PISTOL ….Well, bawd I'll turn, And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand. To England will I steal, and there I'll steal: And patches will I get unto these cudgell'd scars, And swear I got them in the Gallia wars. “Henry V” (v.i.88-92) In Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” Pistol and his late lamented
Legal fireworks concerning religious freedom exploded in what some commentators hailed as the most important case of the term, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, decided a week before July 4. Though it’s hard to tell for all the squabbling over the meaning of precedents, the justices’ opinions point to the great themes of
About a year ago, the respected Harvard political theorist, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., wrote an op-ed about Donald Trump for the Wall Street Journal titled, “Why Donald Trump Is No Gentleman.” Mansfield made the case that the appellation “gentleman” is one used so rarely these days that we forget, even, to note its
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has made a much-heralded case for removal of four Confederate monuments he suddenly found the cause of great evils. “The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity,” he observes. But he arrogantly concludes that now we can “make straight a wrong turn we made many
“Donald Trump is not being reasonable…. But, then, man does not live by reason alone, fortunately. Trump, who believes that excess can be a virtue, is as American as Manhattan’s skyline, which expresses the Republic’s erupting energies. He says the skyscraper is necessary because it is unnecessary. He believes architectural exuberance is good
In one of the wealthiest, most highly-educated counties in America, two illegal immigrants raped a 14 year-old girl during school hours. The crime occurred March 16 at Rockville High School, a few blocks from where I live in Montgomery County, Maryland. The nationally reported crime cries out to have its true national significance exposed,
Supreme Court justices sometimes devise overly clever “tests” in their opinions to determine the constitutionality of a law or government action. Here’s my one-pronged (and multi-part) Supreme Court minimal competency test, derived from Abraham Lincoln’s critique of Chief Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scot: Was Lincoln right in making the Declaration of Independence the basis of constitutional government?
Jesse Merriam makes an attractive case for a more principled and thereby, he hopes, more successful approach for conservatives arguing religious liberty cases in the courts. He is concerned in particular with State of Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers, involving a florist who cited her Christian beliefs in refusing to make a floral arrangement for a same-sex
As Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg spoke of America by referring to the four score and seven years that had passed since its birth, President Trump envisioned an America twelve score and 10 from its birth; its 250th birthday, or sestercentennial. That would place us in 2026, a year and a half following an eight-year Trump presidency. Our
The battle over the administrative state is joined. In remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, presidential advisor Stephen Bannon called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” On Saturday, the Democratic National Committee elected as its chairman the very embodiment of the administrative state: former Obama Administration Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez.
