I met Judge Robert Bork once, in the summer of 1989, when I was interning at Accuracy in Media. I was working on a feature story for the Washington Inquirer, AIM’s weekly newspaper, about the Smithsonian Institution’s use of tax dollars to fund the performance of Santeria and Palo Mayombe rituals on the Mall in...
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Ditching the Cadaver
“Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.” —Wendell Phillips If anything might have transformed the presidential election of 2004 from a dull ritual of mass democracy into an interesting and perhaps even meaningful act of civic decision, it would have been the presence of Patrick J. Buchanan, whose wit and sharp conservative intelligence enlivened...
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Ditching the Cadaver
“Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.” —Wendell Phillips If anything might have transformed the presidential election of 2004 from a dull ritual of mass democracy into an interesting and perhaps even meaningful act of civic decision, it would have been the presence of Patrick J. Buchanan, whose wit and sharp conservative intelligence enlivened...
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The Forced Funding of Student Radicalism
I happen to be a conservative, a Christian, and white. I am also in the military, and I disapprove of homosexuality. At the University of Wisconsin, there is little tolerance for this combination of characteristics. As a student there, I served as the symbol of all that’s wrong with the world. My checkbook showed just...
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A Highly Acceptable Man
Conscience and its Enemies is a collection of Robert George’s recent writings for a general audience. In addition to the title topic, it includes chapters on the defense of natural marriage, the protection of life from conception to natural death, the nature of moral reasoning, and the need for limited government. Overall, the pieces in...
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Mr. Lincoln’s War: An Irrepressible Conflict?
“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are ...
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A Third Way?
I went into the 2000 presidential campaign an enthusiastic supporter of Pat Buchanan’s bid for the White House as a third-party candidate. I emerged more convinced than ever that Buchanan would have made an outstanding president but skeptical that a serious right-wing party will be able to emerge, at least in the short run. I knew...
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A Lawyer’s Lawyer
Judge John Roberts of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, whom President George W. Bush has nominated to take the place of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, is what we used to call a “lawyer’s lawyer.” He comes from Harvard College, Harvard Law School, the Harvard Law Review, a...
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The Never Trumpers: Sore Losers With Thin Skins
Emerald Robinson recently wrote a witty piece for The American Spectator puncturing the pomposity of the Never Trump wing of the conservative movement. At least one member of that wing, the thin-skinned Jonah Goldberg, now the holder of the “Asness Chair in Applied Liberty at the American Enterprise Institute,” was not amused, and he let...
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A Third Way?
I went into the 2000 presidential campaign an enthusiastic supporter of Pat Buchanan’s bid for the White House as a third-party candidate. I emerged more convinced than ever that Buchanan would have made an outstanding president but skeptical that a serious right-wing party will be able to emerge, at least in the short run. I...
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Mr. Lincoln’s War An Irrepressible Conflict?
“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions … are the...
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The New Deal Paved the Way for Today’s Jan. 6 Prosecutions
David Beito’s account of American concentration camps, wartime censorship, mass surveillance, and misuse of executive agencies for partisan political purposes further impugns the claim that FDR was a man of virtue.
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Media Matters: Another Inquisitor In Fighting ‘Hate’
The granddaddy of the “anti-hate” movement is, of course, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has made hundreds of millions of dollars and ruined the lives of conservatives by using innuendo, guilt by association and outright lies to smear anyone it doesn’t like. And that’s just about anyone to right of, say, Che Guevara. One...
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In Praise of Elites
Being a lifelong elitist myself, I have long had a sneaking sympathy for a Trollope character, Sir Timothy Beeswax. In The Dune’s Children (1880), Beeswax is a dignified old politician who lives not for power but, quite unashamedly, for the trappings of office. Parliament, he believed, was a club so eligible that any Englishman would...
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Leave the Kids Alone
The recent Supreme Court decision striking down a Silent Prayer Law in Alabama came as a shock to many people. What harm could be done by a moment of silence that the students were free to dedicate—or not dedicate—to a Supreme Being? Religion, it now seems, is to be treated like the daughter who disgraces...
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A Killing Privacy
Abortion is not something to discuss in polite company. Unlike a good, clean murder committed from natural motives such as revenge, envy, and greed, abortion is something slimy, more like a sex crime. Many parents must be tempted, from time to time, to commit mayhem upon their offspring. Such feelings are natural; but women who...
