In 1840, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story dedicated his A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States to the “ingenious youth” of Massachusetts as a man who “gratefully acknowledges, that her territory is the land of his birth and the home of his choice.”Unfortunately,in recent times Massachusetts has found judges of Justice Story’s [...]

The outlook of the 2008 presidential race is hardly a dream come true for libertarians. Then again, we haven’t really had a viable candidate (other than maybe Reagan and Goldwater) in post-FDR Amerika. While the prospect of one of three great luminaries who’ve made their names and fortunes squabbling over how worst to spend your [...]

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” These words, the first in the United States Constitution, were likewise at the beginning of Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) recent speech regarding Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr.’s comments. It is fitting that Obama, the presidential candidate who is supposed to be above racial politics, [...]

The Vast-Right Wing Conspiracy and Republican Attack Machine may have thought that they “beat the bitch,” but it appears likely that their sights were pointed in the wrong direction. While Hillary Rodham Clinton has endured the bulk of criticisms from stalwarts of the Right from Pat Buchanan to Robert Bork for nearly two decades, it [...]

In “Gun-Free Zones: The Latest in Suicide Pacts” (Spectator VI:3), Kristina Kelleher ’09 noted that the Virginia Tech, Columbine, Beach, Jonesboro, Paducah, Connetquot High, Killeexn, Orange Park, SuccessTech, and West Nickel Mines school shootings all took place in so-called “gun-free zones.” This argument would, most unfortunately, presage another horrendous act of campus violence: the February [...]

As the general election draws ever closer, it is time for Brown students and the United States public in general to get down to the nitty-gritty. It is time for you as a voter to examine each political issue in detail so that when you vote for a presidential candidate and his or her platform, [...]

Drawing its seminal inspiration from the William F. Buckley, Jr., of the 18th century, Edmund Burke, the conservative movement might be thought to have all but foresworn revolutionary intent. Although known for his stinging critique of the French Revolution’s abandonment of civil protections for life and property, Burke was, nonetheless, a philosophical supporter of the [...]

On December 13th, 2007, Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) published the much anticipated Mitchell Report. This report was the conclusion of a twenty-month investigation regarding the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball (MLB). For approximately the last fifteen years, there have been rumors and whispers around baseball about the use [...]

It hardly needs to be proven, beyond the years of personal experience which we each possess, that human beings are creatures of habit, that we often prefer the humdrum of daily bourgeois life to the uncertainties of political activity and civic action. The present writer is no exception to this general trend – it would [...]

On October 18th, 2007, during day two of Michael Mukasey’s Senate confirmation hearing, the prospective Attorney General refused to label waterboarding as torture. Although he was criticized heavily by the media, Mukasey hesitated to allow public opinion to guide his conscience. On January 30th, 2008, now-Attorney General Mukasey continued to deliberate on whether or not [...]