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by Anna Wrobel THE TAX THEFT being perpetrated by Republicans will create little that is living, but will instead produce a growing austerity. The big winners will continue to siphon our public treasury for private gain at ever greater speed and volume, with no legal compulsion that the wealthiest receivers do anything constructive for the economy nor for […]
Read MoreWHEN IT COMES TO THE ENVIRONMENT, CITIES, STATES, AND PEOPLE ARE IN MOTION An Editorial from our Summer 2017 issue THE UNITED STATES is the oldest constitutional republic in the world (except for the tiny Italian microstate of San Marino). Given that durability, it’s not wishful to believe that the country’s basic political system is strong […]
Read Moreby Marc Jampole IF THE PAST serves as any predictor, the Senate will not impeach Trump for the large number of contacts his factotums had with Russian intelligence officials before the election, even if we discover that Trump struck a deal to have Russian hackers help him win the election. No matter that such a […]
Read Moreby Lauren Shapiro “The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to […]
Read Moreby Marc Jampole IT DOESN’T SURPRISE me that in the weeks after his death, the mainstream and rightwing news media have treated Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as if he were Robert E. Lee, who is traditionally presented as an admirable hero who served his country well. Both were brilliant and prominent men whose distorted […]
Read MoreThe influential legal scholar and philosopher Ronald Dworkin was born in Providence, Rhode Island on this date in 1931. An erudite contributor for several decades to the New York Review of Books, and a professor at Yale, Oxford, and NYU, among other institutions, Dworkin believed in the rightness of an interpretive approach to law, including […]
Read Moreby Mitchell Abidor THIS HAS BEEN a week for exposing the public’s general ignorance about American history and our entire political system. My 7th-grade social studies teacher, Miss Kelly, told us that if we remembered everything we learned through the 6th grade, we’d seem like geniuses all our lives. Back then that was true: Who […]
Read MoreThe 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the consumption, manufacture, and distribution of alcohol, was ratified on this date in 1919, to take effect a year later. Prohibition would advance the criminal careers of numerous Jewish gangsters, including Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Waxey Gordon, Dutch Schultz, Harry Rosen, and Detroit’s Purple Gang. Apart from underworld […]
Read MoreSanford Levinson, a progressive critic of the U.S. Constitution and a supporter of the idea of a Second Constitutional Convention, was born on this date in 1941. A professor at the University of Texas Law School, Levinson is widely quoted for opposing the expanding powers of the U.S. Presidency (which he has described as “constitutional […]
Read Moreby Marc Jampole I’m still flabbergasted at the naiveté — or perhaps lack of experience in the world — displayed by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion upholding the right of upstate New York government officials to say Christian prayers before town meetings. Kennedy writes that the case comes down to whether people are […]
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