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Heightened Security
Federal judges in California have been busy. In August, Judge Vaughn Walker held that it is irrational to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Following in Judge Walker’s footsteps, Judge Virginia A. Phillips struck down the congressional prohibition against homosexuals in the military as violating the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause...
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The Trump Indictment May Saddle the GOP With a Loser
Trump's rise in the 2024 election polls after his indictment plays into Democrat hands, potentially saddling Republicans with a candidate who cannot win in 2024 because he cannot acknowledge his past mistakes.
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Birthright Citizenship Is a Breach in the Border
Trump’s promise to end birthright citizenship will be a battle but it’s a battle America can’t afford to lose.
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Federales, Gringo Style
For most of American history, federal law enforcement consisted only of U.S. marshals serving in the territories of the West. Their legacy is decidedly mixed. Many were appointed purely for their political connections, and graft and corruption were not unusual. The first U.S. marshal for Colorado Territory was accused of embezzling federal funds. The third...
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On Ending “Gay Marriage”
Did I read aright the piece on “Gay Marriage” by Prof. William J. Quirk (“What’s Next for the Imperial Judiciary?” News, January)? When he puts forth his solution, it turns out to be the passage of a bill that will give the “last word” to “[e]ach state’s high court.” But as he himself points out...
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Freedom or Tyranny?—June 2006
PERSPECTIVE Imposing Utopiaby Thomas FlemingConcealing despotism. VIEWS Cincinnatus, Call the Office!by Clyde WilsonPublic service versus the American System. Judging for the Peopleby Stephen B. PresserDemocracy, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution. Democracy: The Enlightened Wayby Claude PolinThe your-fault society. REVIEWS A Government We Deserveby H.A. Scott Trask Sean Wilentz: The Rise of Democracy: Jefferson to...
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On a Supreme Court Appointment
Chronicles carries informed and very interesting articles. You have literate and intelligent authors, and I look forward anxiously to the arrival of each issue. I want to compliment you particularly on the article on the judiciary by William F. Harvey (“An Appointment to the Supreme Court,” Vital Signs, June). It is a tragedy that Judge...
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Sharpening the Swords
On June 25, one day before the U.S. Supreme Court declared that a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Louise Melling, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Miss Melling’s announcement that the ACLU would no longer support the...
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The Government Needs Censorship Because Nobody Trusts It to Tell the Truth
Americans have come to see the government as a purveyor of misinformation, not a trusted speech referee. A case now before the Supreme Court reinforces that perception.
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Why No Evangelical Justice?
When Republicans were warned not to give Sonia Sotomayor the drubbing Democrats gave Robert Bork and Sam Alito—lest they be perceived as sexist and racist by women and Hispanics—the threat was credible, for it underscored a new reality in American politics. The Supreme Court, far from being the last redoubt of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant...
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USA becomes military dictatorship
With little fanfare, in the past week the United States officially became a military dictatorship. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a suit brought against the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that allowed indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. That means the military now can, at any time, “disappear” you, even if...
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Killing Off Limited Government
The federal government cannot ban criminals from bringing guns to schools, but it can arrest a person for growing marijuana at home to ease nausea from chemotherapy. Such is the state of Supreme Court jurisprudence. The intellectual case for the “War on Drugs” faded long ago. Criminalization of what is primarily a moral and health...
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How Conservatives Can Finally Get Judicial Nominations Right
It is past time that conservatives actually play to win at the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Geographical Diversity May Be The Next Affirmative Action Trojan Horse
Affirmative action advocates aren't likely to stop trying to implement their racial politics even after the Supreme Court's decision. A "geographical diversity" law in Arkansas may be the model for the left's next move.
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We’ve Only Just Begun
The Left is not generous in victory. The ink on the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was barely dry before a vicious assault on organized religion in this country was launched, a multipronged offensive with the clear intention of marginalizing Christians and banishing them from the public square. The first shot was fired...
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Forever 1965
In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). Under the formula, states or their political subdivisions are “covered jurisdictions” if they maintained in the 1960’s and early 70’s tests or devices (e.g., a literacy test or moral character requirement) as a prerequisite...
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The Fruits of Fraud
The worst thing about the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 legalization of abortion in all 50 states and U.S. territories has not been the 55 million—and counting—dead babies, as horrible as that has been, but the damage it has caused to the rule of law, specifically the U.S. Constitution. In his dissent, Justice Byron White branded...
