Blog Posts

I submitted the following testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly in opposition to the so-called "Prosecutorial Accountability" act. The legislation is a solution to a problem that does not exist.
My name is Norman Pattis. I have represented people accused of...

A year ago, I watched New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to try to catch my bearings as a pandemic struck. Donald Trump was the black beast of politics then. In the contrast media of the cable news cycle, Cuomo came out looking like a white knight. Hell, he wrote a book about it all. He was king...

My cell phone blew up mid-afternoon yesterday. Was I watching what was going on in Washington, D.C.? The Capit0l was being stormed! There was a coup taking place!
I never turned on the television, or did more than scan a few Internet accounts of the events. I even asked...

The final words of Book Two of St. Augustine’s Confessions could easily be a epigraph for our times: “I turned myself into a famished land I had to live in.” I’ve all but given up watching the news on television: In a matter of months, our public life has been...

You’ve probably seen the picture of Naked Athena by now. She’s the lithe young woman who pranced nude through the streets of Portland, Oregon, the other night, wearing only a black face mask and a cap to confront law enforcement officers as they tried to quell protestors....

I’ve turned during this season of pandemic-induced hysteria to Saint Augustine for solace. His Confessions is one of the greatest books ever written. Augustine understood sin; he experienced the transforming power of grace; and, he wrote of his relationship with God in terms at once...

We’re now four months into the pandemic, and, as near as I can tell, much about the world has changed. I say this tentatively because throughout this period, I’ve remained mostly at home, working remotely, and appearing in my office on rare occasions when I am sure not to run into...

What follows are two alternative proposals for amendments to the United States Constitution to ban race-based transfer payments, or reparations.
Discuss these daily with friends, families, and elected officials. In this season of race-based hysteria, support for reparations to...

If I understand the evolving racial rhetoric of our times, it goes something like this: You are either a racist or an anti-racist. There is no position of neutrality. Using this device permits adherents to dispense with nuance and divide the world in good and evil at the snap of a finger. ...

I’m thinking we’re on the cusp of what I will call our “Concord Moment.” That’s when a shot fired in anger will be heard coast to coast, if not around the world, as were the shots fired in Concord, Massachusetts in 1775. The 1775 shots galvanized the...