News at Home

Child Rearing and the American Future (Let the "Hunger Games" Begin!)

by James E. Block

American children are in trouble. Each day brings increasing evidence of peer aggression (the new documentary Bully), autism spectrum disorders (the report just released by the Centers for Disease Control), and serious dependency and helplessness issues (an ongoing U.C.L.A. study). The unsurprising conclusion of the director of the C.D.C. is that children and families “need help.”But what kind of help? With the predictable failure of No Child Left Behind to conjure higher achievement out of thin air and news from the parental front that raising children is no longer joyous, those cultivating the young have again lost their way.

Vice Presidential Nominees Must Be Plausible As President

by Joel K. Goldstein

As Mitt Romney slogs on toward the GOP presidential nomination, political talk is turning to his running mate. That discussion has focused on conventional political factors thought to dictate vice-presidential selection. Should Romney select someone from a large swing state or target a particular demographic? Should he focus on energizing his base or on appealing to independents? Some of these factors may come into play, yet the recent history of vice-presidential selection suggests that the key requirement for a running mate is whether he or she is presidential.It's curious that this threshold factor is often overlooked. Most recent presidential candidates have recognized that good politics, as well as good governance, requires choosing a running mate who would be a plausible president. Since 1976, presidential candidates from both parties have almost always chosen running mates who would be plausible as president.

Americans Elect Could Become a Viable Political Party

by J. David Gillespie

It may be that I just like duels. One of my favorite movie scenes is of the dueling banjoes in Deliverance. I find some fascination even in the historical accounts of the Burr-Hamilton affair, though it is a relief that such lethal blood sports no longer have the protection of law. This will be a dueling essay. It is about Americans Elect, the brightest, most glittering phenomenon situated outside the walls of America’s partisan duopoly in the 2012 election. For sparring partner, I choose Professor Robert Brent Toplin, a respected scholar whose article on Americans Elect appeared on HNN two weeks ago.

The Founding Fathers Had an Individual Mandate—to Buy Guns

by David A. Walsh

The acrimony over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has now (perhaps inevitably) drawn in the Founding Fathers. Writing for Slate, Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar cited the 1792 Militia Acts as a legal precedent that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, widely criticized for his bumbling under the onslaught of questions by the conservative justices on the Supreme Court, should have cited. The Militia Acts have their own individual mandate:Each and every free able-bodied white male citizen...who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years...shall...be enrolled in the militia....Every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges....” [emphasis added]

History Shows Brokered Conventions Go for the Moderate Candidate

by Nicole Hemmer

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will likely nab enough delegates in today's primaries to cross the halfway mark in his bid to clinch the Republican presidential nomination. As he inches ever closer to the finish line, two things have become clear. First, Romney is the only candidate able to capture the majority of delegates. And second, a still-sizable contingent of GOP voters would desperately like to stop him.That desperation has breathed new life into the idea of a brokered convention (in which delegates or party leaders rather than voters choose the party’s nominee), which has now become the main goal of both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, Romney’s two main rivals. Their hope: while no other candidate can amass enough delegates to win the nomination outright, they could block Romney from doing so. If they do, the choice moves from the voting booth to the national convention in Tampa, Florida.

"People in the Press are Just as Patriotic" as Everyone Else -- Interview with Anthony Lewis, Part 2

by Adam Eisenberg

For more than fifty years, Anthony Lewis has been a keen observer of the United States Supreme Court, the First Amendment, and the critical role the press plays as watchdog for our government.The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Mr. Lewis was "politely fired" from his first job as a local news desk editor for the New York Times. He bounced back quickly as a reporter for the Washington Daily News, and his reporting on abuses in the federal loyalty-security program in the McCarthy era earned him his first Pulitzer.The New York Times promptly re-hired Mr. Lewis. The paper sent him to Harvard Law School on a one-year Nieman Fellowship, and then returned him to Washington, D.C., where he effectively invented modern Supreme Court reportage. Among the many landmark cases he covered was Gideon v. Wainwright; the decision that established state courts must provide lawyers for all indigent criminal defendants. He chronicled the case in his book, Gideon’s Trumpet.

