The American Constitution Society posted some excerpts from my appearance with them a week or so ago. Next time I’ll sit up straighter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMkDuNJt01I

So, I was reading the memoir of Benjamin Perry at the Library of Congress today. Who? He was the first post-Civil War governor of South Carolina, appointed by President Andrew…

I just finished Joseph Ellis’ His Excellency, George Washington, a book I had dipped in and out of for research purposes without reading cover to cover. It is a worthy…

On Sunday, I caught the interview with Justice Antonin Scalia on Sixty Minutes. I was particularly bemused by the Justice’s discussion of whether torture — say, of the detainees at…

In my current project on the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, I am now in the phase of chopping out those parts of the story that — though entertaining to…

The quote comes from Dylan Thomas, from “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” in Under Milkwood. The subject comes up with the death…

It’s more than two weeks late, but I do want to offer belated 216th birthday greetings to Thaddeus Stevens of Lancaster, PA. He plays a pivotal role in the book…

The major parties use a somewhat bemusing array of electoral mechanisms to choose their presidential candidates: winner-take-all primaries, caucuses, “open primaries” (any voter can vote in any party primary), “closed…

I’m looking forward to a forthcoming article in the Texas Law Review — how’s that for a sentence I never thought I’d write? The title shows a certain insensitivity to…

In writing about Henry Adams recently, I was intrigued by a perennial conversation as to what are the best political novels. The project begins with defining what is a political…