Justice Thomas addresses the progressive attack on America’s freedom

April 21, 2026

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990. And, on July 1, 1991, Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court of the United States, and he was confirmed by the Senate on October 15, 1991.

Prior to that he earned his Juris Doctor degree in 1974 from Yale Law School. He was an assistant attorney general in Missouri, served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Danforth, was Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, and was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

He is the longest-serving justice since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. And, since the death of former Justice Antonin Scalia, he is the Court's foremost originalist.

Originalist’s sensible approach is that the laws and the U.S. Constitution must be understood in terms of what they meant when they were enacted, not some modern interpretation that ignores their original meaning and purpose, and instead is interpreted as if the law or Constitution was just enacted.

Thomas, therefore, is a “judicial conservative,” which is not a political conservative, but one who adheres to the original meaning of laws and the Constitution, rather than applying liberal thinking to the process, which means a law or the Constitution can mean different things at different times.

Speaking last week at the University of Texas Austin School of Law, Thomas addressed what he identified as a critique of modern political trends. He said that America’s founding principles are under attack from ideological shifts in academia and government.

The values that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence have “fallen out of favor,” and are under assault by progressives. "Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government," Thomas told the audience. This movement rejects the idea that rights come from God and instead places complete authority in government institutions, Thomas said.

Our founding documents assert the concept that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights. The definition of unalienable (or inalienable) is that rights are fundamental, inherent entitlements that cannot be taken away, sold, or transferred, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

And, Thomas noted that the Constitution was designed to limit government power, and to acknowledge and protect our liberties.

These documents protected Americans from centralized government authority and the majority controlling the minority. He cited principles — such as separation of powers and federalism — as safeguards against centralized authority and majority overreach, which are characteristics of many less-free nations.

History, he said, offers many lessons on the dangers of abandoning natural rights, where strong governments have suppressed those rights. Again, he noted that our system was intentionally designed to prevent this by restraining the government and empowering the citizenry.

But progressivism prefers the government to control everything, even the individual freedoms that the Constitution guarantees us, destroying those freedoms.

And history, Thomas said, is rife with examples of powerful governments suppressing individual freedoms, and the terrible results that followed.

He traces the roots of progressivism back about a hundred years, to early 20th-century, where figures such as President Woodrow Wilson advocated for a larger and more powerful federal government, drawing his inspiration from what had occurred in European nations.

Wilson also said that the Constitution should be read in light of changing conditions. But that is wrong. The Constitution must be read and understood as when it was first created. If changes are deserved, then they can be made through the established process, not simply by current justices who don’t like them, or don’t understand them, simply pretending they don’t exist.

And that also holds true for fundamental principles. Those principles cannot simply be ignored. They have been firmly established through due process. If there is good reason and ample support for changing them, then go through the established process to change them.

During this troubled time of the worst political division in decades, Thomas asked all Americans to rediscover the courage and conviction that our Founders possessed. "In my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration had so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs," he said.

That future has lasted in pretty stable form for nearly 250 years. But it has serious problems today, presented by those who do not understand our system, or who do not appreciate it.

It is interesting that as a unique system of government that has proven its worth for two and a half centuries, so many of those who live in this country and benefit from it, want to change it to something that has been proven to be a failed system over those same 250 years.

If the progressives are successful in their effort to subvert our constitutional republic, they may not live long enough to suffer the consequences of that subversion, as it will take some time to totally ruin the country. But their children and grandchildren most certainly will.

The meaning of laws or the Constitution should not be changed on a whim

June 4, 2024

Why is it that those on the left — liberals, socialists, Marxists, “progressives” — think that the ideas expressed in our laws and the Constitution are just suggestions, and their interpretation by judges and others in positions of authority can vary with the wind?

Do they really believe that words mean whatever anyone wants them to mean at any given time as political fervor and social preferences dictate? 

Well, yes, many of them believe that whatever their political motivation is at any moment is enough to justify changing the meaning of a law or a feature of our Constitution that was written years, decades, or even centuries ago.

Those written words were just ideas of the moment, they suggest, and everyone knows that ideas and circumstances change as time progresses. Therefore, the meaning of laws and the Constitution must be flexible enough to be understood as they want to understand them at any point in time.

