Bartle Bull couldn’t believe his eyes. The former civil rights lawyer had been arrested in the South during the 1960s. He once forced local officials in Mississippi to remove nooses that were hanging from tree branches outside polling places. But…
Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg once said of Arlen Specter: “He’s an intimidating senator and very successful at any game of ‘Survivor.’” Indeed, Arlen Specter might as well have been born to be champion of that reality show. He’s beaten cancer,…
Politico.com opened a rich vein of controversy in March when it reported that “President Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his teleprompter.… No other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small.” Indeed, I have…
The census—the supposedly objective counting of every inhabitant of a country—has always had politics lurking in the background. Jesus was born in Bethlehem because the Romans insisted Joseph and Mary go back to the town of their birth to be…
Barack Obama made a campaign pledge to appoint Republicans to his cabinet in order to transcend old political divisions. In retaining Defense Secretary Bob Gates, a registered independent who has served GOP presidents, Mr. Obama picked a skilled technocrat. His…
LONDON — When a couple years ago I met Vladimir Bukovsky, the former Soviet dissident who spent a decade in the Gulag before being released in 1976, I asked him how he liked living in Britain. He said he loved…
BARACK OBAMA HAS APPOINTED Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel as his new White House chief of staff. Emanuel, a bruising partisan street fighter, has the kind of blunt- talking tough-guy persona that Obama clearly doesn’t possess but would like to call…
PAT ROONEY was a special kind of businessman. He did far more than merely provide jobs for employees and services for his customers, as important as those goals are. He helped change the course of public policy in our country…
In picking Sarah Palin, John McCain reinforced his own anti-establishment credentials. “I found someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies,” he declared in announcing her selection. So in an election in which everyone…
This article appeared as the cover story of The American Spectator‘s May 2007 issue. Click here to subscribe. IT’S VERY EARLY, BUT WE ARE already seeing surprise shakeups in the potential 2008 presidential field. Perhaps the most stunning is how…