U.S. Constitution

Vox’s Matthew Yglesias: Hillary Does ‘What She Can Get Away With,’ and That’s the Kind of President Democrats Need
By Tom Johnson | October 6, 2015 | 9:28 PM EDT

The antics of the former major-league baseball player Manny Ramirez were frequently described as “just Manny being Manny.” Yglesias suggests that Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised use of a private email server was just Hillary being Hillary, and that that’s a good thing.

In a Tuesday article, Yglesias wrote that “from her adventures in cattle trading to chairing a policymaking committee in her husband's White House to running for Senate in a state she'd never lived in…to her email servers, Clinton is clearly more comfortable than the average person with violating norms and operating in legal gray areas.” That modus operandi, he argued, is what liberals will need in the post-Obama years: “Democrats have almost no chance of securing a majority in the US Senate and even worse odds of securing a majority in the House. So if there is a future for making progressive policy, that future is executive action."

Blogger: American Exceptionalism Mainly a ‘Strange Belief’ About ‘Letting Everyone Stockpile Weapons’
By Tom Johnson | October 4, 2015 | 1:18 PM EDT

Liberals and conservatives often differ over the concept of American exceptionalism, either on how to define it or whether there even is such a thing. Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore recognizes a limited version of American exceptionalism, one which pretty much boils down to a mania for guns.

“America is mainly exceptional [italics in original] among advanced democratic nations not in our personal or economic liberty, but in our strange belief that letting everyone stockpile weapons is essential to the preservation of our freedom, and in the consequences of that strange belief,” wrote Kilgore in a Friday post that piggybacked on President Obama’s statement regarding the Oregon community-college shootings.

New Republic Writer: Hillary ‘Simply Has to Select Barack Obama As Her Running Mate’
By Tom Johnson | April 14, 2015 | 9:50 PM EDT

The title of a famous essay by Jonathan Swift and that of Tuesday's article by Brian Beutler each starts with “A Modest Proposal.” There are, however, many differences concerning the two pieces. One is that Swift’s was a satire, whereas Beutler’s is a fantasy. Another is that pretty much anyone who somehow took Swift’s proposal seriously would find it horrifying, while Beutler’s suggestion -- that the 2016 Democratic ticket should consist of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- will horrify mostly conservatives (and opponents of dynastic politics who already were upset over the prospect of a Hillary v. Jeb race).

Lefty Blogger: Americans of Today Shouldn’t Be ‘Stunted With the Same Moral Sensibilities’ as the Founding Fathers
By Tom Johnson | July 27, 2014 | 8:58 AM EDT

Quite a few right-wingers call themselves constitutional conservatives, but self-described constitutional liberals are pretty rare. Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman essentially positioned himself as one in a Friday post, arguing that there’s no need for modern Americans to interpret the Constitution the way the Founders did, but contending that the Founders would be OK with that because they knew “we could amend the Constitution, [or] pass new laws, [or] judges would make rulings consistent with changing standards about privacy and human sexuality and crime and punishment.”

“The modern world,” wrote Longman, “would blow all of [the Founders’] minds and they would probably struggle to make sense of it.” He claimed, for example, that George Washington wouldn’t “believe that the NRA was being reasonable at all” in its opposition to proposed gun restrictions.

Washington Monthly Blogger: So-Called Constitutional Conservatives 'Are Implicitly in the One-Party-Authoritarian-State Camp'
By Tom Johnson | May 21, 2014 | 6:33 AM EDT

Piggybacking on Paul Waldman's "Who Do You Hate?" American Prospect post in which Waldman singled out Sarah Palin and Scott Walker for special scorn, another liberal blogger, the Washington Monthly's Ed Kilgore, reflected on the politicians ("usually, though not always, on the right side of the fence") who inspire in him "regular fear and loathing."

One of Kilgore's choices is an entire group, "the self-styled 'constitutional conservatives'...[who] don’t just want to beat progressives (and moderates) politically, they want to define us right out of existence."