The Casey Lartigue Show!

What Casey hits on in the post below, regarding "character" and Rush's blatant misunderstanding of same, highlights the problems of people who are not terribly literate or educated (regardless of their claims) attempting to interpret 200 year old language. I discovered this in elementary school, looking at older documents that were full of "ye" and stange looking "f" letters. Turned out that the "y" in "ye" is actually shorthand for "th," while the funny "f" is actually the equivalent of the German S-zet - a double "s." What Adams or Madison or Hamilton (whenever Rush finally gets it right) describes in the Federalist #69 is not the "character" of the executive, but rather what today we would call "characteristics of the office of president." There is, by the way, excellent reading in there for those few still interested in comparing the current administration's actions with wh...

A couple of days ago in a conversation about Eliot Spitzer and morality in politics, Rush Limbaugh said the following: Our last caller wanted to know -- he's a Republican, but he doesn't like this morality in politics, it's not in the Constitution. Actually, it is in the Federalist Papers in the section in which the criteria for the president was being written and debated about, the number one aspect in the Federalist Papers, I think it was John Adams in this case -- I think it was John Adams writing number-one, most important thing in the executive was character. Federalist #69, written by Alexander Hamilton, outlined the duties and responsibilities of the president. Limbaugh then had a change of heart about the author: It was James Madison. Actually, he wrote one-third of the Federalist Papers, the forerunner of the Constitution. He also was the principal author of the Constitution. It was James Madison in the Federalist Papers who laid out the requirements for the e...