Trump Derangement Syndrome, now playing out in the impeachment proceedings in the House, would require a Shakespeare adequately to describe and understand the way it is playing out as a motivating factor in our politics. The Bard did give us a hint of what is going on in one of his more obscure yet fabulously
In the next phase of the impeachment proceedings currently underway against President Donald Trump, the task of the House of Representatives will be to determine what offenses are impeachable and whether the facts, as found by the House Intelligence Committee, constitute such impeachable actions. This should not be a difficult job. Perhaps we can save
If one president decides that he has the power to suspend the application of a law, when he clearly has no such right, may his successor, by an executive decree, reverse his predecessor’s decision? This question, ridiculous as it sounds, is now actually before the United States Supreme Court, and will be resolved by a
In Gordon Wood’s elegant little summary of the lives of the Framers, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (2006), the greatest of living American historians laments that those who created the United States put in place a structure that made it impossible for people like them ever to exist again. Most of the Founders—in
Hillary Clinton was in the news this week for her odd feud with 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic member of Congress from Hawaii. Clinton accused Gabbard of being a “Russian asset” who is being groomed by the Kremlin to defect from the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate. The two-time presidential
For those of us who can remember when our politics was more civil, when Republicans and Democrats actually seemed to respect each other and could trade control over the presidency without wild claims of illegitimacy being hurled at the incumbent, the recent behavior of Democrats is puzzling. How can one explain the now obviously transparent
Should our 232-year-old United States Constitution still be binding? For the last few years, progressives increasingly have begun to answer with an emphatic “No!” The most visible such criticism of our fundamental law is the attack on the Electoral College, which provides for indirect election of the president by electors who, if the truth be
How did the Constitution’s framers envision the presidency? Would Donald Trump be their worst nightmare, or just what they had in mind? We know something about what kind of person their ideal president was because of who was chosen to be our first. More or less the same folks who framed the Constitution
The difficulties President Trump faces in carrying out his agenda are massive and were underscored again by the last case decided this term by the United States Supreme Court. That case, Department of Commerce v. New York, presented a challenge to the Trump Administration’s plan to add a question about citizenship status to
