In the latest issue of National Review, one finds a laudatory review of a new doorstop biography of Franklin Roosevelt. Among other things, the author of this review credits Roosevelt with reducing the unemployment rate between his first inauguration in 1933 and his reelection in 1936.  On the Conservativenet e-mail list for conservative and libertarian scholars recently, editor Richard Jensen offered … [Read More]

Since the Truman administration, Democrats have called for the nationalization of the health-care industry. The Democratic Party’s position, stressed more strongly at some times than at others, has been that the average Joe should not have to sacrifice much to pay his family’s medical bills. For Republicans, this has been sacrilege. And a threat. As William Kristol famously explained of the … [Read More]

Today’s Republican Party is no longer the conservative party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It has morphed significantly in regard to the two main questions of concern to me: foreign policy and constitutional philosophy. In the area of foreign policy, Reagan vindicated Goldwater’s lonely stand in the early-1960s Senate with such fellow “extremists” as John Tower and Strom Thurmond on … [Read More]

As Tom Woods and I demonstrate in our new book, Who Killed the Constitution?  The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush, there is a bipartisan consensus in all three branches of the federal government that the U.S. Government can do whatever it wants. Joe Biden is one of the chief proponents of this view. It … [Read More]

Under Consideration: Steven M. Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, Princeton University Press (2008), 358 pages.  Steven Teles set out to write a book explaining how conservatives in the law achieved stature and success and transformed a profession that had become monolithically liberal. What The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement reveals, … [Read More]

On Saturday, March 8, 2008, President George W. Bush vetoed a congressional bill that would have explicitly banned interrogation techniques like waterboarding. In doing so, Bush cemented his worthiness of impeachment. The impeachment power allows Congress to keep the other two branches from grasping at powers that the Constitution gives to the Legislative Branch. Congress is described in Article I … [Read More]

Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It). Oxford University Press, 2006.   Sanford Levinson is very upset. As he sees it, the United States Constitution fails to uphold the principles of the American nation, and something needs to be done about it. Our Undemocratic Constitution is his case for a … [Read More]