The art of the great American political vendetta was born in New Jersey, just a short drive – barring heavy traffic – south of the George Washington Bridge. There, in the town of Weehawken, on a majestic cliff overlooking the Hudson River, the vice president of the United States, Aaron Burr, shot and killed his […]
Sixteen presidents before Barack Obama got a second chance at giving an inaugural address for the ages. Most didn’t make much of it. George Washington’s remarks the second time around were admirably succinct — only 135 words — but hardly qualify as an address. Thomas Jefferson, who laid out a masterful brief on democracy at […]
President Barack Obama used the anniversary of Social Security to trumpet Democrats’ support for the popular program and accuse Republicans of trying to destroy it. Seventy-five years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday: “We have an obligation to keep that promise, […]
The rabid right wants to rewrite history and in states like Texas they are already doing so. Conservatives in the Lone Star state want the state school board to rewrite teaching guidelines and force schools to downplay the role that Thomas Jefferson played in American history while praising right-wingers like Phyllis Schlafly and challenging the […]
Rarely does the government, that big, clumsy, poorly regarded oaf, pull off anything short of war that touches all lives with one act, one stroke of a president’s pen. Such a moment has come. After a year of riotous argument, decades of failure and a century of spoiled hopes, the United States is reaching for […]
The current partisan divide is as stark and nasty as any in recent history and on almost every issue — from health care to energy independence to reviving the economy — there’s little or no effort to find common ground. But fierce political battle is also a tradition ingrained in American history. If today’s hostile […]