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Breathing Easier—For a While, Anyway—With Inouye as President Pro Tempore

by William Thompson

I am one American who is breathing a bit easier now that Senator Robert Byrd has been laid to rest in the West Virginia soil.  Not that I wished him the fate that awaits all of us as we become old and older.  He may have had many decent qualities, and there were certainly those who befriended him and loved him.  May he rest in peace.  But quite honestly, this superannuated former KKK member and “Pork Master in Chief” of the U.S. Senate was thoroughly unr

The Kagan Hearings: Back to Conservative Activism?

by David A. Strauss

For the last fifty years or more, American constitutional law has lent itself to an easy caricature.  If you were a liberal, you thought that liberals

A Missed Opportunity for Tribal Sovereignty in the Iroquois Lacrosse Battle

by Michael Leroy Oberg

The Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse team had hoped to travel this week to England to participate in the 2010 World Lacrosse Championships, that sport’s versi

Byrd’s Soiled Nest

by Robert H. Dockery

It is, I suppose, a measure of the illness of our society that we often fail to tell the truth, or the whole truth, about our leaders, whether it be General Stanley McChrystal or Senator Robert C. Byrd.  The lionizing may eventually collide with the reality, but all too often it is hidden from view by a press corps that places greater value on access than it does on exposure.From the early fall of 1980 through the late spring of 1981, or roughly mid-way through my twenty-eight

The Conservative Side of Barack Obama

by Alan Luxenberg

Amid all the acrimony that has accompanied the debate over President Obama’s policies, the conservative side of Barack Obama has failed to receive the attention it deserves, especially among conservatives. Most obvious has been his expressed determination to defeat Al Qaeda and its affiliated movements (AQAM), most visible in the surge he ordered for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.  In addition, Obama vastly increased the use of drones to target militants in Pakistan,

The McChrystal Affair: Pity the Poor Historian

by Michael H. Hunt

There is good reason to pity the poor historian, who has been tested especially severely during the recent McChrystal-Obama imbroglio as th

Goodbye Cleveland!

by Michael H. Carriere

As both a basketball fan and an urban historian, I found myself fascinated by the now ex-Cavalier Lebron James’ public humiliation of his former team and city.  It is clear that James did not handle his exit from Cleveland with anything resembling the grace and poise he displays on the basketball court.  Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers, also put his worst foot forward, as seen in the bizarre, hateful press release he issued immediately after witnessing James&rsq

The Tea Party and the New Right-Wing Christian Feminism

by Ruth Rosen

Most Americans are not quite sure what to make of the sprawling right-wing Tea Party, which gradually emerged in 2009 and became a household name after it held nationwide Tea Party rallies on April 15, 2010, to protest paying taxes.  Throwing tea overboard, as you may remember, is an important symbolic image of the colonial anger at Britain's policy of "taxation without representation."Many liberals and leftists dismissed the Tea Party as a temporary, knee-jerk

Economic Justice Before the High Court

by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

We are in the middle of another fight over the Supreme Court.  Elena Kagan, Obama’s woman of judicial mystery, is now before the Senate.  Even before the hearings began, conservatives wrung their hands over what they assume will be yet another liberal justice eager to legislate from the bench.  Most fret over her stance on abortion, gay marriage, and “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but pundits have gone back to the tried-and-true method of trying li

Leave the Seventeenth Amendment Alone!

by Byron W. Daynes

History does repeat itself!  Listen to those Tea Party spokespersons this year who support the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment that allows for the direct election of senators.  They are using the same ill-conceived arguments eastern Republicans and other opponents of the amendment’s original attachment to the Constitution used in the 1890s.  A study I did several years ago about the Seventeenth Amendment revealed that the 1890 Tea Partiers p

What's Wrong With Kagan's Confirmation Hearings

by Kathleen Gronnerud

Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings are underway in the Senate Judiciary Committee, a rite of passage for Supreme Court nominees.  Right?  Not so fast. There's actually no constitutional or legal requirement that nominees to the Supreme Court testify before the Senate. The Constitution merely states that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint...Judges of the Supreme Court."  The first co

An Illiberal Education and Southern Politics

by Randal Jelks

Most of you will not remember or read Dinesh D’Souza’s book, An Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus.  D’Souza charged, p

Graham Opinion Reflects Justice Kennedy's Moral Foundation

by Frank J. Colucci

This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in Graham v. Florida that sentencing a juvenile whose offense does not result in homicid

A History of Insubordinate Generals

by John C. McManus

Stanley McChrystal is not alone.  Nor is he unique.  In fact, I would argue that he is only the latest in a long line of generals who have run afoul of their presidential bosses because of the inherent, and

The Presidents and the McGenerals

by Kenneth Weisbrode

The furor over comments made by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his aides to a writer for Rolling Stone brings to mind earlier, infamous clashes between presidents and wartime commanders, both of them, curiously, of similar prefixes—Generals George McClellan and Douglas MacArthur. Both were forced to stand down, but at great political cost to their presidents.  McClellan, after Abraham Lincoln cashiered him, opposed Lincoln in the election of 1864—unsuccessfully in the ev

Myths from the Right about the Disaster in the Gulf

by Tyler Priest

A new narrative reverberating in right-wing political circles blames the Deepwater Horizon disaster on a favorite scapegoat:  the federal government.But this n

Gender Apartheid Online

by Ruth Rosen

Forty years ago, feminists demanded that special "women's pages," which featured fashion, society and cooking, be banished from newspapers. 

It’s the Trade Deficit, Not the Budget Deficit

by Judith Stein

The U.S. and global stock markets soared on June 10, after China reported a fifty percent rise in exports,  compared with a year ago.  "China's export growth reassured investors that a recovery in t

Entering the Soviet Era in America

by Tom Engelhardt

Mark it on your calendar.  It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.You remember the Soviet Union, now almost twenty years in its grave.  But who gives it a second thought today?  Even

Who is Elizabeth Dilling, and Why is Glenn Beck a Fan?

by Zach Honoroff

During the June 4 edition of Premiere Radio Network’s The Glenn Beck Program, Glenn Beck endorsed and promoted Elizabeth Dilling’s The Red Network: A “Who’s Who” and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots, self-published in 1934 as an exposé of communist front activity in the United States. Beck lauded the work as an example of Americans in the 1930s “doing what we’re doing now,”—the patriotic service of targeting radicals within the United States. Unfortunately for