Recently a New York Times headline blared: “McConnell Urges States to Defy U.S. Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gas.” It was the first in a barrage of mainstream media stories to the same effect. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was telling the states to violate the law! An apalled ranking environmental committee Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said she could not recall another top politician actually “calling on states to disobey the law.”
In thinking and reflecting on Michael Greve’s The Upside-Down Constitution over the past year, I still agree with my initial assessment that Greve’s competitive federalism gives us an enormous understanding of so many fiscal and regulatory problems in our current political practice. I think he convincingly shows why many of the states are broke with little hope of recovery, save a federal bailout. Moreover, it also demonstrates why the broken states continue their current course of irresponsible fiscal policy. What else is there for them to do, channel their inner Coolidge? Not bloody likely.
A new political biography questions his status as an authoritative expositor of the Constitution. During the nineteenth century, historians typically placed James Madison in Thomas Jefferson’s shadow. But in twentieth century scholarship Madison emerged as a towering figure in his own right, in some respects superior to his friend Jefferson. Since his “rediscovery” Madison has received generally favorable treatment from biographers and historians – his presidency excepted, and even that phase of his career has gained some defenders.[1] Irving Brant’s four-volume biography (1941-1961), Ralph Ketcham’s 1971 biography, Drew McCoy’s The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (1989),…
