the TOWN HALL weblog

Please read the document linked in the sidebar to the right called US Constitution 2.27
I had included the articles of amendment within the American basic law, instead listing them separately as if they were equal to the original seven articles. Twenty-seven times the US Constitution has been amended or, better put, some of the original [...]

I feel that I had been had since 1989! It seems the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was more of a chapter seven bankruptcy where one can re-organize ones affairs. In this case the former USSR now Russia didn’t pay off its debts to the western banks but it is now going [...]

John Derbyshire has an interesting article today about the history of Chinese Olympians http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTc1OWYzYWU5YjE3NzRkZjdhNTA5M2QyZmU2OGMyYTg=
 
It reminded me of my favorite Chinese Olympians and one of the greatest skating performances in history.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kql3sf_crA

It is easy on days like this watching enormous egos clash over the presidency that we forget how insignificant the US Presidency can be.  Few presidents have made a mark on history.    But today we have lost a man A man who stood astride the 20th century like a colossus.  A man whose pen was mightier than any of [...]

While Wisconsians do not observe any State holidays except those the federal union proclaims for us, I wish to make note of this day. It is the one hundred and sixtieth year since the Congress had approved our State to be equal to the original thirteen. Of a most important note Wisconsin came in as [...]

I didn’t have a chance to read the poem Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson on Patriot’s Day.  I know I have it in the house in one poetry anthology or another but  today I found it on wikipedia.  Here it is:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled;
Here once the [...]

In 1852 Charles MacKay published in London his Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. MacKay began his preface: “In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find [...]

I have been so busy getting the Seder ready that I completely forgot it is Patriot’s Day until The Corner linked to this great post.
http://www.julescrittenden.com/2008/04/19/april-morning/
This is truly our nation’s Independence Day.  Of course Congress decided to give that name to the day that Congress finally got into the act.  Politicians would of course think everything [...]

In the End They All Kill Their Opponents

“In 1968, in a televised debate during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when American fascists were taking to the streets outside the studio, Gore Vidal slandered William F. Buckley Jr. as a “crypto-Nazi.” Vidal, a pagan, statist, and conspiracy theorist,had good reason to cast this charge [...]

     Many assumed, possible voters today do not know any history from the pre-Internet age (before 1994). The Republican candidates’ vision is about how they will govern as Ronald Reagan did over twenty years ago. Twenty years ago has been mostly forgotten by too many of us. If one tells today’s generaion of voters one will [...]

The decision to opt for a system by which the government paid for providers chosen by patients directly, pushed a ready and deep supply of money into the medical market and did so suddenly. It also made it so that a large population - the  disabled, elderly and  working poor - [...]

American Heritage reviews Joseph Ellis book on the Founding Fathers. John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, American Revolution, Valley Forge, Founding Fathers.
This statement in the review particularly caught my eye.
argument can be said to weave together the separate pieces of American Creation, it is that the founding generation had five central [...]