"The Supreme Court is a Very Great ... Institution," but Today It's "Outrageous": Interview with Anthony Lewis, Part 1

by Adam Eisenberg

For more than fifty years, Anthony Lewis has been a keen observer of the United States Supreme Court, the First Amendment, and the critical role the press plays as watchdog for our government.The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Mr. Lewis was "politely fired" from his first job as a local news desk editor for the New York Times. He bounced back quickly as a reporter for the Washington Daily News, and his reporting on abuses in the federal loyalty-security program in the McCarthy era earned him his first Pulitzer.The New York Times promptly re-hired Mr. Lewis. The paper sent him to Harvard Law School on a one-year Nieman Fellowship, and then returned him to Washington, D.C., where he effectively invented modern Supreme Court reportage. Among the many landmark cases he covered was Gideon v. Wainwright; the decision that established state courts must provide lawyers for all indigent criminal defendants. He chronicled the case in his book, Gideon’s Trumpet.

The Texas Sabbath Showdown—The Inside Story

by Edwin Black

At about 8:00 pm on February 27, 2012, constitutional attorney Nathan Lewin was sitting half-asleep in the aisle seat of an Amtrak train speeding south from New York to Washington, D.C. Seated next to him was his daughter and law partner Alyza Lewin. Shortly after crossing the bridge into New Jersey, as red and green track lights blurred past, his cell phone rang. Struggling against the din of a train car filled with passengers, and the exhaustion of a tiring day in Manhattan, Lewin tried to make out what was being said on the cell phone. “You are located where?” he asked. “Did you say Texas?”From that Monday night moment and for the next four days, a tornadic frenzy of phone calls, text messages, emails, conference calls, and voice mails was unleashed between parents and attorneys in Texas and Washington. It would all change a number of lives forever, and make headlines worldwide as an international sports drama.

The Myth of "Brokered" Conventions

by Leo P. Ribuffo

The 1950s and 1970s probably do not seem so long ago to most adults. Even those born later usually remember conversations with their parents and grandparents. The main exception to this practice seems to be our reigning political pundits, for whom only events since 1980 at the latest count as recent and relevant. This short-term perspective badly distorts our understanding of so-called brokered conventions.

The Perils of a Brokered Convention

by R. Craig Sautter

Before the primary system became the dominant path to nomination, most delegates to the national convention were simply loyal members of the party rewarded with a junket to a far-off city. They would readily switch their vote when ordered by state leaders or in exchange for some particular inducement. Not now.

Memo to Pundits: Stop Calling Rick Santorum a Fascist

by Michelle Nickerson

Rick Santorum “did it again” last Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi. Flanked by five of his seven children with wife Karen, he opened his victory speech to crowds of supporters in southern Louisiana by sharing a common greeting he encounters on the campaign trail: “I am praying for you.” All the prayers, all the kids, and all the victories have been drawing scrutiny not only to Santorum’s conservative Catholicism, but to his links with the Catholic organization Opus Dei, founded in 1928 by St. Josemaría Escrivà, a Spanish priest who supported Francisco Franco’s fascist regime. Fueling the interest in Opus Dei’s orthodoxy and Catholicism's role in mid-century fascism have been the protests by Catholic bishops and conservatives against the contraception mandate that President Obama added to the Affordable Care Act. The debates have made the power of clergy to withhold reproductive health services from women by virtue of the church’s widespread presence in the national healthcare system... well, frighteningly apparent. 

The Value of Shaming the Banks? Around $2 Billion.

by Joe Krudler

In the year 1711, Joseph Addison penned one of the greatest satirical lines on the topic of banks. “Methought, I returned to the great hall, where I had been the morning before, but,” wrote Addison in The Spectator, a London-based subscription. “I saw, towards the upper end of the hall, a beautiful virgin, seated on a throne of gold. Her name, as they told me, was Public Credit.”  By my calculations, then, this makes 301 years worth of moral outrage over what you and I commonly coin banks (pun intended).

It's Been Fifty Years Since We "Discovered" Poverty -- Has Anything Really Changed?

by Barbara Ehrenreich

It’s been exactly 50 years since Americans, or at least the non-poor among them, “discovered” poverty, thanks to Michael Harrington’s engaging book The Other America. If this discovery now seems a little overstated, like Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was because the poor, according to Harrington, were so “hidden” and “invisible” that it took a crusading left-wing journalist to ferret them out.  

