The U.S. Senate has particular Constitutional responsibilities and political duties. As the deliberative body it is meant to check the impulses of a more rambunctious House of Representatives, confirm judicial appointments, ratify treaties and, when necessary, act as the jury in the event of the impeachment of the President or Cabinet officials. Ira Shapiro, Senate …
When Alvin Ridley’s wife was discovered dead in their home, residents of the small town of Ringgold, Georgia assumed the recluse, hoarder, and odd fellow naturally murdered her. His difficulty in communicating what took place added to the conclusion many had drawn about his guilt. As it turns out, they were proven wrong in a …
While our parties may only from time to time have lived up to the mission of truly organizing our political discourse and developing serious nuts and bolts efforts toward major transformations that benefit our society. Yet when they have, the impact had been remarkable. So says today’s guest Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld, political scientists …
The Rascals had a song out years back called ‘How Can I Be Sure’? And while those lyrics pertained to love, the same question could, and should, be posed today about the media content you are devouring from a range of sources–legitimate and sketchy. The ability to discern which is which gets harder by the …
To those of us who stopped thinking about the inherent risks in our banking system after the meltdown of 2007-2009, exemplified by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and assumed that Dodd-Frank legislation had corrected all of our problems, it might be time to think again. Except for extraordinary government interventions over a weekend in 2023, …
Our guest is a feminist trailblazer who had an inside look at the feminist movement as it progressed from the 1960’s on. Her insights and odes to those who made it possible for women to have virtual integration into all aspects of commerce, the arts and even sports, as we’ve seen, is a far cry …
Each of us honors remarkable women in our own way. Often it’s when we think about what our mothers contributed to our growth and development. In other cases, it’s a teacher or a caregiver. Well the emphatic sex has for generations contributed both to the nurturing part of society’s needs as well as the political …
Sure democracy is messy and lots of people feel it’s not working as well as it once did. But all of us born here have never lived under the alternative. Be careful what you wish for if you are taking in, and buying, all the strongman musings of Donald Trump. It’s a recipe for disaster. …
Viktor Orban? Vladimir Putin? Turkey’s strongman Erdogan? Is that the traditional leader America wants to hold up as an exemplar for a nation built on universal principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all? Maybe we’ve never achieved those lofty aspirations, but we never said let’s take our form of government–a …
There is a fact that is so surprising that it borders on being unbelievable. Research indicates that students from disadvantaged and advantaged class backgrounds who graduate from the same college go on to earn the same amount of money. Our guest, Duke sociology professor, Jessi Streib, author of “The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay …