Free Republic

ObamaCare, officially called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, marks the first time in history that the federal government has required every person to purchase a commercial product or service. As part of its “Preserve the Constitution” series, the Heritage Foundation is presenting an expert panel, headlined by David Rivkin, to discuss the case on Nov. 3 at Lehrman Auditorium in D.C. from noon to 1 p.m. Other speakers include: Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies; Michael Carvin, partner at Jones Day and lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business; and Andrew Grossman,...

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, former gang member, and designated enemy combatant who was sentenced to 17 years in prison, is mounting an aggressive appeal. The oral arguments on October 26 in Richmond’s Fourth Circuit will strike at the heart of the Constitution. Padilla brought a lawsuit against former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials, alleging he was illegally detained and tortured in the military brig after his 2002 arrest. That suit, which has been described as “lawfare” or exacting personal and financial “flesh” from an opponent, was dismissed last February by a federal judge in Charleston,...

Immigration policy has been a much-debated issue, both at the national and state level, for a number of years now. The George W. Bush Administration tried, but failed, to enact a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The Obama Administration, while talking much about the need for reform, has not mounted a serious legislative effort in this area. Unfortunately, it has chosen a different path, whereby the President, solely on his own authority, sought to revise the existing immigration laws. In our constitutional system, however, it is Congress that has plenary constitutional authority to establish U.S. immigration policy and fundamental reform requires...

Why did the United States apologize to the family of Al Qaeda Propagandist Samir Khan? David Rivkin debates Sally Kohn, Founder of Movement Vision, on America Live with Megyn Kelly on Fox News.

WASHINGTON — Anwar al-Awlaki did not leave much of a trail, frustrating the American and Yemeni intelligence officials pursuing him over the last two years. They believed they finally had found him in a village in southern Yemen last year. Yemeni commandos, equipped with tanks and heavy weapons, surrounded the hamlet, but he slipped away, according to a Yemeni official. In May, his pursuers targeted him in a drone attack, but narrowly missed him and other members of his entourage as they drove across a desert. The search for Mr. Awlaki, the American-born cleric whose fiery sermons made him a...

Is it “game over” for ObamaCare? Can ObamaCare survive scrutiny by the Supreme Court? Lawyer, writer, and former White house counsel David Rivkin will address those questions and more as the keynote speaker at a Federalist Society luncheon tomorrow in Denver, CO. David Rivkin will invite questions about the unconstitutionality of and legal challenge to ObamaCare, specifically its so-called “individual mandate” that all persons must buy health insurance or pay a fine. The Federalist Society could not have engaged a more appropriate speaker for its Colorado Lawyers Chapter. David Rivkin was the first person to question the individual mandate’s constitutionality...

Former White House lawyer and leading conservative commentator, David Rivkin, was the first to outline the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare that will soon go before the Supreme Court. ObamaCare, officially called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, marks the first time in history that the federal government has required every person to purchase a commercial product or service. As part of its “Preserve the Constitution” series, the Heritage Foundation is presenting an expert panel, headlined by David Rivkin, to discuss the case on Nov. 3 at Lehrman Auditorium in D.C. from noon to 1 p.m. Other speakers include: Todd...

The city of Jerusalem has been fought over for nearly 3,000 years and remains one of the most contentious places on Earth. This fall, the battle will reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The case—Zivotofsky v. Clinton, brought by the parents of Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem on October 17, 2002—involves a 2002 effort by Congress to force U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It sought to do so by, among other things, requiring the State Department to identify Israel as the place of birth on passports issued to U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem. The high...

Only Congress has constitutional authority to establish U.S. immigration policy, and fundamental reform requires legislative action. Thus the administration’s recent announcement that deportation will be sought only for undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States violates the separation of powers and is unconstitutional. No president, of course, can hope to expel every undocumented person in the United States — they number perhaps upward of 11 million people. Human and financial resources to identify, apprehend, process and promptly deport millions have been lacking for years as has, arguably, the political will to do so. In this environment, immigration...

In the most comprehensive judicial opinion to date, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit last week ruled (2-1) that Congress cannot compel Americans to buy and maintain health insurance. Unlike the Florida district court that earlier found ObamaCare unconstitutional, the 11th Circuit did not invalidate the entire law. But it likewise reaffirmed the fundamental constitutional rule that our federal government is one of enumerated powers with judicially enforceable limits. Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 in order to guarantee near-universal health-insurance coverage. According to this law, individuals...

Host: My next guest here is David Rivkin. David is joining us to talk about the 11th Circuit’s decision last week overturning the individual mandate in the Obama healthcare law . . . I should point out that David and his colleague Lee Casey argued this case at a lower court level . . . so what is the significance of this decision? David Rivkin: Well, it’s the first time the Court of Appeals has done it, point number one. Point number two, you have a bipartisan panel, I hate to engage in these types of observations, but it’s very...

Video of former Reagan legal advisor David Rivkin on the ObamaCare lawsuit and last week's 11th Circuit ruling.

Former White House lawyer David B. Rivkin, Jr. and colleague Lee A. Casey began the debate in August 2009 with their Washington Post article, “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Mandate Questioned." Now in their latest article for SCOTUSblog, “Why the Court Will Strike Down PPACA," Rivkin and Casey predict that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, also known as “ObamaCare”) “will be unable to withstand the Court’s scrutiny” for the very reason Rivkin and Casey gave in 2009. ObamaCare’s individual mandate that almost all Americans must purchase health insurance is unconstitutional because it does not regulate commerce, but rather...

The debt-ceiling crisis has prompted predictable media laments about how partisan and dysfunctional our political system has become. But if the process leading to the current deal was a "spectacle" and a "three-ring circus," as Obama adviser David Plouffe put it, the show's impresarios are none other than James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Our messy political system is working exactly the way our Founders intended it to. To the extent House members were the most intransigent during the process—a matter of opinion, in any case—they were meant to be. The House of Representatives is the "popular branch," as described in...

Peace Corps regional recruiter Jason Beach said the organization has taken recent steps to prevent sexual assaults, including tailoring volunteer training to the cultural norms of each region and encouraging volunteers to report every incident to their supervisors. The program has formed several panels to study sexual assault, hired a victim advocate and established a case tracking system to better serve effected volunteers. In light of these measures, Charles “Chic” Dambach, a volunteer in Colombia from 1967 to 1969 and former CEO of both the Alliance for Peacebuilding and the National Peace Corps Association, said he did not feel the...

Background The past two years have witnessed a profound resurgence in public interest in constitutional federalism. While a number of States have been involved in this undertaking, the State of Texas, through the bold efforts of Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbot, and former Solicitor Generals Ted Cruz and Jim Ho, has been at the forefront of this movement. Texas has led the Nation in enacting environmental policies that clean the air and water without imposing undue burdens on businesses and citizens. It has had a light touch in business regulation, and now leads the Nation in employment growth....

At least four Democratic senators are advocating legal action against News Corp. for allegedly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying British police for information. Former Department of Justice attorneys David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey argue that legislation enacted to police bribery in government contracting is not applicable to news gathering.

At least four Democratic senators—Frank Lautenberg, Barbara Boxer, Robert Menendez and Jay Rockefeller—have alleged that News Corp. companies may have violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying British police for information. Those salivating at the prospect of an American legal offensive against News Corp. don't seem to appreciate the implications of deploying the FCPA in this situation: Its inappropriate application to news-gathering raises very significant First Amendment concerns for all U.S. media. The FCPA was enacted in 1977 in an effort to clean up government contracting, where bribery was then a way of life. U.S. and European...

"Of course, were Congress to reclaim this authority and separately approve each new U.S. debt issue, it would once again be directly responsible for government borrowing in a way that it has avoided for nearly 100 years. With political power comes political accountability. And that, more than anything else, is what the voters who brought a Republican majority back to the House of Representatives wanted. This true type of fiscal responsibility would also be far more consistent with the vision of our Founders. They believed that public borrowing was an important governmental tool, but one that should be used sparingly...

The United States cannot constitutionally default on its existing public debt even if the debt ceiling is not raised, constitutional scholar and attorney David Rivkin said during a Federalist Society news event. Instead, he said, the country should focus on the fiscal responsibility of new borrowing. “The United States, to put it more clearly, is one of the few countries in the world that is technically incapable of defaulting on its public debts, so we cannot have a situation like in Greece or Portugal or Ireland, ” Rivkin, co-chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism, said during a telephone...