Author: Dolley Madison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813921525
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
A witty, insightful selection of letters from the modest Quaker woman who became First Lady illuminates the life of a graceful, courageous woman who created the mold for a president's wife. (Biography)
Author: California. Legislature. Assembly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 2258
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Author: William Van Rensselaer Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Associations, institutions, etc
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Author: Carl T. Bogus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197632246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
This engaging history overturns the conventional wisdom about the Second Amendment--showing that the right to bear arms was not about protecting liberty but about preserving slavery. In Madison's Militia, Carl Bogus illuminates why James Madison and the First Congress included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights. Linking together dramatic accounts of slave uprisings and electric debates over whether the Constitution should be ratified, Bogus shows that--contrary to conventional wisdom--the fitting symbol of the Second Amendment is not the musket in the hands of the minuteman on Lexington Green but the musket wielded by a slave patrol member in the South. Bogus begins with a dramatic rendering of the showdown in Virginia between James Madison and his federalist allies, who were arguing for ratification of the new Constitution, and Patrick Henry and the antifederalists, who were arguing against it. Henry accused Madison of supporting a constitution that empowered Congress to disarm the militia, on which the South relied for slave control. The narrative then proceeds to the First Congress, where Madison had to make good a congressional campaign promise to write a Bill of Rights--and seizing that opportunity to solve the problem Henry had raised. Three other collections of stories--on slave insurrections, Revolutionary War battles, and the English Declaration of Rights--are skillfully woven into the narrative and show how arming ragtag militias was never the primary goal of the amendment. And as the puzzle pieces come together, even initially skeptical readers will be surprised by the completed picture: one that forcefully demonstrates that the Second Amendment was intended in the first instance to protect slaveholders from the people they owned.
Author: Andrew Burstein
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812979001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 850
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Book Description
“[A] monumental dual biography . . . a distinguished work, combining deep research, a pleasing narrative style and an abundance of fresh insights, a rare combination.”—The Dallas Morning News The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper gentlemen, with Thomas Jefferson’s genius overshadowing James Madison’s judgment and common sense. But in this revelatory book about their crucial partnership, both are seen as men of their times, hardboiled operatives in a gritty world of primal politics where they struggled for supremacy for more than fifty years. With a thrilling and unprecedented account of early America as its backdrop, Madison and Jefferson reveals these founding fathers as privileged young men in a land marked by tribal identities rather than a united national personality. Esteemed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg capture Madison’s hidden role—he acted in effect as a campaign manager—in Jefferson’s career. In riveting detail, the authors chart the courses of two very different presidencies: Jefferson’s driven by force of personality, Madison’s sustained by a militancy that history has been reluctant to ascribe to him. Supported by a wealth of original sources—newspapers, letters, diaries, pamphlets—Madison and Jefferson is a watershed account of the most important political friendship in American history. “Enough colorful characters for a miniseries, loaded with backstabbing (and frontstabbing too).”—Newsday “An important, thoughtful, and gracefully written political history.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author: Sarah A. Binder
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0815703910
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
For better or worse, federal judges in the United States today are asked to resolve some of the nation's most important and contentious public policy issues. Although some hold onto the notion that federal judges are simply neutral arbiters of complex legal questions, the justices who serve on the Supreme Court and the judges who sit on the lower federal bench are in fact crafters of public law. In recent years, for example, the Supreme Court has bolstered the rights of immigrants, endorsed the constitutionality of school vouchers, struck down Washington D.C.'s blanket ban on handgun ownership, and most famously, determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. The judiciary now is an active partner in the making of public policy. Judicial selection has been contentious at numerous junctures in American history, but seldom has it seemed more acrimonious and dysfunctional than in recent years. Fewer than half of recent appellate court nominees have been confirmed, and at times over the past few years, over ten percent of the federal bench has sat vacant. Many nominations linger in the Senate for months, even years. All the while, the judiciary's caseload grows. Advice and Dissent explores the state of the nation's federal judicial selection system—a process beset by deepening partisan polarization, obstructionism, and deterioration of the practice of advice and consent. Focusing on the selection of judges for the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. District Courts, the true workhorses of the federal bench, Sarah A. Binder and Forrest Maltzman reconstruct the history and contemporary practice of advice and consent. They identify the political and institutional causes of conflict over judicial selection over the past sixty years, as well as the consequences of such battles over court appointments. Advice and Dissent offers proposals for reforming the institutions of judicial selection, advocating pragmatic reforms that seek
Author: Donald R. Wolfensberger
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
ISBN: 9780801867262
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Will some form of direct democracy supplant representative, deliberative government in the twenty-first century United States? That question is at the heart of Donald R. Wolfensberger's history of Congress and congressional reform, which runs back to the Constitution's creation of a popularly elected House of Representatives and forward to the surreal ending of the 105th Congress, featuring barrels of pork, resignation of the speaker, and impeachment of the president. The author's expertise comes from twenty-eight years as a staff member in the House, culminating in service as chief of staff of the powerful House Rules Committee. He was a top parliamentary expert and a principal Republican procedural strategist. Sensitive to the power of process, Wolfensberger is an authoritative guide to reform efforts of earlier eras. And as a participant in reforms since the 1960s, he offers a unique perspective on forging the "1970s sunshine coalition," televising House proceedings, debating term limits, and coping with democracy in an electronic age.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Administrative law
Languages : en
Pages : 1134
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Author: California. Legislature. Assembly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 2712
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Author: Public Service Commission of Wisconsin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Public utilities
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
