Sometimes government listens.

Sometimes citizens show up, ask difficult questions, refuse to accept rehearsed assurances—and the people entrusted with public power reconsider their position.

That is what happened this week in Pleasant Valley.

On Wednesday, residents packed Pleasant Valley Town Hall for a public forum on Flock cameras and automated license-plate readers. Two days later, Dutchess County Sheriff Kirk Imperati and District Attorney Anthony Parisi announced that they were jointly withdrawing their support for the county’s continued use of Flock Safety technology. (midhudsonnews.com)

That is a significant reversal.

Approximately 64 Flock or similar license-plate-reading cameras are currently deployed throughout Dutchess County as part of the county’s Analysis and Real-Time Crime Intelligence Center. The Democratic majority in the County Legislature now says it will introduce an October resolution seeking to suspend data collection, cover the cameras, and move toward their removal. (midhudsonnews.com)

There will undoubtedly be politicians eager to claim victory. There always are.

But this should not become another partisan trophy to be waved around during an election year. It should be recognized for what it is: an example of citizens exercising their right to question government and public officials demonstrating the willingness to listen.

Let me be clear: I support law enforcement.

Our police officers deserve the technology, staffing, training, and community cooperation necessary to catch criminals and protect innocent people. Flock cameras have legitimate investigative uses. They can help recover stolen vehicles, locate missing people, identify dangerous suspects, and establish timelines in serious criminal cases.

Sheriff Imperati still believes properly regulated license-plate-reader technology can provide legitimate value to law enforcement. His decision was not an admission that the cameras had never worked or that local officers had abused them. In fact, no evidence of misuse within Dutchess County has been publicly identified. (midhudsonnews.com)

That distinction matters.

This was not a case of the sheriff and district attorney being caught doing something improper. It was a case of residents raising legitimate concerns about the extraordinary power of the technology itself.

Flock cameras do not record only suspected criminals. They capture information about every passing vehicle: its license plate, location, time, direction of travel, and identifying characteristics.

Your car. My car. The schoolteacher driving home. The parishioner going to Mass. The nurse reporting for work. The political activist attending a meeting. The woman entering a medical facility. The journalist meeting a confidential source.

Everyone is recorded—not because they are suspected of doing something wrong, but because they happened to drive down a public road.

That should concern conservatives every bit as much as liberals.

Supporters argue that license plates are visible in public. That is true, but it misses the larger point.

A police officer noticing your car at an intersection is not the same as a connected network creating a searchable digital history of your movements. Human observation is limited and temporary. A network of automated cameras can allow someone sitting behind a computer to trace a vehicle across multiple locations and communities.

That is no longer simple observation. It is surveillance.

The central issue was never whether Sheriff Imperati or District Attorney Parisi could be trusted. Both men have devoted decades to law enforcement and public safety. The issue was whether any government should possess this much information about innocent citizens without stronger laws, independent oversight, and clearly enforceable restrictions.

Policies change. Administrations change. Technology expands. Databases are shared. Systems built for violent crimes eventually attract less serious uses.

That is how mission creep works.

A tool introduced to locate dangerous offenders becomes a convenient way to investigate minor offenses. A database created to recover stolen vehicles can potentially reveal who attended a protest, visited a particular home, crossed state lines, sought medical care, or associated with someone the government considers suspicious.

The proper question was never whether the cameras could help solve crimes. They could.

The question was whether those benefits justified recording the movements of thousands of innocent people—and whether county government could guarantee that the information would never be misused, improperly shared, hacked, or repurposed.

No government can honestly make that guarantee.

At Wednesday’s forum, residents raised those concerns directly. They did what citizens are supposed to do: they showed up, spoke clearly, challenged authority, and demanded answers.

Then something refreshingly unusual happened.

The people in authority listened.

District Attorney Parisi acknowledged that public participation becomes meaningless if officials refuse to change course after hearing from the community. Sheriff Imperati made the equally important point that public safety depends upon public trust. (midhudsonnews.com)

They are right.

Leadership is not stubbornness. It is not digging in simply because reversing a decision may allow political opponents to celebrate. Real leadership means weighing new information, hearing the public, and changing direction when continued support for a policy would damage the trust necessary to govern effectively.

Sheriff Imperati and District Attorney Parisi deserve credit for making that choice.

Their decision does not make them anti-police. It does not mean Dutchess County is abandoning technology or surrendering to criminals. It means they recognized that even a useful law-enforcement tool can carry a price the community is unwilling to pay.

Those celebrating the decision should also resist the temptation to turn it into political theater.

Calling for responsible limits on surveillance is not the same as “defunding the police.” Supporting law enforcement does not require giving government unlimited access to information about innocent citizens. Those are false choices promoted by people more interested in winning arguments than solving problems.

We can support our police officers while insisting upon constitutional boundaries.

We can value public safety while protecting personal privacy.

We can respect law enforcement officials while questioning the tools placed in their hands.

That is not hostility toward government. It is self-government.

The next step must be clear and orderly. Data collection should be suspended promptly. The cameras should be disabled and removed. Existing information should be handled under a transparent deletion policy, and the public should receive a full accounting of what information was collected, how it was searched, which outside agencies had access, and what continuing contractual obligations remain.

The County Legislature must now ensure that the announced reversal becomes an enforceable public policy—not merely a press release.

Pleasant Valley residents helped bring this debate into the light. Dutchess County residents spoke. Sheriff Imperati and District Attorney Parisi listened.

In an age when politicians so often pretend to seek public input after decisions have already been made, that is worth acknowledging.

Public safety matters.

So does the presumption of innocence.

And free citizens should be able to drive to work, worship, visit friends, attend meetings, seek medical care, and live their lives without government quietly assembling a searchable history of where they have been.

This week, the machinery of government did something it does not do often enough.

It stopped. It listened. And it changed course.

That is not weakness.

That is what accountability looks like.

To comfort the afflicted…and afflict the comfortable.

By Ed Kowalski

New York collected $1.3 billion in tax revenue from online sports betting this year.

That is not pocket change. It is enough money to make even the most seasoned Albany politician briefly pause—before figuring out how to spend every last dime of it.

Since online sports betting was legalized in 2022, the industry has generated approximately $8.3 billion in gross revenue. New York imposed one of the most aggressive tax structures in the nation and watched the money pour into state coffers.

So, here is the question every New York taxpayer should be asking:

If Albany keeps finding new sources of revenue, why does living in New York never become more affordable?

The answer is painfully simple: Albany does not view additional revenue as an opportunity to reduce the burden on taxpayers. It views additional revenue as permission to spend more.

This year’s enacted state budget is estimated at an astonishing $277 billion—a 7% increase over the previous year. The state comptroller has warned that spending is projected to exceed revenue throughout the financial plan, raising serious questions about New York’s long-term fiscal sustainability. (osc.ny.gov)

Only in Albany can the state collect billions more, spend billions more and then congratulate itself for fighting “affordability.”

Apparently, the government’s definition of affordability is taking more of your money, running it through an enormous state bureaucracy and eventually returning a portion of it through a carefully branded program bearing a politician’s name.

That is not tax relief.

That is a political rebate program.

New York collected $127.5 billion in state taxes during the last fiscal year—nearly $10 billion more than the year before and $2.3 billion above projections. Yet total state spending still climbed to almost $259 billion, an increase of $17.5 billion in just one year. (osc.ny.gov)

Read those numbers again.

Tax collections rose by nearly $10 billion, but spending increased by $17.5 billion.

That is not a revenue problem. It is a spending problem.

If a family in Pleasant Valley handled its household finances that way, the credit cards would eventually be declined. If a small business in Dutchess County consistently allowed expenses to grow faster than income, it would close its doors.

Albany, however, never has to confront those consequences immediately. It can raise taxes, increase fees, borrow money and pass the bill to people who have no choice but to pay it.

Even the state comptroller warned earlier this year that projected spending was growing faster than anticipated revenue. At that point, cumulative budget gaps were expected to reach $27.5 billion through the 2030 fiscal year. The enacted budget only increased the concern. (osc.ny.gov)

Meanwhile, state agency overtime reached $1.6 billion in 2025—an increase of nearly 23% in a single year. The state workforce also grew for the third consecutive year. (osc.ny.gov)

There are legitimate reasons for government spending. We need functioning schools, safe roads, reliable infrastructure, responsible healthcare programs and support for people who truly need it.

This is not an argument for eliminating essential services.

It is an argument for demanding priorities.

Albany’s defenders will point to uncertainty surrounding federal funding and argue that New York must spend more to protect vulnerable residents. Federal decisions may indeed create difficult choices. But uncertainty is precisely when responsible leaders control recurring expenses, eliminate ineffective programs, strengthen oversight and distinguish genuine needs from political wish lists.

Instead, Albany continues expanding spending while weakening the very accountability mechanisms that might help taxpayers understand where their money is going.

The comptroller warned that billions of dollars in proposed state spending could be removed from independent oversight and competitive procurement requirements. When government is spending more than ever, taxpayers should be receiving greater transparency—not less. (osc.ny.gov)

The sports-betting windfall makes the absurdity especially clear.

This revenue does not magically appear. It comes from money wagered—and often lost—by New Yorkers. Albany encourages the activity, advertises the tax revenue and then spends the proceeds as though it found a bag of cash on the steps of the Capitol.

There is also something troubling about a government becoming financially dependent upon its citizens gambling more. Once that revenue is folded into ever-growing budgets, Albany has a vested interest in keeping the bets—and the losses—coming.

At the very least, unexpected revenue should be used to reduce debt, strengthen reserves or provide permanent, broad-based tax relief. It should not become another excuse to create programs that require even more spending next year.

New Yorkers are not demanding a government that does nothing. We are asking for one that understands the difference between spending and solving.

We are asking elected officials to measure success by results rather than announcements, press conferences and the size of the next budget.

We are asking why every new tax, fee, gambling program and revenue windfall disappears into Albany without ever making life noticeably easier for the people supplying the money.

Most of all, we are asking a question Albany seems determined to avoid:

How much is enough?

For the political class, the answer is apparently always the same:

Just a little more.

For the taxpayers of New York, however, “a little more” has become far too much.

Affordability will not be achieved by expanding government in our name. It will begin when Albany learns to leave more of our money where it belongs—in our own pockets.

A Valley Viewpoint Narrative

Let me begin with something that should not be controversial: I support law enforcement.

