Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Darryl PaulsonApril 13, 2016

Here are a few basic facts about the electoral-college system. First, very few voters understand how it works. Second, most voters hate the system. Third, the system is almost impossible to change. Those who drafted the Constitution had little trust in democracy. James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, wrote that unfettered majorities tend toward “tyranny.” […]

Phil AmmannMarch 17, 2016

A group of state senators in Kansas hope to undo by legislative fiat that which our Founding Fathers literally crafted by the sweat of their brow in the Philadelphia summer of 1787 — an independent judiciary. Last week, the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee recommended to the full Senate that Senate Bill 439 be passed. Entitled, […]

Guest AuthorMarch 1, 2016

The most repeated phrase of late on social media and on talking-head shows is, “This election is unlike anything ever before!” Each time I hear it I have to chuckle. Is it just a sign of our times that we think ourselves so special that everything we do has to be the biggest or […]

Guest AuthorOctober 13, 2015

As the 21st century finds its rhythm, and the 2016 presidential contest begins to take up most of our public space, it seems clear to me that we have two political parties in the United States, but they are both thoroughly Hamiltonian. We have what might be called the “greater Hamiltonian Party” and the “lesser […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 20, 2015

The U.S. Senate’s refusal to debate or vote on the Iran nuclear agreement is a national embarrassment. The culprit is clear: the 60-vote threshold required to stop a filibuster. It’s time to end the filibuster, a relic of the past that is contributing to gridlock and dysfunction. This week I sent a letter to Senate […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 20, 2015

The U.S. Senate’s refusal to debate or vote on the Iran nuclear agreement is a national embarrassment. The culprit is clear: the 60-vote threshold required to stop a filibuster. It’s time to end the filibuster, a relic of the past that is contributing to gridlock and dysfunction. This week I sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader […]

Guest AuthorOctober 7, 2014

If you haven’t yet heard about political writer Matt Bai’s book on the failed presidential hopes of Gary Hart, you will. Bai, once political editor for the New York Times’ Sunday magazine and current political editor for Yahoo, asserts that one week in 1987 forever changed politics in America. Bai is on the interview circuit […]

Martin DyckmanJuly 9, 2014

Among the flock of on-line petitions I declined to sign last week was one calling for the impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Much as I and others might wish them gone and forgotten, impeachment is a terrible idea. The merits aside, it […]

Tag: Alexander Hamilton

Darryl Paulson: Voters don’t understand or like the Electoral College

Isaac Ruiz-Carus: Bill would eliminate independent judiciary in Kansas

Ed Moore: Is this an election unlike any seen before?

Clay S. Jenkinson: Restoring the American republic, beginning in Tallahassee

Vern Buchanan: Time to end the filibuster

Vern Buchanan: Time to end the filibuster

Doug Clifton: Miami Herald was right to pursue tip about Gary Hart dalliance

Martin Dyckman: We should limit terms of U.S. Supreme Court justices to 18 years