SCOTUS Says No To Politics
by Michael Liss The Supreme Court doesn’t play politics. In what was destined to be an inevitable ruling, by an inevitable 5-4 vote, inevitably written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court decided, in Rucho v. Common Cause, that it couldn’t decide how much “partisan” gerrymandering was too much partisan gerrymandering. So it wouldn’t.…
Your Rights, Part III, Establishment Clause Edition
In Your Hands, My Dissatisfied Countrymen: The Jaquess-Gilmore Mission
After Mueller: Seeing What Is Before You
Tales From An Audiophilic Childhood
by Michael Liss How do you raise kids in an increasingly harsh and atonal world? We all have our templates for seeking harmony. Mine were my own parents. They were not performing artists or even musicians; neither played an instrument (I think the kazoo doesn’t qualify), and neither could sing. But, as listeners, they were…
Emergency!
by Michael Liss The man for whom the word “Emergency” must have been invented (“serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action”) pulled the pin out of yet another hand grenade. Our President, Donald J. Trump, bollixed, frustrated, stymied, and parboiled (twice) by the evil Nancy Pelosi, went off and did just what he…
Radical Centrism: Lincoln at Cooper Union
by Michael Liss “He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.” —Frederick Douglass, Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, April 14, 1876 In October of 1859, Abraham Lincoln received an invitation to come to New York to deliver a lecture at the Abolitionist minster Henry Ward Beecher’s…
Climbing the Walls
by Michael Liss What is it about immigration that causes us to lose our minds? I’m not even referring to the absurd spectacle of toilets overflowing at national monuments and hundreds of thousands of federal workers going without pay. In theory, at least, there’s a reason for that: The President promised his supporters a magnificent…
A Bear Ate My Turkey: Lessons From the Midterms
An American Tries To Understand Armistice Day
by Michael Liss This past Sunday, November 11, marked the Centennial of Armistice Day, the European commemoration of the agreement to end World War I. Representatives from more than 60 countries attended carefully choreographed ceremonies to honor the sacrifice of those who fought. The Europeans take the Great War seriously. Americans really don’t. It just…
The Mortar and The Pestle
by Michael Liss My dad was a pharmacist. He had an old-fashioned store (including an actual soda fountain and stools) and some of the old-fashioned tools of the trade: scales and eye-droppers, spatulas and ointment bases, graded flasks and beakers, amphorae, and his mortar and pestle. Pharmacy was a bit more of an art in…
The Lost Summer of William Jennings Bryan
Return to The Atomic Cafe
by Michael Liss Will you know what to do when the atomic bomb drops? This question, and others like it, are vividly on display in the 4K restoration of Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty’s 1982 documentary, The Atomic Café. Having seen the movie when it was first released (my kids’ reaction to this information was…
Your Rights, If You Can Keep Them, Part II
by Michael Liss The other shoe dropped. Anthony Kennedy’s idiosyncratic role as a Justice of the United State Supreme Court will come to an end a mere week from now. A lot of things are going to change. Let’s start with the politics. Kennedy’s leaving cinches the conservative revolution (or counter-revolution) for at least a…
Your Rights, If You Can Keep Them
The Graduate Schools His Father
Is 2020 Rabbit Season?
by Michael Liss “You should look into this, perhaps write a little something about it.” When Ed suggested something to you, it always emerged gently from his mouth as if on a cloud, and somehow morphed into a command by the time it reached your ears. He beckoned, I came, and now we were sitting together…
Preston Brooks Canes the Union
by Michael Liss History is fractal. Zoom out, and you see grand themes, mass movements, stirring oratory, and profound ideas. Zoom in, and it is countless individual acts and choices, smaller moments that often seem to be just footnotes, but are, on closer inspection, immensely revealing. On May 22, 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks…
Dred Scott Strains the Mystic Chords
by Michael Liss We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus…