The American Spectator

March 2011

About This Month

• State of the Presidency

  Wlady Pleszczynski

Freedom Watch

• In Defense of American Exceptionalism

  Unfortunately, some politicians have either forgotten or chosen to ignore the glory of our founding.

  Herman Cain

The Continuing Crisis

• The Continuing Crisis

  R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

Features

• Who's Afraid of America's Constitution?

  Anyone, it appears, who would be driven up the wall by a reading of its enumerated powers. 

  Seth Lipsky

• Sam's Club President

  Runner-up to Sarah Palin in 2008, blue-state budget-balancer Tim Pawlenty has his eyes on a bigger prize. 

  Nicole Russell

• Front-Runner Failure

  The early anointment of Mitt Romney or any other presidential candidate will repeat a common GOP mistake. 

  W. James Antle, III

• A Week in the Death of the New York Times

  How a once great paper overdosed on the Tucson massacre. 

  James Taranto

• Money Train

  In California, Obama’s grand vision of America’s high-speed rail future is meeting reality.

  Philip Klein

The Pursuit of Knowledge

• Non-Discrimination

  By penalizing old-fashioned morality you do not make toleration of the new morality more likely. 

  Roger Scruton

With the Tea Partiers

• Netflix Politics

  Washington and the grass roots can learn a lot from Netflix's business model.

  Ned Ryun

Capitol Ideas

• Afghanistan: The Futile Conflict

  Now in its 10th year, it could drag on a lot longer.

  Tom Bethell

The Nation's Pulse

• Portland Going Nowhere

  Except broke -- light rail will do that to you.

  Ethan Epstein

The Energy Spectator

• America's Last Nuclear Hope

  Small reactors may save us yet.

  William Tucker

The Realignment Spectator

• The Battle Moves to the States

  Government in Washington may be divided, but not in the rest of the country.

  Grover G. Norquist

High Spirits

• The Greatest Book in the English Language

  The King James Bible celebrates its 400th anniversary this year.

  Jonathan Aitken

Ben Stein's Diary

• A Smile on My Face

  People in Washington were never friendly, but now they are really, really unfriendly. But then there's Charleston.

  Ben Stein

Conservative Tastes

• The Art of Discrimination

  How casually our age compares Bach and Beethoven to Lady Gaga.

  James Bowman

Books in Review

• Creating the Best Government in the World

  Pauline Maier has written the first coherent account of our Constitution's ratification debates.

  John R. Coyne, Jr.

• We Like to Think We Know Him

  This is the autobiography of "Mark Twain," not the self-revelations of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the real man who used that riverboat pseudonym.

  Joseph Bottum

• Among the Miserabilists

  The inimitable Theodore Dalrymple scores again.

  James Srodes

• Daddy Dimmest

  Ron Reagan, author of My Father at 100, was the baby of the family.

  Aram Bakshian, Jr.

Current Wisdom

• Current Wisdom

  Assorted Jackasses

Last Call

• Switching Off, Switching On

  Do we spend too much time watching sports?

  Paul Beston