December 13, 1784.As Samuel Johnson prepared to die in his Lon- don residence at No. 8,Bolt Court, a number of people took an unusual interest in how he would meet his end. "The death of Johnson," accord- ing to Arthur Murphy, a contemporary writer and actor, "kept the pub- lic mind in agitation beyond all former example."
Several reasons may be offered for this keen and perhaps morbid state of excitement. To begin with, no English author had ever been more of a celebrity....
Mark Green, in The Nation (Sept. 15, 1984),P.O. Box 1953,Marion, Ohio 43305.
Since 1974, political action committees (PACs) funded business, labor, and single-interest groups have multiplied like rabbits. But after early public alarm over the prospect of such committees "buying" elec- tions, a pro-PAC backlash set in. PACs, it was said, are not really so bad. Green, president of the Democracy Project, a Washington advocacy group, contends that the critics were right.
PAC defenders point...
for a stronger Clean Air Act?"
As Representative Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) has observed, Green writes, "Politicians are the only people we allow to take thousands of dollars from perfect strangers and not expect it to influence their judg- ment." Rather than cling to such delusions, he argues, Americans should demand federal financing of election campaigns.
"The New Jurisprudence" Gary L. Mc-A New Legal Theory Dowell, in The Journal of Contemporary Studies (Summer 1984),...
the Warren Court's (1953-69) judicial activism. Notable advocates in- clude Harvard's Abram Chayes and Oxford's Ronald Dworkin. "The new constitutional theorizing is not aimed at the explication of the the- oretical foundations of the Constitution," writes McDowell, "it is typi- cally aimed at creating new theories of constitutionalism that are . . . superimposed on the Constitution."
Traditionally, American judges distinguished between social evils and constitutional violations....
environmentalists and Eastern and Mid- western industrialists and labor unions aggrieved over "disproportion- ate" subsidies to the West-angered Westerners by limiting grazing, logging, and mining on public lands and by restricting the availability of cheap water and electric power. Such restrictions threatened to snuff out a regional economic boom.
To many Westerners, Washington's subsidies seemed to bring more trouble than they were worth. In 1979, Nevada's state legislators kicked...
IODICALS
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
however, OMB officials have spent more and more time on Capitol Hill, trying to push the president's budget through Congress-and thus more timi in the news.
The change stems partly from Congress's overhaul of its own budget procedures. The Congressional Budget Impoundment and Control Act of 1974, for example, compelled the OMB to report to Congress frequently. It also created House and Senate budget com- mittees and a Congressional Budget Office, all of which n...
no means extreme Latin American standards, would shock most American conservatives."
For Washington policy-makers, the question is this: How can the Center-Left be put back together again? The Reagan administration's "scenario calls for some unwieldy pieces to fall neatly into place," ob- serves Falcoff. With the help of U.S. military and economic aid, Presi- dent Duarte must simultaneously tame the army, appease the 45 percent of the electorate that last May voted for Roberto DJAubuisson's...
his generals in July 1914 that no plans even existed for partial, defensive mobilization of the reserves to deter Austria-Hungary from making further threats against Serbia. Russia was forced to muster its forces against Germany as well. In Berlin, the offensive mentality reinforced fears that the Russian bear, if not struck first, would overwhelm Germany. As a result, Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, and general war soon broke out.
Van Evera believes that if Europe's leaders had understood...
Admiral Karl Donitz's U-boats in the North Atlantic, the results were dramatic. Because Allied merchant convoys were able to pinpoint and avoid the roving U-boat "wolf packs," ship losses dropped from 61 in June 1941 to 22 in July and stayed low.
Ultra's ultimate value to the Allies is difficult to assess, Gabriel argues. In fact, the clearest lesson emerges from the German side. Hit- ler's generals, aware that their moves were frequently anticipated, re- fused to believe that their codes...
Rudiger Dornbusch, in The World Economy (June
Debt Crisis 1984), Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd, 108 Cowley Rd., Oxford OX4 lJF, United Kingdom.
In August 1982, Mexico declared itself unable to pay its foreign debts, and in quick succession, Brazil and several other Third World countries followed suit. Wall Street and Washington were shaken; the over- extended international banking system would be acutely threatened if any single debtor nation actually defaulted.
As Dornbusch, an MIT economist,...