Were you paying attention in your high school Civic's Class, or did Coach what's-his-name bore you into oblivion? The answer might lie in whether or not you can pass the United States Citizenship Test. Unfortunately, most Americans probably cannot. The U.S. Citizenship Test includes 100 questions about U.S. law, history, and values, but the immigration officer administering the test will only ask ten of them. The applicant only has to answer six questions correctly in order to pass.
Today in history: On Sept. 25, 1957, nine Black students who had been forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of unruly white crowds were escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division and the National Guard. Also on this date: In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sighted the Pacific Ocean.
Earlier this week, I expressed exasperation at the seeming irrelevance of what I used to teach in American government classes in the context of what's going on now. Old standbys like "checks and balances," "equal protection of the law" and "judicial review" seem to have been discarded in favor of what Lionel Trilling called "a series of irritable mental gestures." I couldn't imagine how I would teach the class now.
Nina Turner, former presidential campaign co-chair for Bernie Sanders, called for Ogles's outright ouster from Congress, asserting that Ogles advocates against the Constitution.
"Recently, the Polish constitution has been violated so regularly that we, as the political class, must begin working on solutions for a new constitution that will be ready for adoption, I hope and believe, in 2030."
Ruadhan Mac Cormaic questioned if a United Ireland would require tearing the current Constitution up and starting anew. Professor David Kenny supported this idea by noting former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's suggestion that unification necessitates a new Constitution due to the limitations and symbolism of the current framework.
The president is abusing the powers of his office to wield the might of the executive branch in retaliation against organizations and people that he dislikes. Nothing in our constitution or laws grants a president such power; to the contrary, the specific provisions and overall design of our constitution were adopted in large measure to ensure that presidents cannot exercise arbitrary, absolute power in the way that the president seeks to do in these executive orders.
