Essays
Judgment / October 23, 2026
When the Supreme Court struck down the Line Item Veto Act in Clinton v. City of New York back in 1998, plenty of people on the right treated it as a loss...
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The First Amendment does not say, "Congress shall make no law except during the sixty days before an election." But if you read the federal campaign finance...
If you want to understand the nuclear option, you have to start with a fact almost no one in Washington wants you to know: the filibuster was born of a...
When a private company cannot make payroll, nobody gets paid. Not the executives, not the line workers, not the janitors. The money simply is not there, and...
The live quorum count looks like the most boring thing on C-SPAN. A clerk reads names into a microphone. A number crawls across the bottom of the screen...
Most people hear the phrase "executive privilege" and immediately picture a president refusing to give Congress something. That reflex is understandable...
There is a quiet constitutional coup that unfolds every time a president signs a bill and then issues a statement claiming the right to ignore or...
The Constitution's appointment process is two steps. The President nominates. The Senate gives or withholds its advice and consent. That's it. There is no...
Try this thought experiment on for size. Take the greatest political argument ever written in America, The Federalist Papers, and imagine Hamilton, Madison...
There is a peculiar ritual in American politics that should trouble anyone who takes the Declaration of Independence seriously. Every two years, after the...