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The Right to Bear Bazookas: A New Take on the Second Amendment

by Saul Cornell

The Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia has decided to strike down a gun control law as a violation of the Second Amendment. The decision, known as Parker, casts aside more than 70 years of established jurisprudence. The Appeals Court’s revisionist reading of U.S. v. Miller, (1939) the controlling Supreme Court precedent, is highly problematic. According to the majority opinion in Parker, Miller was only concerned with the type of weapons pro

Working Hard to Misconstrue the 2nd Amendment

by Robert J. Spitzer

In a startling case that may single-handedly revive interest in the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 Friday that a D.C. law barring residents from keeping handguns in their homes violated citizens’ Second Amendment right to have guns, aside and apart from service in a militia. In carving out an “individual” right, the case of Parker v. District of Columbia proves that bad

Exercising Congress’s Constitutional Power to End a War

by Louis Fisher

Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/30/07.Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to offer my views on the constitutional authority of Congress to restrict, redirect, or terminate military operations. In recent years, some commentators have argued that Congress cannot, in time of war, interfere with the President’s power as Commander in Chief. Others claim that if Congress decides to exercise the power of the purse it must terminate all funding rather than a

The Cherokee: Saying No to Blacks

by William Loren Katz

As President Bill Clinton and others arrived in Selma, Alabama for the 42nd anniversary of the "bloody Sunday" march that prodded Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Cherokee Nation chose a lower road. It voted overwhelmingly for an amendment to their constitution that revokes citizenship rights for 2,800 members because their ancestors included people of African descent.

Memorandum to Sen. Obama: How to Run

by Randal Maurice Jelks

Senator Obama, I surely wish Harold Washington were alive to give you wise counsel, now that your candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination is official. Washington's successful Chicago mayoral campaign in 1983 offers valuable lessons that still make sense. The first is the importance of getting out the vote. When Washington was asked to run for mayor he challenged supporters to get voters registered. He realized that if he were to become the city's first African Americ

Dynasties: An American Tradition

by Noemie Emery

From 1775, when the Adamses began raising their sons to be president, to 2006, in the second term of the second Bush president, this country has been through 230 years of dynastic ambition, with fairly uneven results. Taken together, four families have given us five presidents, three vice presidents, five senators, four governors, four ambassadors to major foreign powers, and four members, including one past and one future president, of the House of Representatives. This sounds impressive, and i

Coming: Something New in Presidents

by Matthew Pinsker

On this Presidents Day, it's worth celebrating the fact that our nation is almost certainly about to make some presidential history. Each of the current front runners for the major party nominations offers important new biographical details to the traditional commander-in-chief profile. After having 43 presidents cut from the same cloth, we finally seem poised to elect someone different. The similarities of our previous White House occupants are astonishing. In a nation of 300 milli

Presidential Debates: HNN Scrapbook

by Alex Bosworth

FrontrunnersAfter the first televised debate in 1960, when Vice President Nixon saw his solid lead in the polls evaporate after debating the photogenic Kennedy, Press Secretary James Hagerty predicted, "you can bet your bottom dollar that no incumbent president will ever engage in any such debate or joint appearance in the future."President Lyndon B. Johnson avoided debating Barry Goldwater in 1964 through a technicality. Sec

Giuliani for President? America's Mayor for President?

by Michael H. Ebner

Set aside the standard list of reasons why Rudolph W. Giuliani – should he declare his candidacy – would find it challenging to secure the presidential nomination of the Republican party and then election to the White House in November of 2008. Instead focus on a factor largely overlooked: his sobriquet – America’s Mayor – is rooted in the urban history of the United States. The standard obstacles confronting him are familiar enough and frequently recited.

Could the Democrats Lose the Senate before the Next Election?

by Richard K. Neumann, Jr.

