As all eyes turn to Denver and the Democratic National Convention this week, anticipation is building for Barack Obama’s address to a crowd of 75,000 at Invesco Field. The speech everyone is awaiting is another in a long line of addresses by both candidates this election cycle. What do these speeches tell us about the status of the Constitution in American politics today? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is that our public officials and candidates have progressively ignored the Constitution as a theme of their governing philosophy. Andrew E. …
The Olympic Games got off to a solemn start last Saturday after a member of the U.S. men’s volleyball team lost a relative who was fatally stabbed while touring Beijing. Compounding the tragedy, the U.S. team had to scramble to obtain official Chinese permission to bring an English-fluent chaplain to Olympic Village to console athletes in their grief. In Athens in 2004, more than 100 religious leaders speaking several dozen languages were stationed in Olympic Village. But China’s authoritarian government sees any cause that could compete with its authority, including organized …
This week The Heritage Foundation’s ‘What Would Reagan Do” campaign asks, “Why did Reagan value economic freedom?” You can check out the WWRD page for the answer, but in the meantime here is what President Reagan said when signing “America’s Economic Bill of Rights” on July 3, 1987: Inextricably linked to these political freedoms are protections for the economic freedoms envisioned by those Americans who went before us. While the Constitution sets our political freedoms in greater detail, these economic freedoms are part and parcel of it.
Last week The Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson posted a chart at The Corner that he said could “only be termed, alas, Republican overspending—that is, the enormous increase in domestic spending during this administration, most of which, of course, took place while the GOP held not only the White House but both chambers of Congress.” Rising to defend President Bush’s record on spending, The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat responded: “[W]hen Bush took office, discretionary domestic spending accounted for 3.1 percent of GDP, and in 2007 it accounted for … 3.3 percent of …