I Studied Savonarola, I Wrote About Savonarola, and Rick Santorum, Sir, You are No Savonarola

by Donald Weinstein

Up until a few weeks ago, if you mentioned Girolamo Savonarola (pronounced "Saa-va-na-roll-a") anywhere but at a convention of historians, you would likely have been met with shrugs and puzzled looks. Even the few who were vaguely aware of him would have had trouble pronouncing his name, and an even harder time spelling it. All this has changed -- well, maybe not the spelling and pronunciation problems. But anyone reading a newspaper or surfing the web today is but a click or turn of the page away from the distinguished Italian friar and his life, but a short reading from actually having an opinion about him. In other words, Savonarola has gone viral. No, this sudden notoriety is -- unfortunately -- not due to my new book, Savonarola The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet which Yale University Press published last year. No, the real catalyst has been GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum, again catching steam after a series of victories in the South.

The Moral Crusade Against Contraception Won't Work

by John W. Johnson

“Did you ever imagine,” a cable TV host recently asked a guest, “that we’d be talking about contraception in the year 2012?” The guest shook her head sadly, adding that she had no memory of when contraception had last been a debatable issue in America.For many American women, obtaining effective, safe, and reasonably-priced contraception is a primary medical concern. Thus, the recently expressed objections of the Catholic Church and a few other employers to offer insurance coverage for birth control has understandably angered a wide range of women--including Catholic women. Moreover, the relish with which Republican politicians have invoked the religious clauses of the First Amendment to defend the putative constitutional rights of employers to withhold such coverage has further inflamed the debate.

Why Drug Companies Can Take Your Body Tissue Without Your Consent: Interview with Bioethicist Harriet A. Washington

by Robin Lindley

No one should approach the temple of sciencewith the soul of a moneychanger.--Thomas Browne, Religio MediciAs demonstrated by the Occupy movement, citizens across the United States are increasingly concerned about how large corporations are encroaching on every aspect of their lives. They question rampant deregulation, corporate takeover of democratic processes, and the greed of a few that results in misery for many.

The Georgia Senate Tries to Whitewash the Founding Fathers

by James C. Cobb

In the forty-three years that I have taught United States history in both state universities and the public schools, I have done my best to resist the temptation to turn my lectern into a “bully pulpit” for proselytizing my personal political gospel. Not surprisingly, I also get my back up when others, with no particular preparation in the field but a truckload of ideological axes to grind, attempt to prescribe both the content of historical curricula and the lessons that are to be drawn from them. A textbook example of such an effort to control the textbooks is Georgia Senate Bill 426, introduced by Sen. William Ligon (R., Brunswick) and others and currently under subcommittee review.

What the War over Contraception is Really About: Control over Women's Bodies

by Ruth Rosen

For weeks, bewildered Americans have witnessed politicians debate whether or not contraception should be covered by President’s Obama’s new health care plan. On March 1, after some of the most bizarre theatrical antics remembered in this nation’s political history, the U.S. Senate finally interrupted this surreal soap opera with a cliff hanger.  By only two votes, they defeated an amendment that would have allowed religious employers to refuse to pay for the contraception of their employees.  The pilot episode of the drama began on February 16, when President Obama announced that all the employers of all institutions, regardless of their religious affiliation, would have to pay for contraception.  When the Catholic Church and right-wing fringe went ballistic, he compromised and said that if an institution felt it was violating its religious beliefs, then the insurance company would have to pay. 

Does Barack Obama Have True Political Wisdom? (Yes, He Does.)

by Walter G. Moss

In two previous essays on "Political Wisdom" I dealt with the topic generally. The first was much longer, amply footnoted, and considered how it applied to both elected officials and the electorate. The second and shorter essay summarized many of the findings of the first and dealt primarily with the virtues and values required of a politically wise president. The present essay also summarizes a longer, more scholarly essay, this time on President Obama’s political wisdom. No political leader exercises such wisdom all the time. Even our greatest presidents, like Lincoln, sometimes acted unwisely.

The Legal Case Against Attacking Iran

by Bruce Ackerman

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington has provoked a broad debate over the military and political wisdom of an attack on Iran. But so far, there has been little attention to the legal issues involved, which are crucial. American support for a preemptive strike would be a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution.