Andrew P. Napolitano
Articles by Andrew P. Napolitano
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is Hillary Clinton above the law?
What if Hillary Clinton's emails were hacked by foreign agents when she was the secretary of state? What if persons claiming to have done so are boasting about their alleged feats on Internet websites and in chat rooms traditionally associated with illegal or undercover activities? What if this is the sore underbelly of an arrogant and lawless secretary of state who used her power to exempt herself from laws that govern executive branch employees and didn't care about national security? Published March 18, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Do Hillary and Bill Clinton get special treatment from Obama?
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady, U.S. senator from New York and secretary of state, used a private email server for all of her emails when she was President Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Published March 11, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Obama ignores constitutional limits of presidential power
Can the president rewrite federal laws? Can he alter their meaning? Can he change their effect? These are legitimate questions in an era in which we have an unpopular progressive Democratic president who has boasted that he can govern without Congress by using his phone and his pen, and a mostly newly elected, largely conservative Republican Congress with its own ideas about big government. Published March 4, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Obama all violated Fourth Amendment
What if the current massive spying on Americans began with an innocent secret executive order signed by President Reagan in 1986? What if Reagan contemplated that he was only authorizing American spies to spy on foreign spies unlawfully present in the United States? Published February 25, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Farewell to Jon Stewart, a singular comedic genius
About six years ago, one of my producers at the Fox News Channel received a call out of the blue in which the caller asked if I'd be interested in coming on "The Colbert Report." At the time, I was generally unfamiliar with the genre of late-night comedy because I am usually in dreamland when it airs. Published February 18, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: George W. Bush, Obama trampled Fourth Amendment
President George W. Bush was fond of saying that "9/11 changed everything." He used that one-liner often as a purported moral basis to justify the radical restructuring of federal law and the federal assault on personal liberties over which he presided. He cast aside his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution; he rejected his oath to enforce all federal laws faithfully; and he moved the government decidedly in the direction of secret laws, secret procedures and secret courts. Published February 11, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie unwittingly ignited a firestorm earlier this week when he responded to a reporter's question in Great Britain about forced vaccinations of children in New Jersey by suggesting that the law in the United States needs to balance the rights of parents against the government's duty to maintain standards of public health. Published February 4, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Torturing terror suspects leads to little justice
Ali Saleh al-Marri is a convicted conspirator who entered the United States before Sept. 11, 2001, in order to create a dreaded sleeper cell here that might someday launch an attack on Americans similar to what we witnessed earlier this month in Paris. When the feds woke from their slumber on Sept. 11, they wisely began to search immigration records for persons who came here with no discernible purpose from places known to spawn terrorist groups and who had overstayed their visas. Al-Marri was one such person. Published January 28, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Government steals Americans’ freedoms with NSA snooping
While the Western world was watching and grieving over the slaughter in Paris last week, and my colleagues in the media were fomenting a meaningless debate about whether President Obama should have gone to Paris to participate in a televised parade, the feds took advantage of that diversion to reveal even more incursions into our liberties than we had known about. Published January 21, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: French government decides what speech is free
The photos of 40 of the world's government leaders marching arm-in-arm along a Paris boulevard on Sunday with the president of the United States not among them was a provocative image that has fomented much debate. The march was, of course, in direct response to the murderous attacks on workers at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by a pair of brothers named Kouachi, and on shoppers at a Paris kosher supermarket by one of the brothers' comrades. Published January 14, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: U.S. government stealing Americans’ freedom
A British author, residing in the United States for the past 30 years, created a small firestorm earlier this week with his candid observations that modern-day Americans have been duped by the government into accepting a European-style march toward socialism because we fail to appreciate the rich legacy of personal liberty that is everyone's birthright and is expressly articulated in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Published January 7, 2015
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Obama, Congress defy Constitution with budget bribery, breaches of power
When the government is waving at us with its right hand, so to speak, it is the government's left hand that we should be watching. Just as a magician draws your attention to what he wants you to see so you will not observe how his trick is performed, last week presented a textbook example of public disputes masking hidden deceptions. Here is what happened. Published December 17, 2014
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The CIA and its torturers
When the head of the CIA's torture unit decided to destroy videotapes of his team's horrific work, he unwittingly set in motion a series of events that led to the release this week of the most massive, detailed documentation of unlawful behavior by high-ranking government officials and intentional infliction of pain on noncombatants by the United States government since the Civil War era. Here is the backstory. Published December 10, 2014
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Ferguson riots failures of racial sensitivity, police militarization
The city of Ferguson, Missouri, is now burned into our consciousness in a way that few other places are. In my youth, the race riots in Newark, Detroit and Los Angeles marked turning points in my own and in the public's awareness of the problems of a black underclass that perceives itself as being so unfairly governed by a white power structure that it resorts to violence. Published December 3, 2014
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Give thanks to God, not to government
What if the government is designed to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents, diplomats and bureaucrats behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which major political party controls Congress? Published November 26, 2014
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Questions for Loretta Lynch’s Senate confirmation hearings
Within hours of realizing that his party lost control of the U.S. Senate last week, President Obama nominated Loretta Lynch, the chief federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., to be the next attorney general. Published November 12, 2014
ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO: Can the Republicans make a difference?
With the midterm elections complete, it is clear now that the Republicans will control the U.S. Senate for the next two years. Will it make a difference? Published November 5, 2014
ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO: The presumption of liberty
In the years following the adoption of the Constitution, before he was secretary of state under President Thomas Jefferson and then president himself, James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, was a member of the House of Representatives. Published October 29, 2014
ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO: The feds’ ‘truthy’ new chill on free speech
Earlier this week, the federal government's National Science Foundation, an entity created to encourage the study of science, announced that it had awarded a grant to study what people say about themselves and others in social media. Published October 22, 2014
ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO: A euphemism for tyranny
Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey in an interview on "60 Minutes" revealed a flawed understanding of personal freedom. Published October 15, 2014
