Personal essays
Notes on attention, technology, judgment, and the small practices that shape a thoughtful life.
Judgment / October 31, 2026
Ask most Americans to explain the difference between a PAC and a super PAC, and you will get a tangle of half-remembered phrases about contribution limits...
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There is a moment at many modern town halls that tells you everything about the health of the American republic. It is not the first question or the...
When a president signs a bill into law and then announces that parts of it are unconstitutional and won't be enforced, the press often calls it a...
The first mistake most people make when an executive privilege assertion letter lands is treating it as a political press release. They scan for the...
Most Americans don't spend a great deal of time thinking about the Senate page program. That's understandable-it's small, it's obscure, and it doesn't set...
If you go looking for the Congressional Intent Committee, you will not find it. It has no chairman, no hearing room, no roll call. No voter ever sent a...
Nothing in American law is more jealous of its place than political speech. The First Amendment exists so that the government cannot decide who gets to talk...
James Madison called the power of the purse "the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the...
Most Americans remember the line-item veto as a short-lived victory for taxpayers. The idea was simple: give the president a scalpel to trim pork from...
Every budget season ends in the same dreary ritual. A must-pass bill appears at the last minute, runs thousands of pages, funds nearly everything, and gets...