Politics

Executive Orders and the Decline of Law, Part 1

by William L. Anderson January 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 During his presidency, Bill Clinton would conclude his trips abroad by telling his advisors that he was determined to use the powers of his office. Those “powers,” of course, included what are called “executive orders,” which are orders that come from the office of the president of the United States and have the ...

The Repudiation of Bush

by Sheldon Richman November 10, 2006

Power tends to corrupt, Lord Acton famously said. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. The voters apparently agreed. Its reasonable to conclude from the election results that most voters felt the Republicans had been in power too long. The hopeless war in Iraq, the culture of corruption and incompetence, the spending binge (which includes the war), the grating social conservatism, and ...

They Deserved to Lose

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 8, 2006

Having lost control over the U.S. House of Representatives and possibly also the U.S. Senate, Republicans have no one to blame but themselves. They deserved to lose. For years, Republicans have used libertarian rhetoric in their political campaigns. We favor freedom, free enterprise, limited government, and responsibility, Republican candidates have so often proclaimed. Were opposed to big government, they loved ...

Page Scandal: Political Corruption Precedes Sexual Corruption

by Sheldon Richman October 25, 2006

For the sake of those vulnerable 16-year-old boys and girls who come to Washington each year, we should abolish the congressional page program immediately. I’m not referring only to the danger posed by the sexual predators in Congress. There’s a more widespread danger that hardly anyone cares about: the congressional page program encourages high ...

Conservatives and the Courts

by Sheldon Richman August 23, 2006

It is always amusing to watch conservatives react to court decisions they don’t like. They were firmly in character last week when Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush administration broke the law and violated the Constitution when it began wiretapping, without warrants, international phone calls between Americans and “suspected terrorists.” She’s ...

Theodore Roosevelt Is No One to Emulate

by Sheldon Richman July 7, 2006

We shouldn’t be surprised that President George W. Bush’s Svengali, Karl Rove, is an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. TR is hot these days. He made the cover of Time magazine, heralding a series of hagiographic articles, including Rove’s, that make him out to be the first modern American president. In Time’s view, that ...

The Cowardice of the Conservative

by Scott McPherson June 2, 2006

Conservatives are an interesting bunch. In a desperate attempt to differentiate themselves from liberals, they like to mock folks on the Left while talking as if they themselves were in agreement with libertarians. “I just vote Republican because they’re the lesser of two evils” is a common excuse for their continued support of that ...

The Fraudulent Meaning of Elections

by James Bovard April 1, 2006

Politicians strive to make Americans view elections as sacrosanct. Challenges to election results are portrayed as heresies that threaten to destroy the entire republic. After the 2004 presidential election, many Democrats went on the warpath over alleged voter fraud and manipulation in Ohio and elsewhere. The Constitution requires Congress to certify the Electoral College voters for each state before ...

Misguided Democracy

by George Leef March 1, 2006

Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); 288 pages; $26.95. One of Winston Churchill’s most famous quips is that democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others. The supposition behind the “except” clause is that ...

Attention Deficit Democracy

by James Bovard January 27, 2006

The following is the introduction to James Bovard’s new book, Attention Deficit Democracy. The forms of our free government have outlasted the ends for which they were instituted, and have become a mere mockery of the people for whose benefit they should operate. — “Americus” Delusions about democracy ...

Katrina Exposes Government for What It Is

by Sheldon Richman September 14, 2005

If a private-sector employee performed as badly as the federal, state, and local governments performed before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, he would be summarily fired. But the governments will claim their budgets were too small and proceed to extract more money from the taxpayers. Thats how the ...

Machiavelli and U.S. Politics Part 6: Public Choice and Spending

by Lawrence M. Ludlow August 31, 2005

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Public choice theory Machiavelli would take great comfort in the public choice theory as outlined by economists James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. Public-choice theory tells us that politicians cannot legislate or spend taxpayer dollars wisely. Why? Because ...