We have got to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes. — Grover Norquist, yesterday I agree. We also shouldn’t, say, take tragedies like the hijacking of four commercial planes and deliberately crashing them into huge buildings with large numbers of people inside them, and […]
House Republicans argue that voters handed their members a mandate as well, granting the party control of the House for another two years and with it the right to stick to their own views, even when they clash strongly with the president’s. And many Republicans remember well when the tables were turned. After Mr. Bush’s […]
Since last Friday, our minds have been focused on children. Those who lost their lives in the Newtown, Conn. tragedy on Friday. Those at that school who survived. Those at schools around the country, who now seem much more vulnerable to, of all things, an assault-rifle hit, even though they don’t live in a war […]
I rarely watch TV news shows anymore, much less cable political talk shows. (Okay, I rarely watch TV at all anymore.) But I happened to watch Chris Matthews’ Hardball tonight on MSNBC. The topic was, of course, gun control. (Actually, the lack thereof, and whether is any real chance that that might change now.) And […]
Last night, in a comment to my post from Tuesday, “Do‘Right to Work’ Laws Violate the Constitution Contracts Clause?”, reader PJR wrote: To a non-lawyer, it kinda looks like SCOTUS rejected the contracts argument in 1949, so unions would have to find someway to get the court(s) to reconsider–or is this wrong? If wrong, why […]
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any […]
Lifted from a note from Beverly Mann in response to a query of mine, as a note of interest: Here’s a link to a long Politico article on those cases and on the prospects of their success: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=67901EA4-2955-4FD7-A52E-1E8CB0EA8E56 Apparently, it looks like the Supreme Court eventually will hear two or three of these cases, probably […]
Every four years, the race for the White House ends in accusations of deceit. Each side says the other spent millions of dollars to lie and skew the outcome. This year’s post-election accounts of backstage calculations and fateful turning points continue that tradition. But if you read these accounts carefully, you’ll find a happy surprise […]
Yesterday in Springfield, Ohio, the crowd listening to Barack Obama booed when the President brought up Mitt Romney and the Republican Congress. That prompted Obama to say: “No, no, no — don’t boo, vote. Vote! Voting is the best revenge.” Romney promptly pretended to be very outraged by this. He told his supporters: “Yesterday, the President said […]
MITT ROMNEY: “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, […]