Democratic Senator Tim Johnson had emergency surgery in December and remains hospitalized.  For a time, he was listed in critical condition.  The governor of his state is a Republican and would appoint a replacement if the seat became vacant. Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic senatorial primary lost summer and was reelected as an independent.  Most of the people who voted for him last November were Republicans.  He supports the White House on Iraq, and although he p

Is Bush a Revolutionary?

by Lee P. Ruddin

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future  And time future contained in time past -- T.S. Eliot Don King has taken on some new fights recently weighing in to promote his commander–in–chief. Kings says “I love George Walker because I think he’s a revolutionary. He’s a president that comes in with conclusiveness.” King later states that he is “fig

What Do Presidents Say in State of the Union Addresses When the News Is Gloomy?

by Rick Shenkman

Last week HNN intern Caleb Miller explained how U.S. Presidents break bad news in times of war. But how do they handle bad news in their state of the union addresses? Do they still insist that the state of our union is strong? In 1975 President Gerald Ford said frankly,"the state of the Union is not good." This was a rare moment of candor in the history of the presidency. Most of the time presidents find a way to sugarcoat the truth.

Is Government Propaganda Legal? Well . . .

by Kevin R. Kosar

In the past couple of years, the Bush administration has been blasted by the media and citizens alike for spending taxpayer’s dollars on propaganda. “Very quickly after 9/11 the administration shifted its focus to Iraq. Then, intelligence departments spent months and huge amounts of money on propaganda, to enlist popular support for an invasion,” wrote an annoyed reader in Takoma Park, Maryland to the New York Times in late December. Meanwhile, the Washington Po

Barack & Hillary: Clash of the Titans

by Gil Troy

 The twin announcements of Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton that they plan to run for President mark great triumphs for both the Civil Rights movement and the women’s movement. The two enter the 2008 contest as the leading Democrats, with his race and her gender appearing as political assets not debits. Let’s put aside the inevitable groans that the American presidential campaign is starting so soon. Let’s overlook the obvious fact that the next 22 months

Sectarian Rage in the New SDS

by Jesse Lemisch

This summer, I published an article in New Politics, "Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack!,” which called attention to many manifestations of a rehabilitation, in some parts of the left, of the Weather Underground (WU). In a short epilogue, I wrote, "As this is written, there is a promising attempt to found a new organization called Students for a Democratic Society

What We Can Learn from George Washington (And Need to Remember Especially Now)

by Harlow Giles Unger

Among the most frequent voter complaints before, during and since the recent elections centered on alienation of government from the public. Complaints charged officials, from the President to local justices of the peace, with being out of touch with voters – which may explain why 42% severed connection to both political parties and declared themselves independent. If true, the disconnection between voters and their elected representatives is in sharp contrast with the early day

George Bush's Misplaced Hope that Historians Will Rank Him Higher than His Contemporaries

by Rick Shenkman

"Look, everybody’s trying to write the history of this administration even before it’s over. I’m reading about George Washington still. My attitude is, if they’re still analyzing No. 1, 43 ought not to worry about it, and just do what he thinks is right, make the tough choices necessary."--George W. Bush While we are reflecting at this time on Gerald Ford's legacy, it is a good time to think about George W. Bush's, as Bush himself has been doing. President Bu

Why Republicans Feel Guilty About Gerald Ford

by John Robert Greene

When my book, The Presidency of Gerald Ford(Lawrence: 1995), the first full-length study of the Ford presidency and the first book to make broad use of the Ford papers was released, it was treated kindly by reviewers and scholars who welcomed it for filling a gap i

Dissent Is American

by Ralph Young

As a historian I cannot help but look at the events of the past five years as history unfolding. And I cannot look at the process of history without reflecting on how everything connects with the past. Each generation, each individual, is a link in the chain that ties us irrevocably to our history. There are many people in this country, and in this administration, who claim that those who have opposed the invasion of Iraq are unpatriotic (at best) and treasonous (at worst). Indeed, the

President Bush at His -- and Our -- Crossroads

by Robert Brent Toplin

As George W. Bush enters the last two years of his presidency, he faces a stark choice: to take the course of our nation's most resilient presidents or to act like the nation's most stubborn. America's greatest presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, were agile leaders who managed to adjust their positions in response to changing political circumstances, but Andrew Johnson, who followed Lincoln in the White House, was an especially obstinate president. Historians now regard him as