presidential incompetence, Congressional uncertainty, electoral confusion and societal instability, our judicial system offers a more reassuring stability. &…

Lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are exposing the crude and dehumanizing racial sorting that goes on in the admissions offices at elite universities. The application form asks young people to check a box identifying themselves as either "(1) Asian, (2) Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, (3) Hispanic, (…

The U.S. Supreme Court opened its 2022-23 term this week, with two affirmative action cases headlining its docket.   Will the Court fully apply the Constitution’s command of colorblindness?  Or will it once again shrink from its responsibility and leave this thorny thicket to grow?  A gaffe last week from Vice President Kamala…

As the Supreme Court opened a new term Monday, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other left-leaning media blasted it in unison, repeating the same big lie: The highest court is "in crisis" and rapidly losing the public's confidence. The cause is "no secret," claims the Times. The Court has turned into "a judicial…

One of the more popular complaints of the contemporary left is that the Constitution subverts "democracy" for "minority rule." If the United States is really more divided than ever, we have even less reason to dispense with the mechanisms and institutions that diffuse power and constrain one side of the divide from lording over…

When the Supreme Court issues a historic decision reining in the vast federal regulatory agency leviathan, that alone merits our gratitude and celebration.   When Justice Neil Gorsuch deliberately trolls Barack Obama for his infamous “pen and phone” regulatory authority remark, it becomes even more poetically just.  …

Despite its name, the Democratic Party has no time for democracy. Public opinion and democracy be damned, especially when it comes to battling climate change. On June 30, the Supreme Court struck down an Environmental Protection Agency plan compelling states to shutter coal-fired power plants and shift to low-carbon alternatives such as natural gas…

In the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court recognized the individual right to gun ownership in the home. In the 2010 case of McDonald v. Chicago, it recognized that the right of individual gun ownership extended to states and local municipalities. This week, in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court…

In the Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers deemed bureaucratic excess so contrary to the concepts of ordered liberty that they explicitly listed it among the “long train of abuses and usurpations” by the British Crown:     He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass…

Intellectual property (IP) rights – patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets – have provided the United States a unique advantage fueling our unmatched history of innovation.   On the heels of World IP Day, and during a week in which questions of constitutional rights returned to the fore of public debate, it’s…

Over the past 60 years, public schools have been scrubbed of religion, stripped bare in the name of the name of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars favoring one religion over others. Now the void is being filled by social justice ideology, the left's religion by another name.  Why should traditional religion be discriminated…

Americans are fed up with racial preferences. More than three-quarters of Americans believe President Joe Biden should consider "all possible nominees" to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, rather than only Black women, according to a new poll. Likewise, nearly three-quarters of Americans, including a majority of Hispanic…

Working Americans got good news on Friday. They may not have to worry about getting laid off because of qualms about the COVID-19 vaccine. A federal appeals court suspended the Biden administration's attempt to mandate the shots at private sector workplaces with 100 or more employees. Under President Joe Biden's order, which would go into effect Jan…

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep Arms shall not be infringed.   Astute readers will immediately note the glaring omission in that defective recitation of the Second Amendment’s text.   Less astute readers, in contrast, will lose interest beyond the…

Joe Biden certainly isn't the first president to violate his oath of office, but he might be the first in memory to openly brag about doing it. As Biden announced a new "eviction moratorium," he informed Americans that the "bulk of constitutional scholars" would say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium…

Finally.   Amid a deepening “Cancel Culture” environment of cyberstalking, harassment and outright persecution on the basis of political differences, the United States Supreme Court put its foot down in defense of the First Amendment.   In a pivotal 6-3 ruling, the Court affirmed that when governments force mission…

One particularly unflattering characteristic of Second Amendment restrictionists remains their transparently insincere assurance that they really, truly respect Second Amendment liberties, and have nothing at all against firearms used for such purposes as duck hunting or target shooting.   All they seek, they earnestly claim, is “reasonable…

In a December 2007 Boston Globe interview, Barack Obama alleged that the Bush Administration had habitually disregarded Congressional authority in favor of executive overreach, and promised a reversal under his administration.  "A president is not above the law," he pontificated.   As president, however, he infamously sang…

It's worth reminding people that if President Joe Biden were compelled to live by the standards he intends to institute for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would be presumed guilty of rape, denied any legitimate opportunity to refute Tara Reade's charges and tossed from office in disgrace. The New York Times reports today that Biden…

CFIF this week joined a coalition, led by People United for Privacy, urging Congress to oppose H.R. 1 and S. 1, the deceptively named "For the People Act." "Nonprofit organizations serve a vital role in encouraging free speech and the free exchange of ideas. Privately supporting causes — and the organizations advancing those…

House Democratic impeachment managers have delivered to the Senate a single, hastily passed article of impeachment against former President Trump. A trial is set to begin on Feb. 9. It will be an event without precedent – the first time in U.S. history that a former president will be tried in a court of impeachment.  Several Republicans…

Remember Lois Lerner and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting of conservative organizations during the Obama years?   That tawdry episode almost seems quaint in retrospect.   At least back then, Obama and leftists feigned remorse and attempted to deny material wrongdoing.   Today, in contrast, the left openly advocates…

New York's dictatorial governor, Andrew Cuomo, may have met his match. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn is asking the Supreme Court of the United States to strike down Cuomo's Oct. 6 executive order shutting down "houses of worship " in areas of Brooklyn and Queens, while allowing "essential" businesses, like pet stores, groceries…

In its effort to challenge vote counts in key states, the Trump campaign has filed lots of lawsuits that have little chance of winning. But there is one suit that it should win – not only for the Trump campaign or the 2020 election, but for all elections in the future. It's the court fight over Pennsylvania's election rules, and it…

Joe Biden says, "You'll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over." To this point, Biden hasn't offered any position on court-packing, one of the gravest threats to the constitutional order in modern American history. Whether he is too scared of offending a significant faction of his party or he believes it's an idea worth…

"Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around.  Judges are like umpires.  Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them.  The role of an umpire and a judge is critical.  They make sure everybody plays by the rules.  But it is a limited role.  Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the…

"The right to self-defense is the first law of nature…   [A] citizen has a right to carry arms in defense of his property or person, and to use them if either were assailed with such force, numbers or violence as made it necessary for the protection or safety of either." —District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)…

On Monday, January 27, trial will commence in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) misguided antitrust lawsuit seeking to prohibit travel technology company Sabre’s acquisition of non-competitor software developer Farelogix.  The DOJ’s action holds no merit in law or fact, and it illustrates how overzealous federal antitrust…