In March 1919 (Schenck v. US), Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes penned the oft-quoted phrase certifying that “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic” was speech that Congress could prohibit and prosecute offenders. The defendant Schenck… Read More ›
VOTING RIGHTS
How Was the Social Contract Broken?
Editor’s Note: New York Times book review of The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, by Robert D. Putnam with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, review published December 13, 2020. Occasionally, a well… Read More ›
On Being Governed
There are other dates in history that live in infamy. Exactly 160 years ago yesterday, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina’s legislature voted to withdraw from the Union known as the United States. That Union had been enshrined in a… Read More ›
Elections Needed; Votes, Not So Much
Editors’ Note: Reposted from The Washington Post, December 12, 2020. For VoxFairfax reviews of Timothy Snyder’s books, see https://wp.me/p9wDCF-6s, https://wp.me/p9wDCF-17f, and https://wp.me/p9wDCF-1D1. By Timothy Snyder Twenty-first century authoritarians are against counting votes, but they legitimate themselves through elections. They don’t seem… Read More ›
Republican Rapture
Michael Steele, former RNC chair and now an MSNBC political commentator and staunch anti-Trumper, in a recent interview observed that Virginia was a bellwether model of the wave of political changes occurring in southern states such as North Carolina, South… Read More ›
Refried or Refired?
Virginia’s forthcoming gubernatorial and other local election campaigns may be characterized as refried like beans or re-fired echoing the Obama slogan. The political calculus functioning across the nation following the broadside attack on the 2020 election results contains unknown quantities… Read More ›
Freedom and Respect
By Frank Blechman In the last few weeks, I have written about why I think the statewide Democratic majority is more fragile than it might appear. I have said that it is very risky to gamble that a candidate can… Read More ›
The Cult of the Lost Cause
Editors’ Note: VoxFairfax previously commented on other aspects of the lost cause: http://wp.me/p9DCF-1Aq. History may now have begun to record a final epitaph. At the tail end of 2015, just before leaving office, Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans, issued… Read More ›
Popular Vote 2020: Implications
There is no dispute that the voter turnout in 2020 dwarfed that of 2016. The meaning of the turnout and the distribution of ballots by political party and by demographic constituency will interest pundits and party strategists for a very… Read More ›