Police officers deserve the technology, staffing, training, and community cooperation necessary to catch criminals and protect innocent people. If a camera helps locate a kidnapped child, recover a stolen vehicle, or identify someone fleeing a violent crime, that is a real and legitimate public benefit.

But supporting the police does not require us to surrender our constitutional principles—or our common sense.

Flock cameras are automated license-plate readers placed along public roads. They do not photograph only suspected criminals. They record every vehicle that passes: its license plate, location, time, direction of travel, and identifying characteristics.

Your car. My car. The schoolteacher driving home. The parishioner going to Mass. The nurse reporting for work. The political activist attending a meeting. The woman entering a medical facility. The journalist meeting a confidential source.

Everyone is recorded—not because they are suspected of doing something wrong, but because they happened to drive down a public road.

That should concern conservatives every bit as much as liberals.

We regularly hear politicians talk about limited government, personal freedom, and constitutional rights. Those principles are easy to defend when nothing is at stake. The real test comes when government offers us something useful in exchange for quietly expanding its power.

Flock cameras present precisely that test.

The company says its current default retention period is seven days, although evidence associated with an investigation may be preserved longer and governments can authorize extended retention. The system collects license-plate images, vehicle characteristics, timestamps, and camera locations. (flocksafety.com, flocksafety.com)

Supporters will say license plates are already visible in public. That is true—but it misses the point.

A police officer seeing your car at an intersection is not the same as a privately operated network creating a searchable digital record of your movements. Human observation is temporary and limited. A connected camera network can allow someone sitting behind a computer to reconstruct where a vehicle has traveled across multiple communities.

That is no longer simple observation. It is surveillance.

The question is not whether the police chief currently running the system is trustworthy. Perhaps that chief is entirely trustworthy. The question is whether the system itself contains adequate limits for every officer, employee, outside agency, future administration, and government official who may gain access to it.

Policies change. Administrations change. Technology expands. Databases are shared. Systems built for serious crimes inevitably begin attracting less serious uses.

That is how mission creep works.

A tool introduced to find stolen cars becomes a tool for investigating minor offenses. A database created to locate violent suspects becomes a convenient way to determine who attended a protest, visited a particular home, crossed state lines, or associated with someone the government considers suspicious.

Privacy advocates have already documented examples of inaccurate license-plate information, overly broad data sharing, and searches extending far beyond the violent crimes generally used to sell these systems to the public. (sls.eff.org, setarsoltani.ir)

And what happens when the system is wrong?

A bad plate reading is not merely a computer error when armed officers believe they are approaching a stolen vehicle or a dangerous suspect. It can mean an innocent driver being surrounded, ordered from a car, handcuffed, or placed in danger because an algorithm, database, or human operator made a mistake.

Technology does not eliminate human error. It can multiply it—and give that error the appearance of certainty.

None of this means law enforcement should be denied every modern investigative tool. It means those tools must be targeted, transparent, and accountable.

Before any town, county, or police agency installs Flock cameras, the public deserves clear answers:

Who can search the system? What level of suspicion is required? Is a warrant necessary? Which outside agencies can access locally collected information? How long is the information retained? Who audits searches for misuse? Will every search require a legitimate case number? What penalties apply when someone violates the rules? And will residents be told how often the cameras actually solve serious crimes?

“Trust us” is not a privacy policy.

If a community nevertheless adopts this technology, its use should be narrowly limited to serious crimes, stolen vehicles, missing persons, and genuine threats to public safety. Every search should be documented and independently audited. Data sharing should be restricted. Retention should be as short as possible. Officials should publish regular reports, and the entire program should expire unless elected representatives publicly vote to renew it.

Those are not anti-police restrictions. They protect police departments from misuse, scandal, and the loss of public trust.

The Fourth Amendment was not written because the Founders distrusted every individual government official. It was written because they understood that unchecked government power will eventually be abused, regardless of the good intentions that accompanied its creation.

Flock cameras may help solve crimes. That fact deserves acknowledgment.

But usefulness alone has never been the measure of whether government should possess a particular power. A camera inside every home might solve crimes, too. We would reject that proposition immediately because some boundaries should not be crossed merely in the name of efficiency.

Americans should not be required to choose between effective law enforcement and personal liberty. We can support the police without accepting a system that records the movements of thousands of innocent people to locate the relatively few who may have committed a crime.

Public safety matters.

So does the presumption of innocence.

And free citizens should be able to drive to work, worship, visit friends, attend meetings, seek medical care, and live their lives without government quietly assembling a searchable history of where they have been.

Once we build the machinery of mass surveillance, we cannot guarantee that only honorable people will operate it—or that it will always be used for honorable purposes.

That is why the time to establish limits is before the cameras go up, not after the public discovers how they have been used.

To comfort the afflicted…and afflict the comfortable.

The Valley Viewpoint is launching a Courtwatch Program across the Hudson Valley — in both federal and state courts.

Why? Because justice must be seen to be real.
Too often, bail and pretrial hearings happen out of sight—impacting jobs, families, and futures. We’re changing that.

👀 What we’ll do:

Use virtual court access to observe hearings

Train local volunteers to serve as “eyes and ears”

Report findings back to YOU, the community

⚖️ If you have an issue in federal or state court, let us know. We want to hear your story.

👉 Want to get involved or share an issue? Contact us:
📧 kowalski@thevalleyviewpoint.net

📞 845-518-1943

TheValleyViewpoint #HudsonValley #Courtwatch #JusticeMatters

First off, we’ve got more rules than a Catholic school cafeteria. Taxes? Confiscatory. Regulations? Smothering. And behind it all is the old boys’ network, greased by special interests from Buffalo to Montauk. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Democrat or Republican running the show—everyone’s making sure their slice of the pie is safely wrapped in tinfoil. The rare soul who dares to put public interest ahead of self-interest usually lasts about as long as a cannoli at a church picnic.

Then there’s the people. A whole state full of folks who think they’re entitled to something that isn’t theirs. And no, I’m not even talking about welfare. I’m talking about the “not in my backyard” brigade. The jealous neighbor who suddenly turns into Ralph Nader the minute you propose building anything within ten miles of their mailbox. Or the transplant from Brooklyn who “found their little slice of heaven” upstate and now wants to put a “Closed” sign on the county line. Never mind that their perfect farmhouse used to be a cornfield. Change for me? Fine. Change for thee? Absolutely not.

And God help you if you try to build something. You’ll run into setbacks, greenspace mandates, and enough forms to wallpaper the Empire State Building. Then the state piles on with regulations that cost tens of thousands and take years to process. By the time you get your permit, your grandkids are old enough to inherit the project.

Want an example of runaway spending? Look no further than education. New York shells out a mind-blowing $36,293 per kid, per year. That’s Ivy League money. And yet half those kids still end up in remedial math and English when they hit college. Try trimming the fat and suddenly every special interest in the state forms a human shield around the budget. Your kids? Meh. What really matters is protecting everyone’s “slice of the pie.”

So there you have it. New York: the land of high taxes, higher regulations, and the highest concentration of people who don’t want you doing a blessed thing near their backyard. But hey—at least we’ve got great bagels.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has publicly reprimanded Judge Shelley Joseph for her conduct during a 2018 courthouse incident in which an undocumented immigrant avoided an ICE agent waiting to arrest him.

The court did not find that Joseph knew about—or authorized—the defendant’s departure through a rear courthouse door. That distinction matters. Judges, like everyone else, should be judged on evidence rather than political assumptions.

But the court also refused to pretend that nothing improper happened.

After learning that an ICE officer was waiting inside the Newton District Court, Joseph participated in an off-the-record discussion about the defendant’s case. She suggested that he might be held overnight in state custody, despite there apparently being no lawful basis to detain him. She also directed that the courtroom’s audio-recording system be turned off.

The defendant was later released through a rear exit while the federal agent waited elsewhere in the courthouse.

Perhaps Joseph did not know precisely how the defendant would leave. Perhaps she never expressly approved an escape plan. But judges are held to a higher standard than merely avoiding provable participation in misconduct. They are responsible for preserving public confidence that courtrooms are places where the law is applied—not maneuvered around according to the political sympathies of the person wearing the robe.

That is why the court’s finding of an “appearance of impropriety” is more consequential than the carefully qualified language might suggest.

An ordinary citizen watching this unfold could reasonably ask some uncomfortable questions: Why was the recording turned off? Why was detaining the defendant overnight even discussed? Why did the defendant ultimately leave through a back door while an ICE agent waited to take him into custody?

Those questions do not disappear simply because investigators could not prove that Joseph personally authorized the exit.

Federal obstruction charges filed against Joseph in 2019 were dropped in 2022 after she agreed to submit the matter to Massachusetts’ judicial disciplinary process. The Commission on Judicial Conduct initially pursued much stronger sanctions, but a hearing officer ultimately concluded that the evidence did not establish that Joseph knowingly participated in the defendant’s evasion. The state’s highest court unanimously adopted the recommendation of a public reprimand. The official Massachusetts decision⁠ and Reuters’ account of the ruling⁠ detail that history.

The reprimand was warranted. But after eight years of investigations, criminal proceedings, disciplinary hearings and legal argument, it also feels strikingly modest.

This case was never only about immigration. It was about whether a judge’s personal views—or even the appearance of those views—could influence what happened inside a courtroom.

State judges are free to disagree with federal immigration policy. They may believe ICE enforcement is too aggressive, unfair or politically motivated. They may express those views as private citizens within the ethical restrictions governing judicial conduct.

What they may not do is allow the courthouse to appear to become a sanctuary from federal law.

The rule of law cannot depend upon which laws a particular judge finds morally acceptable. If conservative judges attempted to help defendants evade federal gun laws, environmental regulations or civil-rights enforcement, their political opponents would rightly condemn it. The principle cannot change simply because immigration is the issue and resistance to ICE is fashionable in certain jurisdictions.

Judicial integrity requires more than good intentions. It requires transparency, restraint and fidelity to lawful procedure—especially when a case involves a politically charged subject.

Turning off the recorder was not transparent. Discussing detention without a lawful basis was not restrained. And creating circumstances that appeared to help someone avoid federal authorities did not strengthen confidence in the administration of justice.

Judge Joseph may not have knowingly arranged an escape. The evidence did not prove that she did. But her actions helped create a courthouse scene that looked less like impartial justice and more like institutional resistance.

The public reprimand acknowledges that damage. Whether it adequately addresses it is another question.

Because when citizens enter a courtroom, they should not have to wonder whether the law will be applied as written—or filtered through the politics of the person sitting behind the bench.

