Today, 21 March 2011, marks the 150th anniversary of Alexander Hamilton Stephens’ delivery of the Cornerstone Speech in Savannah, Georgia. On 20 December 1860, the state convention called by the legislature of South Carolina after the election of Abraham Lincoln
Inside the Obama administration, a debate is raging. In the face of the uprisings in the Middle East, Barack Obama has opted to sit on his hands. He has a talent for that. Robert Gates, who is extremely wary –
Sad to say, what I wrote last year at this time is hardly less apt today: “The State of the Union Address is ordinarily a bore. It generally consists of a laundry list of proposals, and the list nearly always
We were given fair warning on Tuesday when Robert Gates arrived in China. I doubt, however, that we will heed it. Liberal, commercial polities have a tendency to be caught flat-footed at the beginning of an armed conflict, and what
We were given fair warning on Tuesday when Robert Gates arrived in China. I doubt, however, that we will heed it. Liberal, commercial polities have a tendency to be caught flat-footed at the beginning of an armed conflict, and what
Well, one thing is now clear. Barack Obama very much wants to be re-elected, and he is willing to do whatever it takes. As I have already pointed out in anticipatory posts – first here, then here – he could
There have been reports – here, here, and here– that Barack Obama has approached William M. Daley about becoming the White House Chief of Staff. If true, these reports are very interesting, indeed. You see: Bill Daley has a history.
The experts charged with determining when recessions begin and end tell us that the latest of these unpleasant events ended a while ago. Technically, they are no doubt right. But that does not mean that the economic crisis we have
A bit less than a year ago, I posted piece entitled Is Barack Obama a One-Trick Pony? I raised this question with an eye to three thumbsuckers that had recently appeared – one on Politico by veteran commentator Elizabeth Drew;
The election is now over and the results are in – except in Alaska, Colorado, Washington, and a congressional district here and there. And one by one the usual suspects are weighing in with their comments. Most of these are
“There is,” Shakespeare’s Brutus said to Cassius, “a tide in the affairs of men.” Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a
Over the last twenty-two months, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have sown the wind. Today – if the polls are any indication – they will reap the whirlwind. The portents have been there for a very
Scott Rasmussen now predicts that the Republicans will pick up fifty-five seats in the House. Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia still has the pick-up at forty-seven but says that, if forced to tweak the numbers right now, he
Back in mid-June, Leslie Gelb floated an idea in an op-ed piece that he published in The Wall Street Journal. After the midterms, he argued, when Robert Gates resigned his position as Secretary of Defense, Hillary Clinton should be given
There is a brief story by Jim Carlton in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal entitled “Fiorina Stays Away from Middle Road,” and in the cover story for the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes describes
On Thursday, in Detroit, a federal district judge named George Caram Steeh ruled Obamacare constitutional. On Friday, Mike Pence, a Republican Congressman from Indiana, expressed his confidence that the Supreme Court will declare key sections of the bill unconstitutional. I
A lot has been written on this site and elsewhere concerning the Pledge to America that the Republicans unveiled on Friday. For the most part, bloggers have been critical. Some have argued that it will not do the Republicans any
Can we trust the current polls? I do not mean to level any accusations. I think that, with rare exceptions, the pollsters are doing their best to assess the trends. If nothing else, they know that accuracy pays off –
Congressman Mike Pence spoke at Hillsdale College Monday night at the invitation of the Young Republicans. I attended the dinner held in his honor before the talk, briefly chatted with him, and listened with care and interest to his talk
Today marks Constitution Day. On 17 September 1787, in Philadelphia, the Framers of the American Constitution added their signatures to the document they had produced, and soon thereafter it was dispatched to the Continental Congress for consideration by the states.
We have come a long way in the last twenty months. The President of the United States, his Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader in the United States Senate have done for
I am not personally acquainted with John Boehner, though I laid eyes on him once. I do not really know Eric Cantor either – though we met in passing in April, 2009 when I was in DC promoting my book
A year ago, in a blogpost entitled The Great Awakening, I argued that conservatives “should be grateful to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel.” After all, I wrote, they had unmasked “the Democratic Party as a conspiracy
Ten months back, at the very end of September, I posted online a brief piece entitled Obama’s Wrecking Crew, in which I drew attention to a column in The New York Post in which Charles Gasparino reported two items of
Something ominous is happening within the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama will soon have to start paying attention. For weeks now, James Carville has been railing against the Obama administration’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf. On Tuesday,
When they teach American government and the history of the early American republic, political scientists and historians have a puzzle to explain. There is, within the American constitution, no mention of political parties. And yet it is impossible to make
On Wednesday, if all goes as planned, President Barack Obama will sign the financial-reform bill crafted by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, sponsored by the Democratic Party in both houses, and supported by three
When, in The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton writes that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government,” he refrains from asserting that energy in the executive is the leading character in the definition of good
Earlier this month, I posted a piece documenting Barack Obama’s incapacity as an executive. I followed up with a brief examination of Bobby Jindal’s record as Governor of Louisiana and, then, with a short discussion of a display of vigor
In his recent cover story for The Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti praises CNBC’s Rick Santelli effusively for erupting against Barack Obama’s redistributionist policies on 19 February 2009 in such a fashion as to inspire the Tea Party Movement. Then, he
On Wednesday last, I posted a piece documenting Barack Obama’s incapacity as an executive. I followed up on the following day with a brief examination of Bobby Jindal’s record as Governor of Louisiana – which illustrates admirably what Alexander Hamilton
On Wednesday, I posted a piece, drawing attention to what is now obvious even to Maureen Dowd: that, as an executive, Barack Obama is woefully incompetent. In that piece, I noted the propensity of the American people for electing to
In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again. Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It
There is very little difference between what intelligence analysts do and what ordinary folks try to accomplish when they pick up a newspaper, listen to the evening news, or read the posts on this and other sites. In every case,
This is the question that Rush Limbaugh posed to his listeners on Monday: Is Paul Rahe right? And it is, alas, an all-too-open question. Rush was responding to a piece, entitled “A New Birth of Freedom,” posted on BigGovernment.com early
What is the most important issue facing the American people today? Until late last Fall, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman, the presidents of our major universities, and the editors and reporters at The New York Times, The
Back in November, when Peter Robinson interviewed me for Uncommon Knowledge, he waited until the last segment to throw down the gauntlet, asking me bluntly why I was so much more sanguine regarding the future than was the estimable Mark
When the dust has settled, partisan rancor has gone the way of all flesh, and the history of our times gets written sine ira et studio, what will observers say about developments in February and March, 2010. No one really
Back in 1946, an ingenious advertising executive named Karl Frost suggested a simple, straightforward political slogan to the Massachusetts Republican Committee: “Had Enough? Vote Republican,” it read. This slogan was soon found on billboards all across the country, and in
In earlier posts – here, here, and here – I drew attention to the pre-eminence of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu in and for a time after the eighteenth century, and I suggested that at