End Run Around "High Crimes and Misdemeanors"
The meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the Constitution’s impeachment clause has bedevilled generations of lawyers and politicians, and citizens. An interesting new piece by a Cornell Law Professor, Josh Chavetz, suggests that what is an impeachable offense can be gleaned from another angle — by the comparison between impeachment and assassination. Chafetz starts with…
Read MoreThe Wisdom of Napolitano
I have always had a vaguely positive fealing about Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona and current holder of one of the Official Thankless Jobs of modern America, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Now I know why! A profile of Napolitano in a recent issue of The New Republic includes the following passage: As…
Read MoreSunday Morning on C-SPAN2's Book TV
At 10:15 a.m. on this Sunday, March 28, C-SPAN2’s Book TV is scheduled to run an interview I did with them at the Virginia Festival of the Book last weekend in Charlottesville. The subject is Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy.
Read MoreLeadership and the Constitutional Convention
Business guru Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence) has a new book out titled The Little Big Things, 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. For me, what’s interesting about this book is that he reports that his inspiration to write it was my book, The Summer of 1787, The Men Who Invented the Constitution. What he writes is…
Read MoreNo Way to Treat a Judge
The current impeachment of Judge G. Thomas Porteous of New Orleans is reopening old wounds of mine. My critique of the Senate process of trying impeachments by committee is up at Huffington Post. Having been through one of these Senate trials by committee, and having closely watched another, I am convinced they shortchange everyone involved,…
Read MoreVirginia Festival of the Book
At noon on Saturday, I’ll be in at the university book store Charlottesville for the Virginia Festival of the Book, on a panel titled “American History: Our Government at Work.” I’ll be talking about the first presidential impeachment, based on my book Impeached. My co-panelists will be: Brian Balogh, of UVA, author of Government Out of Sight, The…
Read MoreImpeachment — It's Back!
Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water, impeachment is back in the news. Yesterday the House of Representatives unanimously approved four impeachment articles calling for the removal of District Judge G. Thomas Porteous of New Orleans. Porteous is accused of taking payments from lawyers who appeared in front of him while…
Read MoreThe Benefits of Fellowship
I am halfway through a remarkable opportunity, the Hodson Trust/John Carter Brown Library Fellowship. The grant supported me for two months of research at the library in Providence (where there was a lot less snow than in Maryland!), about Aaron Burr’s conspiracy of 1805-07. The grant also will cover two more months of writing at Washington…
Read MoreThinking About Race
A few factors have combined to make me reflect on race relations in this country, and also to make me hope andwonder if we’re entering a post-racial period. First came Richard Wright’s classic Black Boy, about growing up black in Mississippi in the 1910s and 1920s. If I were better educated, I would have read this book…
Read MorePulitzer Biography Crashes Through
The Washington Post today carries a terrific review of the new biography of Joseph Pulitzer by my friend, James McGrath Morris, a/k/a Jamie. That it’s a great book should be clear from my own review of it, posted on Amazon: “Joseph Pulitzer’s story is a classic American rags-to-riches-to-sellout saga. A Jewish immigrant from Hungary, Pulitzer…
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