There is nothing wrong with an elected official using social media to communicate with the public. In today’s world, it would be political malpractice not to.

But there is a vast difference between communicating directly with citizens and quietly assembling an online army to distribute government-approved talking points while pretending to offer independent commentary.

That is the disturbing line Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration appears to have crossed.

According to reporting by the Columbia Journalism Review, City Hall created a private Signal channel through which nearly 200 social-media influencers reportedly received daily updates, talking points and video clips from the administration. Some were granted interviews and special access to the mayor, while certain city agencies reportedly entered paid promotional arrangements with content creators.

City Hall insists it has never paid influencers for favorable coverage. But that narrow denial misses the larger issue.

Access has value. Interviews have value. Visibility has value. And when creators know that favorable treatment may lead to future opportunities, the distinction between independent commentary and government public relations becomes increasingly difficult to see.

It becomes even more troubling when we examine the people who were allegedly welcomed into this privileged circle.

A New York Post column reports that some members of the network have celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk, endorsed violence against ICE agents, described America as operating “concentration camps,” called for the abolition of police and prisons, and excused violence directed at a synagogue.

These are not merely disagreements over tax policy or municipal spending. This is rhetoric that dehumanizes political opponents and, in some cases, appears to normalize violence.

The mayor’s office argues that inclusion in the group does not amount to an endorsement of everything an influencer has ever said. That is fair—as far as it goes. Public officials routinely speak with reporters and commentators whose opinions they reject.

But these individuals were reportedly not simply asking questions at an open press conference. They were being supplied with government messaging through a private communications channel and given a level of access unavailable to ordinary New Yorkers.

That creates a responsibility to explain who was included, how they were selected and whether public resources were used to support the operation.

The secrecy surrounding the arrangement makes matters worse. Messages in the Signal group were reportedly set to disappear automatically, despite New York’s requirements governing the preservation of official records. The administration has acknowledged that the disappearing-message setting was improper, and the New York City Council has scheduled an oversight hearing.

That hearing must be more than political theater.

Council members should demand a complete list of participating influencers, all communications sent through the channel, the criteria used to select its members and a full accounting of payments made by city agencies—or by contractors acting on their behalf.

New Yorkers also deserve to know whether influencers were expected to identify their relationship with City Hall when sharing administration-generated material.

The central issue is not whether Mamdani’s supporters are liberal, socialist or conservative. Government should be free to communicate its policies, and citizens should be free to support them.

The issue is disclosure.

When a newspaper endorses a candidate, readers know they are reading an editorial. When a campaign purchases an advertisement, the public is told who paid for it. When a government agency issues a press release, the source is clearly identified.

But when official talking points are passed through supposedly independent social-media personalities, government messaging can masquerade as spontaneous public opinion.

That is not transparency. It is political influence conducted behind a digital curtain.

The dangers extend well beyond one mayor or one political party. A Republican administration could use the same method to reward conservative creators, freeze out critics and manufacture the appearance of grassroots support. The standard cannot change depending upon who occupies City Hall.

This matters in the Hudson Valley, too.

County executives, town supervisors, school districts and public authorities increasingly bypass traditional journalism and communicate through carefully cultivated online supporters. Residents should always ask who created the message, who supplied the information and whether the person presenting it received money, access or some other benefit.

Social media has already blurred the boundary between reporting, entertainment and activism. Government should not be permitted to blur it further by quietly turning influencers into an unofficial communications department.

Charlie Kirk believed in confronting opposing ideas through debate. Celebrating his murder is not political discourse. Suggesting that violence is an acceptable answer to speech is not activism. It is moral cowardice.

Mayor Mamdani cannot be held personally responsible for every offensive statement made by every individual who supports him. But he can—and should—be held responsible for the people his administration chooses to elevate, brief and reward with privileged access.

Free speech protects the right of these influencers to reveal exactly who they are.

Government transparency requires City Hall to reveal exactly what relationship it has with them.

New Yorkers deserve facts, not manufactured enthusiasm. They deserve an independent press, not an influencer chorus repeating the government’s daily script.

And they deserve to know when City Hall is speaking—even when it is using someone else’s voice.

There are few institutions in American life that demand more trust than the judiciary. Federal judges possess enormous power. They can take away liberty, determine the fate of property, compel compliance with court orders and hold ordinary citizens in contempt. Their rulings can alter lives permanently.

With that power must come a standard of conduct considerably higher than the one expected in an ordinary workplace.

That is why the case involving U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross—and the federal judiciary’s response to it—deserves far more attention than it has received.

According to the Eleventh Circuit’s own investigation, the judge engaged in an extramarital relationship with a high-ranking police officer, including sexual activity inside judicial chambers during working hours. Court employees were close enough to hear what was occurring. The judge also attended a partisan political event and initially made false statements to fellow judges investigating the allegations.

These are not merely accusations supplied by political opponents. They are findings contained in the judiciary’s own official record. The investigating committee concluded that the behavior was “wholly inappropriate and unfitting of a federal judge” and that the false statements were “egregious.” Eleventh Circuit Judicial Council order⁠

And the punishment?

A private reprimand.

The judge also agreed to apologize to six former law clerks, relinquish the possibility of someday serving as chief judge and refrain indefinitely from serving on Judicial Conference committees. A national judicial panel subsequently upheld that discipline as “appropriate and proportionate.” Reuters⁠

Appropriate and proportionate?

