Mencken on Church and State

REMARKS OF GEORGE W. LIEBMANN BEFORE THE MENCKEN SOCIETY, AT THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, MENCKEN DAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2017 MENCKEN ON CHURCH AND STATE I am honored to be asked to deliver this talk, but in some measure your presence here is due to false advertising. I am a lawyer who has written about constitutional […]

Baltimore Under Mob Rule

To the Editor: Once this City had a newspaperman, H. L. Mencken, who deemed it his duty to quench public passions, not to feed them, and who fought the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition Amendment, lynching, and the Red Scare. Today it has editors who in at least six disgraceful editorials and without any fair discussion […]

On Morons: Executive and Legislative

On Morons: Executive and Legislative by George W. Liebmann As a Baltimore Republican who is a Child of Manhattan, I am twice a politically homeless person. Our President has told us that the first species is nonexistent, while New York County gave Governor Kasich his only county-level primary victory outside of Ohio. Not only Baltimoreans […]

More Than A French Feminist

RIP: Simone Veil: More Than a French Feminist by George W. Liebmann   theamericanconservative.com, July 24,2017 The recent death of Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor who as French Health Minister in the centrist Gisgard d’Estaing government was the sponsor of a liberalizing French abortion law, and who thereafter was the first President of the European […]

The Federal Takeover of Local Law Enforcement

The Federal Takeover of Local Law Enforcement America’s Founders warned against national police, for good reason. by George W. Liebmann   The American Conservative, July 6, 2017 Few propositions about American history are clearer than that the framers of our Constitution wanted to preclude the creation of a national law-enforcement authority in any way resembling […]

Thornton Revisited

Thornton Revisited? by George W. Liebmann   Baltimore Sun,  July 6, 2016 A Commission under the chairmanship of former University of Maryland Chancellor William Kirwan has been studying the ‘adequacy’ of financing of Maryland’s K-12 education system. Creation of the commission was provided for in 2002 ; it is carefully composed of only two designees […]

Judicial Control of Gerrymandering: A Quack Cure-All

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-legislatures-are-polarized-between-extreme-factions/?print=1 Judicial Control of Gerrymandering: A “Quack Cure-All” by George W. Liebmann Believers in government by judicial thunderbolt look to a case, Gill v. Whitford (No.16-1161), making its way to the Supreme Court as a possible vehicle for judicial control of legislative gerrymandering. It will be recalled that the reapportionment decisions of the 1960s unlike […]

John Paton Davies: Foreign Policy Prophet

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/john-paton-davies-foreign-policy-prophet/ A Prophet Remembered John Paton Davies’ memoir, China Hand, was posthumously published, to some critical acclaim, several years ago. His name is usually bracketed with other, more left-wing ‘defrocked diplomats’ of the Mc Carthy period, including O. Edmund Clubb, Owen Lattimore, and John Stewart Service. The later lives of these folk are mostly remembered […]

K-12 Education Reform: A 19 Point Check List

K-12 Public Education Reform: A 19-Point Check List, The American Conservative, May 11, 2017 by George W. Liebmann The last forty years of controversy over education reform has largely involved argument from fixed positions. Reformers have aimed at the heart of teacher-union power by seeking to establish charter schools and voucher programs and by attempts […]

Eleven Suggestions for a Populist Agenda

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-populist-agenda-eleven-suggestions/   A Populist Agenda? Eleven Suggestions by George W. Liebmann President Trump’s victory has been ascribed to a recognition on his part, and that of Steven Bannon, that identity politics was a game that any number can play. Alternatively, it has been ascribed to their recognition of three social deficits: 1) trade-induced unemployment, especially […]