Personal essays
Notes on attention, technology, judgment, and the small practices that shape a thoughtful life.
Judgment / August 12, 2026
Every two years the same ritual plays out. Attack ads flood the airwaves, funded by organizations with sanitized names like Americans for a Brighter Future...
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The collective political judgment of Washington's permanent class in January 2010 arrived swift and unanimous: the Supreme Court had just committed an act...
The filibuster has become one of those Washington institutions praised not for what it does, but for what people imagine it prevents. Ask a defender and you...
Most Americans grow up hearing the country called a democracy. It's in the speeches, the textbooks, the nightly news. We say it so often that the word has...
Every schoolkid who paid half a mind in civics class can recite the heroic version of Marbury v. Madison. Chief Justice John Marshall, cornered by Thomas...
Political scientists have a tidy term for the system Vladimir Putin built in Russia: competitive authoritarianism. Elections happen on schedule. A few...
Most Americans who have spent any time with the founding documents can quote a line or two from Federalist No. 51. "If men were angels, no government would...
Walk into any town hall meeting or scroll through a political thread online, and you will hear it within minutes: the word "democracy" tossed around as if...
Picture the scene: Congress is technically in session, but only for a handful of seconds. A lone senator strides to the front of a mostly empty chamber...
Most Americans hear "unitary executive theory" and immediately picture some exotic constitutional architecture designed to hand the president the powers of...