Elektratig

As I noted in the last post, the Constitution specifically referred to the president's receipt of a salary. But it said nothing about w...

When George Washington took the oath of office as president on April 30, 1789, technically he had no salary. The House and Senate had not a...

Writing the last post reminded me of Merrill Peterson's great turn of phrase describing the unforeseen and unforseeable events that cha...

Rene Tyree at wig-wags recently published a nice post on the inevitability on the Civil War. I commented there that I thought that some of...

So how did Alexander Hamilton and his federalist allies defeat conditional ratification at the New York convention? As I noted in my previo...

Just a small footnote to Scott Johnson's post at Power Line that touches on the 1864 Democratic platform. I'm no fan of George McCl...

To recap, on Saturday July 19, 1788, the federalists at the New York State Ratification Convention were on the ropes. The anti-federalists ...

At Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, Tim Paganos noted a few days ago that the poet A.E. Housman had translated the works of an extremely ...

Taken late last Sunday afternoon, as the snow/ice/freezing rain/whatever was departing lovely NW NJ.

For no particular reason . . .

Alexander Hamilton, in Poughkeepsie, sent his letter to James Madison on July 19, 1788. I infer (based on Madison’s response) that Madison ...

It was Saturday July 19, 1788. Depending on the time of day, the antifederalists at the New York Convention had just passed, or were about ...

When we last visited the New York Convention, federalists were desperately trying to beat back antifederalist attempts to condition ratifica...

Instapundit points out this interesting article by Will Baude entitled The Judgment Power . Here's the intro, which even includes a se...

Via Metafilter , this looks interesting, although I haven't read it yet: The Righteous and Reasonable Ambition to Become a Landholder: W...

Baseball has been taking it on the chin lately, not unreasonably. Here is a photo of happier times -- Honus Wagner and John McGraw sharing ...

Last week I flagged a series of well-reasoned posts over at Volokh arguing that the integration of women into the military degraded the com...

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy reminds me that December 15 is Bill of Rights Day. To commemorate it, I thought I'd present J...

I thought I’d devote a few posts to examining the events leading up to New York’s ratification of the Constitution. Those events – and part...