The Obama campaign is plugging “The Life of Julia,” designed to show how the government in general, and this administration’s policies in particular, help a hypothetical woman throughout her life. The last entry, showing Julia at 67, really annoyed me: Under President Obama: Julia retires. After years of contributing to Social Security, she receives monthly […]
Archive | Politics
Sec. of State Clinton–Don’t Believe our Pro-Israel Rhetoric (or Anything Else we Say)
Here’s Clinton speaking in Tunisia. Note that the questioner operates under the assumption that to be pro-Israel is to be against the “common Arab citizen,” and Clinton not only fails to challenge that assumption, but implies that rhetoric that pleases the “Zionist lobby” is somehow anti-Muslim. She then suggests that Americans (and others) are fools […]
Book review, “Election 2012: The Battle Begins”
Back in the olden days, readers interested in the history of a presidential race would have to wait until the year after the election to read a book about it. Theodore White created the genre of presidential campaign books with The Making of the President 1960. It was published in 1961. White wrote three more […]
N.Y. Magazine on Obama and Israel
This is an interesting piece defending the Obama Administration’s record on Israel. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Obama is “anti-Israel.” But I think the NY Mag piece misses some significant elements of the puzzle. Obama made it clear during the 2008 campaign that he was anti-Likud. Likud happened to be the Israeli party […]
Who wants to provoke a constitutional crisis over abortion?
Today South Carolina Republican Senator Jim Demint hosted a forum at which five Republican presidential candidates spoke. The transcript is here. Each candidate appeared one at a time, and the format allowed for in-depth questions and answers. Among the questioners was Princeton University’s Robert George. Prof. George asked each candidate if he or she would support […]
What if Libertarians and Conservatives Agreed on Empirical Issues?
Following up my post on what might happen if liberals and libertarians agreed on empirical issues, this post addresses the question of what might happen if libertarians came to agree on empirical issues with conservatives. Unfortunately, answering this question is a lot tougher than the previous one about liberals. Libertarianism and liberalism are fairly coherent […]
What if Liberals and Libertarians Agreed on Empirical Questions?
At the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, libertarian lawprof Fernando Teson writes that “The remarkable truth of this conversation between bleeding heart libertarians and progressives is that our disagreement is exclusively empirical. If we all agree that political institutions should be arranged to alleviate poverty, then the only remaining question is which policies actually do this. […]
Wisconsin Senate Does Not Need a 3/5ths Quorum to Pass Much of the Budget Bill
I have a new paper up on SSRN–Super Quorums Under the Wisconsin Constitution–that examines the constitutional three-fifths quorum requirement in Wisconsin. It applies only to particular kinds of fiscal bills, not to all bills that merely have a fiscal impact. Further, it has been interpreted extremely narrowly in the past. Indeed, there is a 1971 […]
A Reflection on the Recent District Court Decision
In the last year, readers of this blog have seen lots of posts on a major constitutional issue that is likely to reach the Supreme Court soon. And just recently, a District Court Judge issued a stunningly broad decision holding that the controversial law at issue is unconstitutional. Such a decision would have been considered […]
Barack Obama and Gun Control: Effective and Shrewd
The Encyclopedia Britannica Blog is running a series this week assessing the Obama presidency. My entry, with the title above, argues that President Obama has been successful at promoting gun control, taking into account the fact that Obama has faced a Congress with strong pro-gun majorities, and that the Obama administration determined to spend its finite political capital on […]
Final score on 2d Amendment in the November elections
Now that all congressional races have been decided, here the final tallies for how the election affected Second Amendment support in Congress, according to the NRA’s top federal lobbyist Chuck Cunningham: 19 of 25 U.S. Senate candidates endorsed by the NRA-Political Victory Fund won their races. The net gain is +7 votes (Ark., N.H., N.D., Oh., Penn., W.V., […]
Are Republicans Serious about the Debt?
Does greater conservative representation in Congress auger well for getting America’s fiscal house in order? Reacting to comments by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) on “Meet the Press” last week, Peter Wehner raises some concerns: It is simply not tenable for public officials to portray themselves as courageous voices for fiscal sanity while simultaneously fencing off […]
The Second Amendment’s Great Election Night
In an article just published at The New Ledger, I examine the long-term implications of the many right to arms victories in state constitutions, the U.S. Congress, and state legislatures on Tuesday.
A Chance, Not an Embrace
In his victory speech last night, Senator-elect Marco Rubio said: We make a great mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican party. What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long […]
2d Amend. Results
Senate: +6 House: +18.75 Governors: +.5 Constitutions: +4 Hawaii Gov. Dem. Abercrombie wins open seat, vacated by Linda Lingle. -75. Undecided Governor races: Connecticut (potential +1), Repub. Foley leads by 3%, with 87% in. Florida (potential -1), Repub. Sink leads by 1% with 99% in. Minnesota open seat (potential -1), Mark Dayton leads by 1% […]