Is the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution all that stands between us and even gloomier economic times?

With China holding $800 billion of United States government debt, President Obama's trip to Beijing was described as a visit to the nation's banker. Indeed, the Chinese hold more than ten percent of...

For over a year, a panel of the House of Representatives has been thinking about impeaching District Judge Thomas Porteous of New Orleans. Deciding that the best defense is a good offense, the judge sued the panel, demanding an order that the impeachment investigation cannot consider sworn testimony that...

With a new clamor to impeach and remove the Republican governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, the question arises of whether this peculiarly American form of executive decapitation is an essential constitutional safety valve or an anti-democratic shortcut that is too often deployed to solve short-term political troubles.

After months...

In Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Big Daddy asks his son why he's disgusted.

"Mendacity," comes the answer. "You know what that is. It's lies and liars."

It's the modern book publishing industry. Remember James Frey's "memoir" which turned out to be largely false? That is,...

Next week, a panel of Deep Thinkers in Washington will consider whether Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should be impeached and removed from office.

His potentially impeachable offense? Writing one of the Justice Department memoranda in 2002 that approved interrogation...

Federalism -- the division and sharing of power between state and national governments -- is the Constitution's signal invention, and its most baffling one. Since 1787, Americans have feuded bitterly over state's rights, and fought a bloody civil war over them. Earlier this month, the governor of Texas openly speculated...

In a few weeks, Thomas Starr King is slated for what Leon Trotsky called the dustbin of history. His statute -- which has stood in the U.S. Capitol since 1931 as one of two allotted to represent California -- will be moved out and replaced with a seven-foot-high likeness...

Sometimes the good news can slip right past us, so it's important to savor it when it happens. New Attorney General Eric Holder is the source of this month's cautious hope that the rule of law is returning to the Department of (irony intentionally withheld) Justice.

Several weeks ago, Holder...

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has proposed a constitutional amendment to require popular elections to fill Senate vacancies. Acting under state law, governors have appointed four new senators this year to replace those appointed to high posts in the Obama Administration. None would have been likely to win an election...

The change in administrations has ended the fanciful talk of impeaching the president, yet Congress still faces two cases concerning the meat-and-potatoes of American impeachments: removing wayward lower court judges. For those cases, often viewed in Congress as annoying and unimportant, the constitutional process is both cumbersome and unfair to...

Americans care about their Constitution. They told me so this spring while I promoted my book, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented The Constitution. Appearing before dozens of community groups, and on media interviews and call-in shows, I spent hours talking with Americans about their Constitution, its...