And they want to get rid of anyone in any position who believes the contrary: that laws and the Constitution mean what they meant when they were created, and will continue to hold that meaning until they are properly changed by the appropriate processes.

In order to get the world organized to their liking, the leftists want to remove anyone from their official position that doesn’t follow the popular ideological line. Supreme Court Justices, for example, who follow the law and Constitution as written. They are “originalists,” or “judicial conservatives.”

Like umpires and referees, judges, justices, magistrates, etc., must not take sides in their work. They must not change the rules of the game during the game. They have the duty to apply the laws and terms of the Constitution as they were intended when created, without applying political or ideological bias. 

That point is frequently missed by some observers who instead want their personal beliefs to prevail in such matters, despite what the intent of the measure in question may be.

But the interpretations of our Constitution and existing law must be based upon the circumstances that prevailed at the time they were created, and that those circumstances were why these laws and Constitutional provisions were created to begin with.

If the original circumstances that were the basis of a law or a feature of the Constitution no longer exist, if things have changed substantially, then the law can be repealed, or the Constitution can be amended as needed. But until those actions take place, the laws and Constitution must be followed as written, and as intended. The leftists prefer to consider the U.S. Constitution a “living document,” the meanings of which ebb and flow with the tide of time.

This concept was dealt with in an article by United States Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch titled, “Why Originalism Is the Best Approach to the Constitution.” 

In this article, he addresses some specific instances. However, we will focus on the primary meaning: “Originalism teaches only that the Constitution’s original meaning is fixed; meanwhile, of course, new applications of that meaning will arise with new developments and new technologies.”

“Whether it’s the Constitution’s prohibition on torture, its protection of speech, or its restrictions on searches, the meaning remains constant even as new applications arise.”

And then, the crux of the debate: “Living constitutionalists often complain we can’t know the original understanding because the document’s too old and cryptic. Hardly. We figure out the original meaning of old and difficult texts all the time. Just ask any English professor who teaches Shakespeare or Beowulf.”

And he then describes the leftists’ preferred solution to the disagreement: “For when it comes to the social and political questions of the day they care most about, many living constitutionalists would prefer to have philosopher-king judges swoop down from their marble palace to ordain answers rather than allow the people and their representatives to discuss, debate, and resolve them. You could even say the real complaint here is with our democracy.”

In common parlance, they want the documents to say whatever they prefer them to say at any given moment. And those meanings can change with a new breath.

“Suppose originalism does lead to a result you happen to dislike in this or that case. So what,” Gorsuch asks? “The ‘judicial Power’ of Article III of the Constitution isn’t a promise of all good things. Letting dangerous and obviously guilty criminals who have gravely injured their victims go free just because an officer forgot to secure a warrant or because the prosecutor neglected to bring a witness to trial for confrontation seems like a bad idea to plenty of people.

“But do you really want judges to revise the Constitution to avoid those ‘bad’ results? Or do you believe that judges should enforce the law’s protections equally for everyone, regardless of how inefficient or unpopular or old the law might be? Regardless of who benefits today — the criminal or the police; the business or the employee; immigrants or ICE?”

Originalism focuses on process, not substance. The originalist concept protects the country from renegade “jurists” who will do whatever improves their political/ideological position. This is not what America is about.

Having a “living” Constitution is having no Constitution

One of the serious challenges to America’s future is the tendency to interpret the U.S. Constitution and our laws liberally. That is, to understand something written years, decades or centuries ago using the current fluid understanding of how things “ought to be.” 

This concept of a “living” Constitution completely discards the reasoning that occurred when the document was created, and substitutes today’s “preferences” for the principles as understood, intended and written.

Strict interpretation of the language of the Constitution, interpreted through knowledge of how things were during the creation of the document and how the Founders thought, is essential to the nation keeping the magnificent principles with which it was designed. This is known as “originalism,” or maintaining the original intent of the Constitution and laws.

A good example of why that is important is in the meaning of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

There are two elements under debate, the first being the meaning of the term “militia.” Today, the term often applies to formal military organizations similar to the National Guard. Thus, the anti-Second Amendment folks suggest that only such organizations are guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. But when the Constitution was being written, the militia consisted of private citizens who could be called together to act in defense against an attack. It was not the army, nor even a formal organization. 

The other issue is that the anti-Second Amendment folks say it does not give anyone the right to own any weapon they want. People often say that the Founders had no way to imagine the existence of so-called “assault weapons.” And that is true. However, the Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. There are two different concepts: Keeping arms means to own and have arms, while bearing arms means they may be carried by the people.

It also does not distinguish between the types of arms people may keep and bear. There were knives and swords, etc., and there were hand-held muskets, long rifles, and cannons. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t say to keep and bear muskets and swords, it says to keep and bear arms, meaning whatever arms were available. People were not prohibited from owning a cannon if they chose, to drag it along behind them or tie it to their horse if they wanted. Muskets, long rifles and cannons were the “assault weapons” of their time, and they were precisely what the Amendment guaranteed the right to keep and to bear.

They also try to persuade us that the purpose was to guarantee the right to keep and bear arms for hunting and home defense, but the main threat generating this right was the potential for a threat from an armed enemy, foreign or domestic.

The idea of a “living Constitution” essentially renders the Constitution to mean what a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices says it means at any given time. Today, it may mean something, and next year it may mean something else. That, of course, means the Constitution means nothing, if what it means is subject to the aspirations of a few people at any given time.

The Founders were smart guys. They had seen various types of government be tried, and fall short. Sometimes falling very short. So, they devised a different idea. And the document designed to govern this nation was comprised of broad principles, one of which was great personal freedom, which would last in perpetuity.

Those principles may not be changed on a whim, or because one or more people in a position of power decides to change one or more of the principles.

Thus, if sufficient reasoning and support for changing some portion of the Constitution exists, there is a process for doing that, and that process involves much more than the personal opinions of jurists. The Constitution may be amended, but through a rigorous process.

The National Archives describes this process: “The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention.”

This process was designed to be a difficult one, in order to prevent quirky, impulsive changes to suit some circumstance, which may be fleeting, and change after a time. It was designed to prevent what too many justices of the United States Supreme Court and judges like to do: make law and change the Constitution from the bench.

Under this process, the Constitution will remain what it was designed to be: a standard for the nation that does not change with the tide or the direction and speed of the wind, unless there is a good reason for it and a substantial amount of support for it.

Politics control the nomination process for Supreme Court Justices

President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee brings to the fore several issues. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has served as a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021. Prior to that, she was a district judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021, and was vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014.

She is expected to be confirmed by the Democrat majority in the Senate Judiciary Committee and in the full Senate, maintaining the current liberal and conservative numbers on the Court.

She has been criticized for her record of letting sex offenders off with sentences well below the recommendations of prosecutors and sentencing guidelines. She defended her actions in the confirmation hearing. That prompted Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall to comment that such actions raise concerns about her being soft on crime. 

She refused to answer the simple question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, of what is the definition of the word “woman?” Jackson said that she could not define the term. “You can’t,” Blackburn asked? “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said. 

The same Democrats who so enthusiastically defend this African American woman’s nomination opposed another African American woman nominee several years ago.

Jackson refused to condemn the radical idea of packing the Court to establish an ideological or political majority. Some Supreme Court Justices and other officials have condemned this as dangerous to the ideal of justice, because of the political influence it would inject into judicial matters.

She has embraced radical philosophies, like critical race theory. She was asked about it by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX: “Do you think that’s an accurate way of viewing society and the world we live in?”

“Senator, I don’t think so, but I’ve never studied critical race theory, and I’ve never used it,” Jackson responded.

Cruz then said, “you gave a speech in April of 2015 at the University of Chicago in which you described the job you do as a judge.” Cruz then quoted part of her speech: “Sentencing is just plain interesting … because it melds together myriad types of law, criminal law, of course … constitutional law, critical race theory.”

Among those issues is also the controversial one of judicial philosophy, which appears to be a factor in some of the issues noted previously. Jackson appears to be an activist judge, not an originalist. Judicial activism is a dangerous thing for the law and for America.

What is judicial activism? “Judicial activism occurs when judges abandon their responsibility to interpret the Constitution and instead decide cases to advance their preferred policies,” according to the Britannica website.

The other side of that is the conservative, or originalist, philosophy. Originalism holds that the Constitution means what it meant when it was written and passed. If there are good reasons to change some things, it must be done through amendments, not by the actions of judges.

The 11th Chief Justice of the United States, from 1930 to 1941, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, offered the idea that “the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”

This statement is absurd on its face. If words mean only what the reader thinks they mean, or what he or she wants them to mean, the world would turn upside-down.

The Framers of the Constitution carefully wrote that document to address important concepts. They are broad principles. They were not written based upon the minute details of that time, but intended to last into the future. 

If the originalist interpretation leads to unpopular or undesirable things, then the Constitution can be properly amended, but not subjected to the whims of a judge, or a majority of five or more of the nine unelected justices.

Justice Clarence Thomas addressed this question in a 1996 speech. “The Constitution means not what the Court says it does but what the delegates at Philadelphia and at the state ratification conventions understood it to mean ... We as a nation adopted a written Constitution precisely because it has a fixed meaning that does not change. Otherwise we would have adopted the British approach of an unwritten, evolving constitution.”

Despite the fact that Judge Jackson’s supporters condemn how she was questioned, the questions were perfectly acceptable, and many even necessary in a confirmation hearing for such an important post. 

Further, when compared to the horrid and disgraceful treatment by Democrat members of the Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Jackson is getting respectful treatment.

And Justice Thomas was also treated contemptibly during his confirmation hearing. Part of his response to his disgusting treatment was, “it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves…”

We need justices and judges on the federal bench who understand and respect the broad and sensible principles stated in the Constitution and will adhere to them, rather than supplant them with personal or political ideals. Judge Jackson falls short of this standard.

However, in today’s highly political atmosphere, such ideals will not carry the day.

“Impeach Kavanaugh” is the new call of the desperate Democrats

Brett Kavanaugh. The nerve of that guy. Thinking he was deserving of a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Just because he has a law degree and many years of good and loyal service as a judge does not qualify him for that highly regarded position. It takes more than that to get a seat on the nation’s highest, and most influential court of law in this day and time.

He apparently thought that his time as an alleged sexual harasser would be so old that no one would remember it. But then, he perhaps had forgotten about Christine Blasey Ford. You remember her. She’s the one that claimed he did unspeakable things to her one summer night while in high school decades ago.

She said in Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing that she was “one hundred percent” certain that Kavanaugh was the man who attacked her when she was 15. He had the nerve to angrily deny allegations of sexual misconduct and called his confirmation process a “national disgrace.”

Her story and his denial were enough to fire up the “he’s unqualified!” posse in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and throughout the land. But, alas, it was not enough to derail the nomination, and Justice Kavanaugh is now sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court.

And now that he has been duly approved, and has served a term on the Court, another story has come out regarding another young woman. It is alleged he did shameful things in front of her and asked her to do shameful things for him while a student at Yale a few years after the alleged Blasey Ford incident.

In the first instance, Blasey Ford alleged that Kavanaugh tried to rape her, and feared he might try to kill her. She named four witnesses to this alleged event. She, however, could not remember the date, location, how she got there, or how she got home. And the four witnesses, one of whom is Blasey Ford’s lifelong friend, all said they remembered the summer in question very well, but did not remember the event Blasey Ford alleged had taken place. There was no supporting evidence or memories of the alleged episode.

In the more recent event, a person brought forth an allegation, and the person alleged to have been harmed refused to talk about it with reporters and other interested parties, but some of her friends have said she does not remember the incident.

The person bringing this allegation to light was a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s named Max Stier who, interestingly enough, was an attorney on President Bill Clinton’s impeachment team, while Kavanaugh was on Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s team. The incident came to light in a story appearing in (yet again) The New York Times, written by reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, which actually contains two accusations. The two women are authors of a book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” 

These notable allegations are automatically believed by many. What makes them notable is that they all share something in common: each is unsupported by actual evidence.

The perpetrators of these frauds have a purpose in mind, and they know that a significant number of their fellow travelers will fall in line, no questions asked. And guess where they found willing accomplices? The gang of candidates for the Democrat nomination for president.

Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, “Beto” O’Rourke and Kamala Harris jumped immediately on board the “impeach Kavanaugh” band wagon, and Pete Buttigieg ran along behind and eventually caught up with the wagon a bit later. All of these folks should know better than to take a position without evidence, but especially Harris, whose was a district attorney and a state attorney general before becoming a senator and candidate. She ought to understand about having significant evidence before acting. That is, unless you know her shady history as a prosecutor.

Since the increasingly left-wing Democrats depend so heavily upon the judicial system to help them force their unpopular ideas on the country, it is imperative that no judges, especially those on the Supreme Court, who follow the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution and our laws be appointed and approved for those positions.

In order to pass muster, you must subscribe to, and tacitly agree to support the left’s holiest of cows, Roe v. Wade -- the license to abort developing children in the womb. 

Blasey Ford's lawyer Debra Katz has admitted support for abortion motivated Ford’s role, and her own, in the use of unsupported allegations of rape against Kavanaugh. “He will always have an asterisk next to his name,” she is reported to have said, by Commentary magazine online. “When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is …; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.” 

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s straight forward allegiance to the intent of the Constitution and the law is a threat to leftist ambitions. Nothing is “too low to go” to prevent judges like Kavanaugh from holding court positions. But their gutter tactics are a threat to Judicial independence and the rule of law.

Filling the Supreme Court vacancy is both critical and divisive

Presidents have the duty to nominate persons to fill federal judiciary vacancies. Each of our 45 presidents made judicial appointments, and all but four nominated at least one justice for the U.S. Supreme Court.

According to the Court’s Home page, the Supreme Court “is charged with ensuring the American people the promise of equal justice under law and, thereby, also functions as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.”

The controversy that arises each time a vacancy occurs on the High Court in recent years regards the second of the Court’s two functions: its role as “the interpreter of the Constitution.”

The question now at the front of the debate about the Court is – as former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano put forth in chapter 2 of his book The Constitution in Exile – given that the Court addresses “issues the Founders never dealt with, should the Court treat the Constitution as a living document, allowing judges to interpret it according to the times? Should the Court try to discern the Founders’ ‘original intent’ and apply it to these new situations and issues?”

Typical of the wild responses to all things related to President Donald Trump by the increasingly socialist political Left, the opportunity that he now has to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy – the Court’s “swing vote” – has them beside themselves, issuing feverish predictions of doom and gloom.

As the Court’s swing vote, Kennedy sometimes voted with the judicial conservatives, who commonly support the original text of the U.S. Constitution, and at other times voted with the judicial liberals, for whom the Constitution’s meaning changes over time.

Now, President Trump must nominate someone to fill that vacant spot on the bench, and is expected to pick another judicial conservative in the mold of the late, great Antonin Scalia, as he did by nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Scalia Court vacancy.

The Founders, being the brilliant humans that they were, understood that a document intended to be the backbone of a unique and superior form of government, needed to promote broad principals that outlined how the republic should function and would endure forever.

Putting the individuals who have served and will serve on the Supreme Court into perspective, Constitutional scholar Mark Levin says in his book, Men in Black: “The biggest myth about judges is that they’re somehow imbued with greater insight, wisdom, and vision than the rest of us; that for some reason God Almighty has endowed them with superior judgment about justice and fairness. But the truth is that judges are men and women with human imperfections and frailties,” like the rest of us.

With such a wide spectrum of human qualities, how can we trust important judicial decisions to the luck of the draw, the nine people sitting on the Court at any given time?

Therefore, great care must be used when selecting someone for a seat on the Court, and someone with judicial humility who will support the principals of the Constitutions should be chosen, rather than someone who will bend the meaning of the Constitution to suit some personal preference or perceived social need.

Imagine a Court with 5 (or more) from the contingent that decide cases not based on a stable set of principles, but on the passions of the day, which might be different passions 10 years hence, and likely were different passions 10 years earlier.

Under the guise of “the Founders could not possibly have imagined _____ (fill in the blank with your favorite issue),” liberal judges often make decisions based not upon Constitutional principals, but based upon their idea of what should be, or what they believe is best. The Constitution is not a “living” document; its foundational principals live on forever.

As good a blueprint for a nation as our Constitution is, its creators realized that changes may at times be needed, and it has been amended 17 times since the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were enacted shortly after the states ratified the Constitution.

