Authored by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano via LewRockwell.com,
Thomas Cromwell was the Lord Chancellor of England for much of the reign of King Henry VIII. He engineered the convictions and executions of many whom Henry wanted out of the way, including his two predecessors in office - one of whom was St. Thomas More - and even the king's second wife, Queen Anne.
When Cromwell's son Gregory, who became sickened as he watched his father devolving from counselor to monster, learned that an executioner for the queen had been sent for from France a week before her trial, he asked his father what the purpose of her trial was if the king had preordained the queen's guilt and prepaid the executioner. Cromwell replied that the king needed a jury to give the appearance of legitimacy to her conviction and prevent the public perception of "the tyranny of one man's opinion."
In America, we have a Constitution not only to prevent the perception but also the reality of the tyranny of one man's opinion. The Constitution's Fifth Amendment makes clear that if the government wants life, liberty or property, it cannot take it by executive command, but only by due process - a fair jury trial and all its constitutional protections; and Article I makes it clear that if the government wants war, it cannot commence it by executive command, but only by congressional declaration.
We have a Constitution also to assure the separation of powers in the federal government. Congress writes the laws, appropriates the taxpayers' money and funds borrowed in their names and declares war when the United States is in danger of imminent foreign threat. The president enforces the laws, spends money as Congress directs and wages the wars Congress has authorized. The judiciary decides what the Constitution and the laws mean and, if properly challenged, determines if the president and Congress or the states have exercised their duties lawfully and constitutionally.
The central constitutional question is not whether a president sincerely believes that his policies are necessary. It is whether the Constitution permits personal liberty and limited government to depend upon the opinion of one man. That is the danger of executive government without effective legislative and judicial checks.
A fair reading of the Constitution begins with a truism: Presidential power is not whatever the president believes it to be. It is only what the Constitution and laws actually confer.
Consider the administration's attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats. President Donald Trump says he has directed military forces to strike narcotrafficking vessels and describes the operation as part of his campaign against fentanyl and cartels. But the constitutional question is separate from the president's characterization of the targets. A person suspected of being a drug trafficker - or even a mass murderer - does not thereby become condemned to death. Criminal guilt always requires accusation, evidence and adjudication according to law, before punishment.
These boat killings are unlawful extrajudicial executions. In the language all Americans can understand, they are murders.
The same principle applies to Iran. The Framers deliberately divided the war powers. Article I gives Congress the power to declare war, authorize military force, regulate the armed forces and control appropriations. Article II makes the president commander in chief. The distinction matters. The president commands forces; Congress determines where and under what circumstances the president does so.
Trump has openly declared an American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and said that the United States controls which ships pass through it. He has also imposed sanctions which deny food, medicine and currency stability to millions of innocent Iranians. He even threatened to murder all Iranians - beyond the thousands he has already killed - if a peace agreement is not soon reached.
Those statements highlight what the Constitution was designed to prevent one individual from addressing alone: Whether the United States should wage military and economic hostilities against the population of another nation.
Congress has repeatedly resisted treating the Iran conflict as a matter solely for presidential discretion. Just two weeks ago, support for Trump's war failed to muster majorities in both houses of Congress.
Nor can the president's personal assessment of Iran's nuclear intentions settle the matter. In 2018, his State Department's compliance report said Iran was fulfilling its nuclear-related non-proliferation commitments and U.S. intelligence had assessed with high confidence that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
In 2020, his State Department again said that Iran was not then engaged in key activities associated with designing and developing a nuclear weapon. In 2025, his Director of National Intelligence testified that the entire U.S. intelligence community continued to assess that Iran was not building nuclear weapons.
Those facts alone establish something constitutionally important: The president's personal belief - whether informed or uninformed - is not evidence or law or a substitute for congressional authorization.
The same textual principle reaches domestic spending and taxation. Article I provides that only Congress can impose taxes, and money may be drawn from the Treasury only pursuant to appropriations made by law. Even though the Supreme Court has invalidated Trump's tariffs, he continues to impose them. Even though Congress has not authorized funds for Trump's vanity projects, he continues to spend tax dollars on them.
The Constitution does not grant any branch of government carte blanche. It has separated powers precisely because legislators, presidents and judges can all succumb to the corruption of power - and can all be wrong.
That is the deeper meaning of the tyranny of one man's opinion. The danger is not merely that one president might be wrong. It is that a constitutional system becomes meaningless if one man's conclusions about war, crime, taxation, spending, foreign threats or national security become the sole basis for government actions - particularly actions that kill innocents.
The Founders separated the sword from the purse and divided governmental power because they understood a truism: Personal liberty and limited government cannot long survive when entrusted to one man's opinion.
Tyler Durden Fri, 10/02/2026 - 22:35Earlier this month, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman fueled speculation about the agency's high-speed flight research plans by unveiling a mysterious aircraft silhouette on a slide titled "Rebuilding our X-plane portfolio."
Asked whether the image on the slide depicted the famed SR-71 Blackbird, Isaacman denied it was a Blackbird but signaled renewed ambitions for high-altitude, high-speed flight, saying NASA was getting back into the business of "flying high and fast again."
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman showed a mysterious aircraft during the portion of his All-In Summit presentation on rebuilding NASA’s X-plane portfolio ✈️
• Isaacman showed a dark silhouette resembling a next-generation SR-71 Blackbird while discussing 'radical airframe and… pic.twitter.com/VNEDExk8K0
This brings us to an Aviation Week report saying NASA is working to return a Blackbird to flight after nearly three decades in retirement.
The agency has approached retired Blackbird engineers about restoring Tail No. 844, a 59-year-old aircraft removed earlier this year from an outdoor display at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California.
The aircraft was moved into a former Space Shuttle hangar, where crews have been working on it, former NASA and Air Force test engineer Mike Relja revealed to the aviation news website.
However, as the outlet shared, there is one major problem:
The Air Force and NASA destroyed a $600 million supply of spare parts for the Blackbird fleet in 2007. The move came long after it seemed unlikely, if not impossible, that an SR-71A would return to operational service.
That decision could lead to significant restart costs. In addition to all of the consumable spares that must be in regular supply, NASA would need to restore access to the Blackbird's unique JP-7 fuel blend, the triethylborane ignition chemical, engine oil and hydraulic fluids, Relja adds. A hodgepodge of bespoke ground equipment also no longer exists, leaving the current effort without vital, if unheralded, pieces of equipment.
"To raise the wing, you need a cart," he says. "To get the engine out, you need a cart. You need equipment to pull the [engine] spikes, pull the [ejection] seat. All that stuff is gone."
When Relja raised all of these issues with Ash, the NASA manager assured him it would not be a problem, without going into details about their solutions.
"Every time I threw one of these things out there, he says, 'Oh, engineering will take care of that [and] engineering will take care of that,'" Relja recalls.
At the same time, he does not dismiss a return to flight as impossible, especially if NASA has enough resources to make it achievable.
"If you got a ton of money, maybe you can make it happen," he says. "They went to the Moon, you know."
Why NASA wants to restore the SR-71 to flightworthy status remains unclear. Reports over the years have pointed to Lockheed Martin's development of the SR-72, dubbed the "Son of Blackbird," for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. Yet no flight tests have been publicly confirmed.
Tyler Durden Fri, 10/02/2026 - 22:10