Since the Earl Warren era, the Supreme Court has assumed enormous power over our politics, and this has become a significant obstacle to the constitutional design of Americans living as a self-governing people. Far more worrisome than “Russian interference,” which at most partially influenced the views of voters with many other sources of information, … Continued
As Democrats have (another) collective meltdown over this week’s Supreme Court rulings and the impending retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, President Trump’s supporters are venting their own rage at another target: NeverTrump Republicans. Minutes after Kennedy announced he would step down later this year, Washington D.C. talk-radio host Larry O’Connor tweeted that NeverTrumpers “should be … Continued
Rarely in the last half-century have so many elite conservatives and intellectuals been so estranged both from a Republican administration and from those who voted for it—neither have they become so animated in their antipathy and disgust for a sitting president. During the 2016 election, and the current Trump presidency, there have appeared four implicit … Continued
The great nineteenth-century man of letters William Dean Howells once made a remark that I have long cherished as a sort of personal motto: “The problem for a critic,” Howells said, “is not making enemies, but keeping them.” A critic who does not make enemies is unlikely to be doing his job, inasmuch as criticism … Continued
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? … Continued
