Jack Rakove

Native Cook County Democrat, Cubs fan, and long-time historian of the American Revolution and Constitution

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

My thoughts on the day.

https://t.co/n00H4Mqhl9

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@GoldieStandard Though at that point I was only a mere historian. On the Farm I got to wear both caps.

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@monthly Yes, that's certainly one way to put it. Need to solve some political problem? Let's just conjure up a doctrine to get rid of it. "Why I can call spirits from the vasty deep." But on these occasions they really do come.

[Washington Monthly @monthly]

On the 250th anniversary of American independence, the Roberts Court has found a way to commemorate it: by gutting the Voting Rights Act. @JRakove, a historian of the founding era, on what's really being nullified. https://t.co/7dudlIW17v

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

Hard to imagine a more moronic statement. For one thing, the vast majority of Jewish Democrats still fault Netanyahu for goading the GOP majorities in Congress to invite him to speak there in opposition to Obama's Iran policy.

[Bob Hutton @HerecomesDrBob]

There's a significant % of top Dems who're sincerely disappointed they can't just import Benjamin Netanyahu and run him as their 2028 candidate.

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@mkazin I see you don't accept Ernie May's explanation of this, which in my naivete I find quite persuasive.

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@Nesherke @DovGilHar Not to take anything away from her, but greater than Mark Spitz?

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@M_H_Taylor I wonder if one could approximate that by correspondence, given that recipients often note which prior letters they have received and sometimes when when they reply in turn.

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@M_H_Taylor Being a pure text guy I've never had to use it, but I had fun showing it to my grandson.
Maybe I should develop a map one day demonstrating how long it took delegates to make to their way from their home residence to the Continental Congress or the Constitutional Convention.

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@tmbejan Or almost out, given that the pub date is a mere seven months away. But I'll be excited then, too!

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

My contribution to the In Pursuit series being conducted by Colleen Shogan, the former national Archivist. My main idea is not to debate whether JM was father of the Constitution but to describe him instead as the leading strategist of constitutional reform in the 1780s.

[In Pursuit USA @InPursuitUSA]

Jack Rakove's (@JRakove) essay on James Madison traces the careful, often unglamorous work that made the Constitution stick.

Madison shaped the agenda in Philadelphia, kept ratification from unraveling into a second convention, and pushed the Bill of Rights through the First Congress despite his own reservations about it.

The goal throughout was the same: a process the public would accept as final.

[mkazin @mkazin]

A brilliant critique. There is no realistic way forward without a coalition of liberals and leftists

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@mkazin Sedaka does rhyme with tzedakah.

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

One could argue about this proposition over coffee, I suppose.
But more important than Trump v. U.S.? Or Dobbs v. Marsh? Or the legacy of Shelby County and its progeny and the systematic effort of the Roberts court to destroy the Voting Right Act? Gimme a break!

[Howard Bashman @howappealing]

Is This the Most Important Supreme Court Case of the Century? https://t.co/mJrkTgYUhV

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

@mkazin Which is amazing: the numbers or the misuse of the pronoun?

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

On the constitutional side: the Framers' main justification for the Unitary Executive was the principle of responsibility (more than vigor, energy, and dispatch). That is a concept that Trump has never understood and could never accept or perform. Someone else is always to blame.

[Dan Shapiro @DanielBShapiro]

Guys, you can just condemn the president for posting racist garbage without building in the bogus excuses for him.

[Jack Rakove @JRakove]

Playing the grinch at the 250th

https://t.co/OskfFmKx53

[mkazin @mkazin]

David French on point: https://t.co/UBGXkJz6eN