The President's End-Run

Apparently, Obama's decision to designate a 1600-acre nature preserve a national monument was the last straw for Utah representative Rob Bishop, who has sponsored a bill that would revoke much of the 1906 Antiquities Act and end all future executive decisions when it comes to designating federal lands. It is hard to understand why this particular parcel is so contentious given that only last year the House voted unanimously to add Point Arena to the California Coastal National Monument but the measure has dragged in the Senate.

It's not likely that this "No More National Parks" bill will pass the Senate, but it isn't stopping House Republicans from fomenting on the runaway executive authority the President has been using of late, essentially "punking" the House. If there is anything the majority Republican House can't stand it is the President doing an "end-run" on this hallowed hall of Congress, to use Rep. Bishop's nixed metaphors.

It's not like Obama has been declaring national parks each month. The last time he did so was a year ago in honor of Harriet Tubman and Colonel Charles P. Young, both of which got support from prominent Republicans. But, designating land is another story, especially when there are other interests involved, in this case hunting, fishing and off-road vehicle use, which most likely would be prohibited under a new management plan. You simply can't have the federal government imposing its authority on good citizens.

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Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

The People Debate the Constitution

As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified. After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution. Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through. But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 . The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others. Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified. A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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