Andrew Hamilton (standing, arm extended) defends New York printer and journalist John Peter Zenger in his 1735 political trial on charges of seditious libel. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS A trial that addresses political questions, involves political officials, or serves political agendas. In certain circumstances the term is used in a pejorative sense to criticize…
Read moreWhat a rat’s nest. While he was giving advice to Hillary Clinton about Libya, Sidney Blumenthal was indirectly working for Libyan interests and at the same time was on the Clinton Foundation’s payroll. Slate is putting it all together. Blumenthal – a long-time Clinton hanger-on – was working with a group who had business interests in Libya. While she…
Read moreAttendees at a vigil for victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, plead for legislative action on gun control. (The Nation /George Zornick) Allow me to remove this rhetorical club I keep in a sheath alongside my waist and beat some of my liberal friends with it, because I’m getting frustrated, frustrated, frustrated, and I…
Read moreAn emboldened group of moderate House Republicans put their leaders on notice this week that they intend to steer a more pragmatic course on social issues — including abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration — as the party tries to position itself for the 2016 presidential election. About two dozen Republicans, led mostly by a small group of female…
Read moreAcknowledging that human fallibility is inevitable Since the collapse of the IT marketplace in the US has made it impossible for me to find work in my field, I have been working as a retail clerk. Anybody who thinks that running a cash register is an easy job has never tried it. It has been a humbling experience in that it is so easy to make mistakes…
Read moreFILE - A Facebook log is displayed on the screen of an iPad, in this Wednesday, May 16, 2012 file photo taken in New York. Facebook Inc. is launching a tool that lets users notify friends and family that they are safe during or after natural disasters. The tool, called Safety Check,will be available worldwide to the social network s 1.32 billion users…
Read moreGeorgia Attorney General Sam Olens had petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to let Georgia’s vote stand and not institute same-sex marriage across the country. He lost, and on Friday Olens made clear that Georgia would not stand in the way of the court’s ruling. “Today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled the Constitution requires a state to license…
Read moreHow can we figure out what people think? There are, like, millions of them! Contra Sam Youngman, going out and talking to Real Americans at random is not an inherently superior method of figuring out what the people want compared to polling. In fact, such aggregation problems are precisely why God made statistical sampling. It is by no means perfect…
Read moreTop 10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Should Be Legal The growing need for LGBT rights has become much more apparent, what with increased awareness and the exposition of vicious hate crimes against this particular demographic. More and more people, even those who are not part of the LGBT community, recognize that these crimes violate basic […] The growing…
Read moreGoldberg’s book is a publishing phenomena not only featuring at the top of the New York Times bestseller lists as a hardback but also, as Goldberg himself has noted in the blog he runs about the book, going into a third printing in the UK. That is enough to make many historians, used to important articles and books receiving scant if any attention from…
Read moreMuch is being written about “the list” in which independent Americans, who do not drink from the Obama Koolaid, are on a list which will ultimately result in their loss of freedom and very possibly their lives. Some people are calling this list, “Main Core”. Advocates of the Main Core view state that a secret government hit list has been in place since…
Read moreToday, the majority of Americans, and other citizens of democratic countries, take these principles of democracy for granted. In fact, these principles have been expanded and applied in every aspect of life. However, what did these principles mean to the people of the 18th century? How did they define them? I know not what course others may take; but…
Read moreCompared to Americans over 30, millennials are half as likely to identify as politically conservative (14% to 34%), and nearly twice as likely to say they’re liberal (25% to 14%). The latest Reason-Rupe study of millennials finds their political ideologies may largely be an expression of their social and cultural values more than their economic policy…
Read moreAbortion has emerged as an issue in the 2012 presidential race, following Missouri GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin’s controversial comments about abortion and “legitimate rape.” In recent years, narrow majorities of the public have consistently said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The Democratic Party is widely favored over the GOP…
Read moreJoseph Stiglitz and a team of his fellow economists have a new plan to reduce inequality, grow the middle class and get the U.S. economy to work better for working people. It is firmly rooted in the conviction that more government can solve most of America s economic challenges. It is a plan seemingly designed to rally liberals, enrage free-market economists…
Read moreEverything is Political Just as I began my college teaching career thirty years ago, the whole academy seemed to have accepted as axiomatic the assertion that “Everything is Political.” This self-evident universal truth (curiously, my relativistic colleagues have quite a few absolutes) came to be uttered frequently in response to complaints from a few…
Read moreA number of times throughout history, tyranny has stimulated breakthrough thinking about liberty. This was certainly the case in England with the mid-seventeenth-century era of repression, rebellion, and civil war. There was a tremendous outpouring of political pamphlets and tracts. By far the most influential writings emerged from the pen of scholar…
Read moreAs a news junkie, I often find myself seeking out political discussions and debates on the various news networks. I like listening to the exchange of viewpoints and the impassioned sparring over serious topics from seasoned analysts. The roundtable and panel formats are my favorite. They’re much more interesting to me than the hyper-partisan, red meat…
Read moreMy colleague Andrea Nill notes that this is a fairly costly endeavor: U.S. government investigators have indicated that it will cost taxpayers $6.5 billion over the next 20 years to maintain the fencing already in place and the Congressional Research Service estimated in 2007 that building and maintaining a double set of steel fences along 700 miles…
Read moreMaps in simple terms represent a geographical area in a way that enables people to find places and/or to better understand the features of a particular destination. Two of the most common forms are political and physical maps. POLITICAL MAP Political maps are designed to show governmental boundaries of countries, states and counties. They can also indicate…
Read moreRepublicans are as likely as Democrats to say enactment of immigration bill is very important. Only about half of Republicans (50%) say it is extremely or very important that the president and Congress pass significant new immigration legislation this year. But that is little different from the shares of Democrats (53%) or independents (46%) who view…
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