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Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPS
If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed, the U.S. Supreme Court will consist of six Catholics, two Jews and precisely one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the form of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 89 years old and boasts of two important WASP insignia: inherited wealth and a bow tie. He also thinks that Shakespeare’s plays...
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A Supreme Disqualification
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court once again trampled on the rights of the states. The media took little notice. Since it became a state in 1912, Arizona has had a citizenship requirement for voters. In 2004, the people of the state, in an effort to combat voter fraud, enacted Proposition 200. This initiative requires...
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Kim Davis vs. Judicial Tyranny
“If the law supposes that, the law is a ass—a idiot.” Charles Dickens gave that line to Mr. Bumble in “Oliver Twist.” And it sums up the judgment of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis about the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, which said the 14th Amendment guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry. Davis refused to...
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“Empathy” And The Court
The President wants an empathetic jurist to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. He will likely get such a one. What the country will get in that event is one more senator or cabinet member—as straw boss, head knocker, high and mighty arbiter of high and mighty matters. A sort of modern Roman...
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Let Us Pray (But to Whom?)
In May, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause is not offended when a city council opens its meetings with a short prayer (Town of Greece v. Galloway). While this result seems to be an example of commonsense constitutionalism, conservatives should not be too quick to pat the Court on the back. ...
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Recess Games
“Supreme Court sharply limits presidential power on recess appointments.” Thus read the headline in the Los Angeles Times after the High Court’s decision in National Labor Relations Board v. Canning. Applying its spin to the decision, National Review opined that “the Court rejected the administration’s power grab on recess appointments” and clarified when a recess...
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Plessy v. Ferguson—One Hundred Years Later
One hundred years ago this May, Plessy V. Ferguson was decided. The Supreme Court’s 1896 decision upheld Louisiana’s law that required all passenger railways operating within the state to have “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” Over the years, the import of the decision and public perceptions of such state regulations...
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Judge Moore & God’s Law
When elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000, Judge Roy Moore installed in his courthouse a monument with the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai carved into it. Told by a federal court his monument violated the separation of church and state, Moore refused to remove it and was...
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57 million babies and counting, RIP
Something died in America 42 years ago today. That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 1973 edict, Roe v. Wade, forcing all 50 states to almost completely legalize abortion on demand – even those states that already had legalized it. About 57 million babies have been killed since. But something more died: Maybe...
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Books and Lovers
Back in 1839, an Englishman by the name of Alexander Walker wrote a manual by the name of Woman, in which he quoted Hume: “Among the inferior creatures, nature herself, being the supreme legislator, prescribes all the laws which regulate their marriages, and varies those laws according to the different circumstances of the creature.” So...
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Constitutional Disorder
The Supreme Court, as Stephen Presser laments, has wandered far off course; increasingly its Justices have taken to reading their own preferences and prejudices into the Constitution, thereby abandoning their solemn obligation to act as its guardians by interpreting its provisions in accordance with the basic values and intentions of the Framers. What is more,...
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Line Item Veto Act
The Line Item Veto Act has been struck down by the Supreme Court. As I predicted in the February issue of Chronicles (“Reining in the Feds“), the Court (in Clinton v. City of New York) declared that the act violated the Constitution’s Presentment Clause, which commands that a bill passing both the House and the...
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Rediscovering Philadelphia
“There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.” —Montesquieu The theme that unites the short, somewhat disparate eight chapters of this book is the use by the Supreme Court of unenumerated rights—that is, rights beyond those specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights—to invalidate state...
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Scandalous Education: UT’s War on Standards
In 2003, the Supreme Court expected “that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary” in university admissions. That was the conventional wisdom of the time. Affirmative action was supposed to be a temporary deviation from the principle of nondiscrimination, a remedy for injustices past, a bit of accelerated...
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Rediscovering Philadelphia
“There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.” —Montesquieu The theme that unites the short, somewhat disparate eight chapters of this book is the use by the Supreme Court of unenumerated rights—that is, rights beyond those specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights—to invalidate state...
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A “Containment Policy” for the New Cold War
Americans regularly accept expropriations—legal, moral, and economic—from the central government that would have driven our 18th- and 19th-century ancestors to arms. The Constitution reserves to the states and local communities all powers necessary to provide legal protection for valuable ways of life. These rights have been usurped by the central government, especially by the Supreme...