“Texas is the national testing ground for bad public policy,” the journalist Molly Ivins used to say. It was a Texas attorney general, Gregg Abbott, who sued in federal court in Brownsville, Texas, challenging Barack Obama’s 2014 executive memorandum that attempted to provide temporary legal status for undocumented parents of children born in the United […]

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“Read the first page of Many Minds, One Heart,” Larry Goodwyn said. It was the last time I saw the Duke University historian, at his home in Durham six months before his death in September 2013. Goodwyn, best known for his defining work on American populism, almost recited the first paragraph of Wesley Hogan’s history […]

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FBI Director James Comey frequently describes how his Irish-American heritage formed him. Here, for example, is Comey at Georgetown University in February 2015. I am descended from Irish immigrants. A century ago, the Irish knew well how American society—and law enforcement—viewed them: as drunks, ruffians, and criminals. Law enforcement’s biased view of the Irish lives […]

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“I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up,” Senator John McCain said on a radio interview in Pennsylvania on Monday. “I promise you. This is where we need the majority.” So John McCain, in his 28th year in the Senate, […]

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore   For years I’ve been picking Mike Pence when handicapping lean and hungry Republican politicians. Even when he didn’t register in the 2010 CPAC presidential poll, and was ignored by Newt Gingrich as he mentioned the potential presidential candidates who had addressed the conference—Tim Pawlenty (remember Tim Pawlenty?), Mitt Romney, Ron […]

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