Imagine an ordinary federal employee engaging in sexual activity in a government office during working hours, creating an uncomfortable environment for subordinates and then making false statements when questioned by superiors. Would that employee receive a confidential letter and be permitted to continue working as though little had happened?

Imagine an attorney appearing before a federal judge and making demonstrably false representations during an official inquiry. Would the court respond with such extraordinary patience and concern for the attorney’s rehabilitation?

We know the answer.

This is not principally about adultery, private morality or partisan politics. It is about conduct inside a federal courthouse. It is about the effect that conduct had on court employees. It is about honesty during an official judicial investigation. Most importantly, it is about whether those who administer justice are willing to impose upon themselves anything resembling the standards they impose upon everyone else.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Courts Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa and Congressman Clay Fuller are now asking Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor to explain why such serious misconduct produced only a private reprimand. They have reportedly requested information about whether members of the Judicial Council believed stronger discipline was warranted and how this punishment is supposed to strengthen public confidence in the courts. Bloomberg Law⁠

Those are legitimate questions.

The committee explained its leniency by citing the judge’s eventual correction of the false statements, the perceived unlikelihood that the conduct would be repeated and an otherwise exemplary judicial record. Rehabilitation and genuine remorse should certainly matter. But eventual candor is not the same thing as immediate honesty—particularly when the truth emerges only after an investigation has begun uncovering the evidence.

Federal courts regularly instruct litigants that honesty is not optional, court orders are not suggestions and respect for the judicial process is essential. Those principles cannot apply only to the people standing before the bench. They must apply with even greater force to the person sitting behind it.

Judicial independence is essential to our constitutional system. Judges must be protected from intimidation and political retaliation simply because someone dislikes a ruling. But judicial independence cannot be transformed into judicial immunity from meaningful accountability. Independence protects judges in the honest exercise of their duties; it should never become a shield for personal misconduct or dishonesty.

The judiciary’s largely internal disciplinary system also presents an unavoidable problem: judges investigating judges, judging the seriousness of another judge’s behavior and then deciding how much the public is permitted to know. Even when that process is conducted conscientiously, secrecy creates the appearance of institutional self-protection.

That appearance alone damages public confidence.

Respect for the courts cannot be commanded by a robe, a lifetime appointment or the threat of contempt. It must be earned through impartiality, integrity, transparency and a willingness to acknowledge institutional failure.

The public is not asking federal judges to be perfect. It is asking them to live under the same rules they enforce—and to tell the truth when they fail.

A courthouse cannot credibly demand accountability from everyone who enters it while quietly lowering the standard for those who preside over it.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom of the Southern District of Florida recently warned that judges and members of the legal profession must do a better job educating the public about the judiciary’s essential role in American democracy.

Her comments followed the release of two reports raising separate but closely related concerns: increasing threats against judges and a growing willingness to defy court orders.

Both should trouble every American.

Our constitutional system depends upon three independent branches of government. Courts do not command armies, control police departments or hold the nation’s purse strings. Their authority ultimately rests upon something far less tangible but every bit as important: public confidence in the integrity of the judicial process and respect for the rule of law.

When court orders are casually ignored because they are politically inconvenient, the damage extends well beyond any particular case or administration. A judicial order cannot be treated as binding only when we agree with the judge who issued it. There are appeals, motions and established procedures for challenging decisions believed to be legally or constitutionally wrong. Defiance is not one of them.

At the same time, defending judicial independence must never be confused with shielding judges from legitimate criticism or accountability.

Judges exercise enormous power over people’s property, freedom, families and futures. They must explain their rulings, follow the law, respect constitutional protections and remain accountable when judicial authority is misused. Lifetime tenure was designed to protect federal judges from political pressure—not to place them beyond scrutiny.

That distinction matters.

Threatening a judge is never acceptable. Criticizing a judge, questioning a ruling or demanding transparency is not a threat to democracy. It is part of democracy. Public confidence cannot be commanded from the bench; it must be earned through fairness, consistency, restraint and openness.

Judge Bloom is right that the legal community must educate the public. But that education cannot consist solely of lectures about why courts deserve respect. It must also include an honest discussion about the responsibilities that accompany judicial power—and the safeguards available when that power is exercised improperly.

Americans should understand that an independent judiciary protects everyone, particularly when government becomes overreaching or politically motivated. Courts have often served as the last line of defense for unpopular individuals, minority viewpoints and citizens without political influence.

But the judiciary must also understand something about the American people: trust is not strengthened by secrecy, arrogance or the suggestion that judges are above criticism. It is strengthened when courts demonstrate that the same rules apply to everyone—including those who wear the robe.

We should vigorously defend judges against intimidation and violence. We should insist that lawful court orders be obeyed unless overturned through the appellate process. And we should be equally forceful in demanding transparency, due process and accountability from the judiciary itself.

Those principles are not contradictory. Together, they are the foundation of the rule of law.

A free nation needs independent judges. It also needs judges worthy of that independence.

There was a time when Americans worried about an imperial presidency.

Perhaps we should also be asking whether we are witnessing the rise of an imperial judiciary.

That question has once again moved to the center of American politics because of U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, the Massachusetts federal judge who has repeatedly intervened in President Donald Trump’s effort to impose new requirements on mail-in voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Talwani has blocked portions of the President’s executive order.

She has blocked the Postal Service from implementing portions of the administration’s policy.

And now the Trump administration has gone back to the United States Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the new Postal Service rules to take effect.

But beneath the political arguments over Donald Trump and mail-in voting lies a much larger question.

Exactly how much power should one federal district judge possess?

The Easy Answer Isn’t Good Enough

Whenever a federal judge blocks something a president does, supporters of that president inevitably complain about an “activist judge.”

Democrats did it when Republican-appointed judges blocked Biden administration policies.

Republicans do it when Democratic-appointed judges block Trump administration policies.

That doesn’t get us very far.

Judicial review is not judicial activism.

Federal judges have both the authority and the responsibility to determine whether presidents are acting within the Constitution and laws enacted by Congress.

If a president exceeds his constitutional authority, we should want a federal judge willing to say so.

That principle must apply regardless of whether the president’s name is Trump, Biden, Obama or anyone else.

But there is another side to that constitutional equation.

Judges have limits too.

And that is where the Talwani controversy becomes considerably more interesting.

One Judge Versus the President

Consider what has happened.

President Trump issued an executive order seeking significant changes involving mail-in ballots.

Talwani concluded that portions of that order exceeded presidential authority.

Her central constitutional argument is hardly frivolous.

The Constitution gives states significant responsibility for conducting elections while giving Congress authority to alter certain election regulations.

It does not explicitly assign the president an independent power to rewrite election procedures.

Talwani therefore concluded that the president could not simply create powers for himself that the Constitution had assigned elsewhere.

That’s a serious constitutional argument.

But something else should make Americans uncomfortable regardless of their political affiliation.

A single unelected federal district judge can issue an order capable of stopping an elected president’s policy from operating far beyond the courtroom in which the case was brought.

Think about the enormous power contained in that sentence.

One judge.

One courtroom.

A policy affecting an entire nation.

That doesn’t automatically make the decision wrong.

But it should make us ask questions.

Who Is Checking Whom?

We constantly hear about checks and balances.

Congress checks the president.

The president checks Congress.

The judiciary checks both.

But our discussions increasingly seem to stop there.

Who checks the judiciary?

The obvious answer is the appellate courts and ultimately the Supreme Court.

And the Talwani litigation provides an interesting illustration of exactly that process.

Talwani previously blocked portions of Trump’s executive order.

The Supreme Court subsequently lifted one of those barriers, concluding that the states’ challenge at that stage was premature.

Importantly, however, the Supreme Court did not definitively declare Trump’s underlying policy constitutional.

The Postal Service subsequently finalized its rule.

Talwani intervened again.

And the administration is now back before the Supreme Court.

That distinction matters.

It would be unfair to say that Talwani is simply defying a Supreme Court ruling that declared Trump’s policy lawful.

The Supreme Court hasn’t done that.

But the continuing judicial ping-pong illustrates something increasingly common in American government:

Major national policies can spend months moving between a president, a district judge, an appeals court and the Supreme Court before anyone knows what the law actually is.

That is not an insignificant problem.

The Presidency Isn’t the Only Institution Capable of Overreach

For years, conservatives have complained about judicial activism.

Liberals have often responded that what conservatives call activism is simply judges enforcing constitutional protections.

Sometimes they’re right.

But liberals should consider the opposite scenario.

Imagine a Democratic president wins the White House.

So, what am I writing about now?

Guitars and pens.

At first glance, they may not appear to have much in common. But both are tools—tools for expressing thoughts and feelings that might otherwise remain buried somewhere inside us. I’m fortunate enough to own both, and I use them as best I can to give voice to whatever happens to be moving through my mind on any given day.

The English alphabet contains only 26 letters. That’s all—26 simple letters. Yet, arranged in the right order and placed in the right hands, they have given the world its greatest literature.

A Jesuit once told me to read the classics because there simply wasn’t enough time in one life to make it through everything worth reading. He was right. The world of literature contains nearly everything about the human experience, and it stubbornly refuses to leave anything out.

I have read like a man on fire for most of my life because some extraordinary English teachers introduced me to the dazzling beauty and power of language.

Because of them, I rode beside Don Quixote, danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and helped lasso a steer in Lonesome Dove. I confronted the horrors of slavery in Beloved, wandered the streets of Dublin in Ulysses, imagined a hundred stories from The Arabian Nights and watched a baseball change everything in A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I have laughed aloud while reading Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinions—not always because the subject was funny, but because of the sheer wit and brilliance of his language. I have been humbled by the blazing intellect of Charles Krauthammer’s columns and reminded that a carefully chosen sentence can challenge an idea, change a mind or remain with someone for a lifetime.

Words eventually carried me beyond the page and behind a microphone. They allowed me to introduce myself to listeners while filling in for the great Tom Sipos on Hudson Valley Live at WKIP. Later, they gave me the privilege of hosting my own morning show on WKIP, where every day began with a microphone, a blank page and the opportunity to connect with people throughout the Hudson Valley.

Today, those same words continue through The Valley Viewpoint. Publishing it has given me another microphone of sorts—a place to write about our towns, our schools, our politics and the people and issues shaping the Hudson Valley. Radio taught me the power of speaking directly to a community. The Valley Viewpoint has reminded me that the written word can carry that conversation even further.

