Hypocrisy, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld told us, is the tribute which vice pays to virtue. Tributes of this kind have been flowing lately from the members of the United States Senate and the mainstream press who clamored for some sort of censure of President William Jefferson Clinton, or who scrambled, for a while, to...
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Sisyphus and States’ Rights
Can a ten-year-old girl successfully sue a local school board for failing to prevent the sexual harassment of the young lady by an elementary-school classmate? Should an Alabama state court judge be able to display his hand-carved copy of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom? Can the people of a state decide that no state...
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An Extraordinary Suggestion
The impeachment proceedings were the subject of an extraordinary suggestion made by Pat Caddell, a former pollster for the Democratic Party, at the “Dark Ages” retreat for members of the “conservative movement” over New Years’ weekend. Caddell told the gathering that the problem with the Republican Party was that they couldn’t seem to pick the...
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Is There Hope for the Federal Courts?
In a radio address last year, President Clinton railed against congressional Republicans who were stalling on his nominees to the federal bench and had even threatened some sitting judges with impeachment. Their actions, he claimed, had endangered our tradition of judicial independence, and were an attack on the rule of law itself. The truth, of...
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Recapturing the Constitution
In a landmark five-to-four decision last spring, in United States v. Lopez, the Supreme Court announced—for the first time in almost 50 years—that Congress had exceeded its interstate commerce powers. At issue was a federal statute—the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990—which forbade the carrying of firearms within one thousand feet of a school....