Within its original 4,400 words is the process for changing it. It is a difficult process, by design, so that changes would have to be very strongly supported by the states. Neither those original words nor those of the amendments authorize changes to be made by judges or by five Supreme Court Justices.

America became the freest, most desirable nation in the world by following the guidance of the Constitution. And despite the changes that have occurred in the last few decades through judicial lawmaking, America still is a great nation.

But we cannot afford to keep traveling down the road of judicial twists and turns that liberal judges create, or the nation will become unrecognizable, and just one more socialist quagmire.

So while the Left continues to rely on scare tactics to create opposition to Trump’s choice for the Kennedy vacancy, even before that choice is made or announced, the president is duty-bound to make a nomination, and will likely propose someone who appreciates and honors the guidance of the U.S. Constitution, and will not legislate from the bench. For that we should all be thankful.

Restoring government’s three branches to Constitutional balance

The unequaled genius of the Founders produced an original form of government that included a system of checks and balances to maintain its integrity. That design has been substantially abandoned, and all three branches of government are guilty of creating this situation.

The Legislative Branch is now weaker and the Executive Branch now stronger due to malfeasance by the Congress and the eager acceptance of extra-constitutional power by administrative agencies. Likewise, failure of the duty to the Constitution’s original language and intent has increased power to the Judicial Branch.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress, and only Congress, the authority to pass laws. But through laziness and other misfeasance through the years Congress has abdicated much of that duty by allowing administrative agencies to pass rules that are in effect laws. That is how the EPA is able to implement a rule that absurdly allows it to tell a farmer in Iowa that the drainage ditch along his dirt road is a waterway that falls under federal control.

That is also how the Department of Education justifies using SWAT teams to break down the doors of people because their education loan payments are past due. There are dozens of other examples of this unconstitutional over-reach by federal agencies.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee confirms this unconstitutional transfer of power, and blames lawmakers, saying, “We are not, in fact, the victims, we are the perpetrators.” He went on to tell The Daily Signal that this was done to make Congress’ job easier, because it is less politically risky to let others do the lawmaking through the rule-making function.

Speaking at the Federalist Society’s 5^th annual Executive Branch Review Conference, Lee talked about his efforts to combat this situation through the Article One Project. He outlined three pieces of legislation designed to address the problem.

The REINS Act would require both Congress and the president to approve any administrative rule with an economic impact of $100 million or more. Lee said that ultimately, “Congress would be responsible for every major regulation that went into effect.” The Act has passed the House, but not the Senate.

The second measure is the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (SOPRA), which Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe told The Daily Signal would reverse the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision that established the “Chevron doctrine” that “determined that courts must defer to agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous laws as long as their interpretation is deemed ‘reasonable.’”

“This bill would end the dysfunctional status quo that tilts the legal playing field in favor of bureaucrats,” Lee said. SOPRA passed the House last year, and Ratcliffe has introduced it again this year.

Currently, federal agencies use funds received through fines, fees, and proceeds from legal settlements at their own discretion, thereby avoiding the formal appropriations process, and escaping congressional oversight. It may also encourage agency action aimed at raising funds. The Agency Accountability Act will require funds acquired by agencies outside the appropriations process to be turned over to the Treasury.

Lee commented, “You see the Constitution has this pesky little provision that … Congress has the power and the responsibility to direct spending of federal dollars. The power of the purse is one of Congress’ most potent tools for controlling bureaucracies.”

The Judicial Branch also has strayed from the straight and narrow path created by the Constitution through increasingly liberal interpretation of the language and intent of the Constitution and federal laws, citing how society has changed over the years as the need to reinterpret them. Amending them is too slow and difficult, you see.

Carson Holloway, author of “Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration,” explains another liberal judicial technique. President Donald Trump’s revised Executive Order temporarily halting travel to the U.S. from several countries with ties to terrorism was found unconstitutional by some lower courts, which agreed with opponents that the order actually bans Muslim immigration.

The order does no such thing, Holloway notes, since it applies to only a fraction of Muslim countries, and that the lower courts reacted not to the language of the order, but to things Trump said during the campaign. In other words, the courts abandoned interpreting actual written language in favor of reading the president’s mind, and finding a hidden agenda there.