None of that happened by accident.

It began with teachers—magnificent men and women who found me when I was still a boy and handed me the precious gift of the English language. They taught me not simply how to read and write, but how to think, question, imagine and communicate. I cherish them, praise them and remain forever grateful for everything they gave me.

Find your voice, and you may also find courage, truth and even a little of God’s justice.

Music offers much the same gift.

I have always believed people would find more pleasure in their daily routines if they occasionally burst into song at significant moments. Life might not become easier, but it would certainly have a better soundtrack.

Music is one of the great unifiers. People who disagree about almost everything can still hear the same song, tap their feet to the same rhythm and sing the same chorus.

It is also one of life’s great rememberers.

A song can return us to happy times and sad ones, to lost loves, old friends and younger versions of ourselves. Years may pass, and then a familiar melody suddenly plays somewhere—a car radio, a restaurant or a grocery-store aisle—and an emotion we thought had disappeared rises quietly back to the surface, often accompanied by a knowing smile.

So, guitars, pens and my voice.

They carried me onto the airwaves at WKIP, through the pages of my blog and into each new edition of The Valley Viewpoint. They are the tools I have been given. I may not always use them perfectly, but I use them honestly and to the best of my ability.

And I’m very glad I do.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for reading. And, whenever possible, keep singing.

“Ed’s a great guy. I’m just not sure about his politics.”

That sentence says more about where we are today than it probably intended.

Apparently, being a “great guy” is no longer enough. Character, kindness, loyalty and how someone treats other people all come with a political asterisk. Before deciding whether a person is truly worthy of our respect, we first need to inspect the bumper sticker, check the voter registration and review a few Facebook posts.

There was a time when learning someone’s politics was simply one more thing you discovered about them. It sat alongside where they grew up, what they did for a living, how they raised their children and whether they believed the Yankees could still find a way to ruin a five-run lead.

Today, politics has become a personality test—and apparently a background check.

Mention whom you voted for, and some people immediately decide whether you are intelligent, compassionate, trustworthy or even worth knowing. One political opinion becomes enough evidence to convict the whole person.

If you voted for one candidate, you must hate certain people. If you supported another, you must be naïve, radical or hopelessly out of touch. If you question either side, everyone becomes suspicious because independence is no longer considered thoughtful. It is treated as disloyalty.

We no longer ask, “Why do you believe that?”

We announce, “I know exactly what kind of person you are.”

Except we don’t.

A political label tells you almost nothing about the entirety of a human being. It does not tell you whether someone stayed up all night beside a sick child, quietly paid a neighbor’s electric bill, donated to a community project, cared for an aging parent or showed up when a friend’s world was falling apart.

It does not tell you about the hardships that shaped that person, the experiences that changed them or the private acts of kindness they never posted on Facebook.

Politics certainly matters. Elections have consequences. Public policy affects our families, schools, communities and country. There are beliefs and actions that deserve to be challenged forcefully. But disagreement is not a license to erase someone’s humanity.

Increasingly, we do not debate ideas—we diagnose the people who hold them.

Conservatives are dismissed as cruel. Liberals are dismissed as foolish. Moderates are accused of lacking courage. People are unfriended, excluded and written off, not because of anything they personally did, but because of the political tribe others have assigned to them.

It is intellectual laziness dressed up as moral certainty.

Judging millions of people by their worst political stereotype is no different from any other form of prejudice. It saves us from the difficult work of listening, understanding and accepting that decent people can examine the same facts and reach very different conclusions.

Some of the finest people I have known disagree with me politically. They are still generous, loyal and honorable. They love their families, worry about their communities and want a better future for their children. We may disagree—sometimes loudly—but their politics do not cancel their character.

And mine should not cancel mine.

Too many people now confuse political agreement with moral goodness. They assume anyone standing beside them must be virtuous and anyone standing across from them must be dangerous. History should have taught us to be more careful. Every political movement contains principled people, opportunists, hypocrites and fools. No party has secured exclusive ownership of wisdom or decency.

Yet social media rewards the quickest judgment and the harshest insult. It encourages us to perform outrage for people who already agree with us. Nuance does not travel very far online. Anger does.

The result is a country filled with people shouting about tolerance while practicing remarkably little of it.

You do not have to surrender your convictions to respect another person. You do not have to remain silent when you believe something is wrong. Strong disagreement can be honest, necessary and even healthy.

But there is a difference between challenging what someone believes and declaring that the belief represents the totality of who they are.

Perhaps we should begin judging people by more than a yard sign, a bumper sticker or the box they checked in a voting booth.

Judge them by whether they keep their word.

Judge them by how they treat people who cannot do anything for them.

Judge them by whether they accept responsibility when they are wrong.

Judge them by their kindness, courage, loyalty and willingness to stand beside others when standing there is difficult.

And before deciding that someone’s politics makes them unworthy of respect, sit down and listen to the story that brought them there. You may still disagree when the conversation is over. You may even disagree more strongly.

But you might also remember that there is a human being behind the label.

“Ed’s a great guy. I’m just not sure about his politics.”

I can live with that. I am far more concerned with being a good man than with passing someone else’s political purity test.

In a nation increasingly determined to divide everyone into opposing camps, recognizing one another’s humanity has become a quiet act of rebellion.

It may also be the only way we ever find our way back to being neighbors.