An American life in public service
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina died Saturday night at the age of 71. Had his untimely death not occurred, one imagines his passion for service (and for politics) as well as his wily survival skills might have carried him into the ranks of the longest serving Senate members in the history of the […]
Court packing should be DOA
The California Congressman Ro Khanna is only the latest high-profile Democrat to insist that the time has come to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices. The plan, of course, is for justices who can be appointed by some future Democrat president and confirmed by a Senate controlled by the same party. Before him, former presidential […]
Socialism runs the table in New York
Who saw anti-Israel socialism arriving as the breakout political movement of 2026? When Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race in 2025, he prevailed over Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of the state (and son of a former governor) and the African American incumbent, Eric Adams. It was something of a shock to […]
Doing it the right way
President Donald Trump took the unusual step of attending part of the oral argument regarding his executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship in the United States. Since the passage of the 14th Amendment, virtually any child born on American soil has become a citizen. This has been true regardless of the citizenship of the […]
How Politics Hijacked Nonprofits
Nonprofits have a long and storied history in the United States. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited this country in the 19th century, he intended to study its prisons. Instead, he wrote one of the most perceptive analyses of American political life. Among his many insights was an observation about what we now sometimes call “the third sector.” In […]
Attack, attack, attack
I can recall a textbook narrative from law school lauding a retired professor who returned to successfully teach a 50-minute class to the next generation of students. Donald Trump is almost certainly older than that gentleman and spoke for nearly two hours last night. Famously improvisational, he looked as though he relished every moment and […]
The house always wins
Twenty years ago, I flew up to New York to visit a friend who had tickets to a matchup between the Giants and the former Washington Redskins. We had a great time watching the game, but, as is often the case, the winner was clear before the clock had really run out. I was fascinated […]
The crime against everybody
Democratic systems are terribly vulnerable to fraud. Interest groups can seek concentrated benefits from the political class while the broader public is rationally uninterested. They are uninterested because any particular payoff to a group amounts to little when spread across the entire body of citizens. As a result, there is a constant cycle of advantage-taking […]
The filibuster is failing us
There is a tremendous amount of romance associated with the filibuster. Many fans of old movies recall scenes such as those in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington where Jimmy Stewart’s character (an unlikely appointee meant to go along) takes the floor and refuses to yield it as he attempts to protect a boy’s camp from rapacious developers. […]
The triumph and tragedy of Dick Cheney
Former Vice President Dick Cheney died on Tuesday. He had one of the most consequential political careers in American history marked by spectacular achievements and enormous setbacks. Cheney’s career really began with his association with Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was a young Republican go-getter who had served in Congress and quickly made his way into administrative […]