Looking back in history to the days of Chief Justice John Marshall, Holloway explains that while Marshall acknowledged both the letter and spirit of the law, Marshall said, “the spirit is to be collected chiefly from its words,” not the imagination of judges.

Holloway said, “rule of law does not mean rule by judges acting on their whim,” but that it requires “judicial modesty.” And Marshall noted in Fletcher v. Peck that “an inquiry into the subjective motives of the lawmaker quickly leads judges into a realm in which there are no clear, compelling standards of judgment.”

Holloway concludes with the hope that the Appellate Court “follows the path of judicial modesty … and not the endlessly debatable intentions that may lie behind” the order.

Our government is badly out of balance, and a quick return to constitutional government and originalism in the courts is essential.

What happens when judges abandon the Constitution and the law?

If you have read legal documents you will likely have noticed how detailed, specific and often obtuse the language is. The purpose of such language is to assure that the intent of the document is clearly set forth, and this language is well understood by lawyers.

However, despite the careful legal wording of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order (EO) temporarily suspending travel to the U.S. from seven countries with close ties to terrorism, U.S. District Judge James Robart in Washington found problems with the document last month, and issued a temporary stay. A revised second version of that EO, rewritten to avoid the objectionable parts of the first one, including removing one of the seven countries on the list, was found unacceptable by two other federal judges, U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii, and Maryland U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Chuang.

The revised document may as well have been written in the language of the Klingons, because these two judges ignored the Order itself, rejecting the travel suspension due to negative statements about Muslim immigrants Trump made during the campaign.

Even though the people who have to implement the EO must do only what it says, the judges, in their infinite wisdom, decided that what they imagine to be the thinking of the president is more important than what the document actually mandates, even though those who follow the EO will have no knowledge of what the president thinks, and therefore no obligation to implement those opinions.

Apparently, these federal judges are confused about their jobs or perhaps just don’t care about professional ethics or their sworn duties. They apparently believe that in ruling on a legal document they should ignore the actual document that is being challenged, and instead rely on speculation about the opinions of the document’s creator, and act to protect certain rights of immigrants and foreigners that the Constitution does not assign to them.

Under 8 U.S. Code § 1182(f) Congress granted the President broad discretion to suspend the entry of “any class of aliens” into the United States, and independently broad discretion over the refugee program.

That section reads: “Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President - Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” This section of the law goes on to assign the Attorney General authority over activities by airlines bringing in non-citizen passengers, further assigning complete authority over entry to the country to the executive branch of the government, not the judiciary.

The law is crystal clear in its meaning, and does not provide as exceptions to the power of the President the personal opinions of federal judges or the beliefs or motives that these unelected referees ascribe to the president.

Perhaps the reason these judges didn’t want to rule on the actual language and effect of the Order is that it disagrees with their personal opinions. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans Von Spakovsky, a former Department of Justice lawyer, told Breitbart, “I don’t think [these judges] have any professional shame about it — in fact, they’re being applauded by newspaper editors for actually ignoring the law and [Supreme Court] rulings based on their own personal policy preferences.”

He notes that, despite the plain text of the law and prior Supreme Court decisions, these rulings are “destructive of the rule of law, which is the entire basis of our Republic.” This, he said, “is a very bad development that threatens our democracy … [and] it looks like it is going to get worse [because] we’re going to have more and more litigation, and it is very clear that the progressive left wants to use the courts to fight the way our democracy works,” he said, adding “I think what they doing is very anti-democratic.”

Indeed. What can be worse for a country that lives by the rule of law than to have some judges that do not follow or honor the law or the Constitution, but instead make law from the bench or twist laws to suit their personal or political preferences? That is what liberal judges do, and this behavior has reached crisis proportions.

These legal rulings raise important questions:

What is the proper response to a federal court ruling that is so plainly contrary to the law? Should the Trump administration follow a clearly illegal ruling and attempt to overturn it though a lengthy appeal process, or defy the federal courts?

What should happen to judges who issue rulings are at odds with laws and the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold?

Aren’t these judges directly responsible for any harm done to American citizens as a result of persons with the intent to do harm getting into the country by virtue of their rulings?