Search Results for: ex post facto

“The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the horrible news.”          Berthold Brecht An Existential Task Until the end of his presidency –  and even after his open complicity in subverting the United States Constitution on January 6, 2021 – Donald J. Trump held effectively unchecked nuclear command authority. Now, after multiple criminal [...]

The Supreme Court of the State of Colorado struck down the state’s Child Sexual Abuse Accountability Act (CSAAA) on Tuesday, ruling that the law violates the state constitution and is “unconstitutionally retrospective.” Justice Monica M. Márquez authored the opinion of the court.  The court ruled that the CSAA violates Article II, Section 11 of the [...]

South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Jocelyn Newman ruled Tuesday that the state’s planned use of a firing squad and an electric chair for executions was unconstitutional. This ruling grants relief to four death row inmates. Freddie Eugene Owens, Brad Keith Sigmon, Gary Dubose Terry, and Richard Bernard Moore were all convicted of committing at least [...]

Abstract: For Israel, core issues surrounding Iran’s still-accelerating nuclear weapons program have been strategic and political, rather than legal. Nonetheless, if Israel should ever decide that it no longer has any reasonable alternative to launching a preemptive attack against certain Iranian military/industrial targets, this defensive first-strike would need to be justified under international law. In [...]

“History is an illustrious war against death.” – José Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (1958) Afghanistan and “Palestine”: Newly Emerging Linkages At first glance, there are no obvious connections between the Taliban victory over the United States in Afghanistan and Palestinian terrorism against Israel. Upon closer inspection, however, the recent Taliban triumph reflects more [...]

The recent review of the U.S. human rights record at the United Nations through the Universal Periodic Review process yielded 347 recommendations for improvement, 80% of which the U.S. accepted. Among them were several urging the U.S. to rescind a Trump-era executive order targeting the International Criminal Court (ICC) and those who support it. Just [...]

Abstract: In principle, especially during a rare historical moment of extra-terrestrial exploration and immunological control, our species ought to render itself capable of managing nuclear threats. Prima facie, after all, the difficulties of transporting complex instrumentation to Mars and simultaneously fashioning effective vaccines against deadly pathogens should exceed even the most complex challenges of international peace. Nonetheless, [...]

“Hic Sunt Dracones” – the Hunt-Lenox Globe, 1504 “Friction is the difference between war on paper, and war as it actually is.” – Carl von Clausewitz, On War Once again, on October 9, 2020, with immodest displays of tangible hardware, North Korea mocked Donald Trump’s lingering expectations of “denuclearization.” Here, in Pyongyang, President Kim Jong [...]

“Everything is very simple in war, but even the simplest thing is difficult.” – Karl von Clausewitz, On War There is palpable wisdom in Clausewitz’s classic observation about war. Where this wisdom is understood in terms of current United States national security challenges, one overarching extrapolation comes immediately to the fore: It would be trouble enough [...]

“All people…who dare not defend themselves when they know they are in the right, who submit to punishment not because of what they have done but because of who they are, are already dead by their own decision; and whether or not they survive physically depends on chance. If circumstances are not favorable, they end [...]