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Politics: Faith-Based Groups Should Be Careful What Whey Wish For

by Andrew M. Schocket

The Bush administration wants to drop some cash in the collection plate. If Congress enacts the proposed"faith-based initiative," the federal government will help pay for religious institutions' social programs. Federal funding of religious organizations' good works would enable these groups to divert money currently spent on such activities any way they want. In effect, tax dollars would be supporting churches, mosques and synagogues. The plan's defenders argue that clos

Column: How Bush Sold Out the Christian Right

by P.M. Carpenter

Recent developments in the president's course of shaping his"faith-based initiative"-a hefty alternative to government attending the needy-prompt questions about the evolution of conservativism. Amidst the Great Depression's massive unemployment, for example, President Herbert Hoover wrote that"many persons left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples." Yet it's doubtful that he conceived this incredibly insensitive assessment as a deliberate deception. Hoover really, trul

Politics: What TR Would Have Made of Bush/Cheney

by Daniel Justin Herman

A century ago Americans, led by their new Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, left behind the excesses of the Gilded Age and entered the Progressive Era. The Gilded Age was a time when plutocrats and corporations dominated society and manipulated government. The Progressive Era was a time when middle-class reformers regained control of their society. Progressives pushed through legislation to protect workers; to conserve natural resources and wildlife; to create national parks and monum

Politics: Who Changed History Most in the Past Half Year?

by HNN Staff

JEFFORDS AND O'CONNOR SANDRA DAY O'CONNORBecause ... She was the swing vote in Bush v. Gore, giving us ... Bush...the end of Kyoto...the end of the ABM Treaty (maybe)...higher levels of arsenic in wat

Politics: Bush’s River Boat Gamble—And Why Republicans Love It

by Robert Forbes

Now that President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut has been signed into law, the pundits and the experts have declared that the surplus is dead--and that that's a good thing. Suddenly, politicians and economists who have for years stressed the urgency of fiscal discipline and the need to slash spending have found a new fondness for deficits. It's a strange tturnaround, to say the least.Why do President Bush and his allies want to knock the federal budget into the red? It's a familiar claim

Column: History 101 for Lefties

by P.M. Carpenter

Novice visionaries of the Left, many of whom signed on with Ralph Nader in 2000, live in an imaginary America. They live in a nation where stridently stated radical visions can lead to revolutionary realities. Experienced visionaries live in a nation where that tactic means profound disappointment, because we’re a profoundly unrevolutionary people.11A brief review of America’s tenaciously conservative past—a splash of cold-water in the face—might be helpful to the (barely) surviving Left i

Column: Can Anybody Teach Gray Davis How to Behave Himself?

by William Thompson

Governor Gray Davis is playing the rich man versus the poor man political game as the lights go out in California. Davis sees the cost of energy rising in his state, and because his state and its poor people cannot share any of the responsibility for the price increases, the fault must be put on the doorstep of the rich people--far away rich people--rich people who live in another political jurisdiction--rich people who live in Texas. To Davis politics is a giant zero-sum game. The poor Calif

Politics: Reflections on Election 2000

by Walter Nugent

For a long while it looked like we would at long last behold Tilden’s revenge, but that didn’t happen. Instead, as my lawyer son observed, the Supreme Court reinvigorated the great tradition it established in Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson. The doctrine of equal protection of the laws may very well escape from the Pandora’s box of Bush v. Gore and bedevil elections in many another state and many another year. Perhaps that will provoke a return to deciding

What History Tells Us Will Likely Happen to Those Giant Surpluses

by Bernard Weisberger

For good or ill, the great 2001 tax cut is an accomplished fact. Congress has chosen to believe the rosy projections of future surpluses piling up in the Treasury for years to come, and has taken the ax to the revenue codes.

Column: Do You Have to be a Democrat to Like the Jefford's Switch?

by William Thompson

As a Republican I share the feelings of losing once again, the feelings of once again being slapped in the face for identifying with the party of"bible thumpers" and Attila the Hun. It was a defeat to have Senator Jeffords leave the party. It was a defeat to lose control of the Senate. I do not want to play any"sour grapes" role, however, by reflecting on the good that could come from the change. Quite frankly, as the story unfolded, I (like many other Republicans) wished and wished that a

Politics: Family Feud

by Rick Shenkman

The Jeffords switch is teaching a great lesson about Washington politics. It’s not always about who gets what and how much. It’s often about raw human emotions like revenge.Revenge is a theme more commonly associated with foreigners like the Serbs, who, we learned during the Kosovo war, still can’t get over a humiliating defeat that occurred some seven centuries ago.But you don’t have to open up musty European histories to find a juicy revenge plot worthy of Shakespeare. Just pick

Column: Did You Think John Ashcroft Wasn't Serious About Guns?

by P.M. Carpenter

Bush II's sometimes-we-mean-it-sometimes-we-don't"strict constructionists" are at it again and this time, it so happens, they don't mean it. One shouldn't need to keep score when it comes to tracking ideological consistency--which is presumably inherent in terms such as"strict" constructionism--but when a dog of ultraconservatism is chasing a rabbit of shinie

Column: Does the NRA Mistrust Democracy?

by Thomas Spencer

As someone who often writes about local topics in my historical research, I seldom am inspired by current events at the local level. Correspondingly, when I write for the History News Network, I tend to try to focus on current events using a rather long-term historical lens. However, the recent move by the legislature in my home state of Missouri to liberalize gun laws has changed this for the moment. I also must admit that the current debate over Michael Bellesiles's Arming America that

Column: Why Nevadans Are Reading Up on John C. Calhoun

by William Thompson

The annals of federal state relationships have been punctuated by several episodes of state efforts to nullify federal executive actions. In the past these efforts have been essentially extra legal (and/or illegal), and they have been basically unsuccessful. A contemporary nullification fight--one going on at this very moment--is different. It is taking place under the guise of federal law according to procedures set down in words by the national congress. The effort will, however, end the same

Column: Al, Are You Listening?

by P.M. Carpenter

Al Gore's recent barn burner of a speech in Florida ignited both elation and, one suspects, acute depression. Most party faithfuls were thrilled right down to their partisan socks to hear Gore taking on Bush II with such refreshing elan, while other presidential hopefuls in attendance--John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd--likely were wishing Al would plunge off the stage, a la Bob Dole. The former vice president's performance seemed like a hard act to follow. On the oth

Column: President Wonk (?)

by P.M. Carpenter

I hope Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank is enjoying the new toaster oven the White House Communications Office promised him. To ward off the flock of flesh-eating Post attorneys trained to see something actionable in that statement, I should hasten to add that I'm sure Milbank is not, in fact, now cooking up tasty morsels in an imposing toa

Column: The Middle East Mess Bush Helped Make Messier

by P.M. Carpenter

With Team 43 it's either too much or too little, but always plenty of talk. Far-reaching yet short-sighted policies aimed at going over the top or doing nothing at all are launched for whatever politically opportunistic reason, then towering rhetoric kicks in, often retroactively, to justify them.Last year's gargantuan tax cut was, and remains, the Platonic Id

Investigating the Theft of the American Dream with Hedrick Smith (INTERVIEW)

by Robin Lindley

Renowed journalist Hedrick Smith on how powerful forces in the past four decades shifted wealth to the very rich and divided America.