Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Senate
Members of “the world’s greatest deliberative body” put the interests of the country first
Newly released personal papers and transcripts of closed-door hearings reveal both the depth of the senator’s conniving and his surprising charm.
Editor's Note: Historian Larry Tye has just written a definitive biography of the controversial Red-hunting Senator, Joe McCarthy,
An impetuous and sometimes corrupt Congress has often hamstrung the efforts of the president since the earliest days of the republic.
On a little-remarked, steamy day in late June 1973, a revolution took place in Washington, D.C., one that would transfer far more power and wealth than did the revolt against King George III in 1776.
“Filibuster”
The Senate tactic known as a filibuster has been much in the news lately. Democrats used the filibuster to stall votes on the nominations of federal appeals court judges and John R.
As Hillary Clinton campaigns for a New York Senate seat, she’d do well to study the career of another effective outsider.
New Yorkers knew they were in for a long, hot summer this year when Hillary Rodham Clinton made an early political foray into their state and was greeted by demonstrators whom the state GOP had urged to dress up as blackflies. One of Mrs.
The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee explains why it has always frustrated presidents, and why it doesn’t have to.
The battle over John Tower’s nomination as Secretary of Defense earlier this year goes down as one of those struggles that whirled trivial and profound issues in the blender of journalism and produced a somewhat mystifying concoction.
A recent British ambassador to Washington takes a generous-spirited but clear-eyed look at the document that, as he points out, owes its existence to King George III
The guest at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., leaves his car and is ushered through a comparatively modest, low-ceilinged entrance hall.
The framers of the Constitution were proud of what they had done but might be astonished that their words still carry so much weight. A distinguished scholar tells us how the great charter has survived and flourished.
Despite his feeling that “we are beginning to lose the memory of what a restrained and civil society can be like,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the senior senator from New York, and a lifelong student of history, remains an optimist about our system of government and our resilience as a people.
My father, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, grew up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and is now, at 59, the senior senator from his home state.
Gargantuan, gross, and cynical, the patrician boss Boies Penrose descended from aristocracy to dominate Pennsylvania Republican politics for thirty years
The history of politics is a history of words. “Boss” is as American as “Santa Claus,” both words being Dutch in origin.
The filibuster has played a key role in the enactment of federal law since 1789, but is rarely used outside the U.S. Senate.
William Maclay, elected by the Pennsylvania Legislature to the Senate of the United States, left his farm near Harrisburg early in March, 1789, and journeyed to New York to attend the first session of the First Congress.
The “conversion” of Arthur Vandenberg, told by a former Secretary of State, his sometime adversary but also his friend
One of the saddest tales in American history tells how a well-intentioned President lost a dazzling opportunity
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