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The Duke of Sussex briefly burst into song at a charity performance of the hit musical Hamilton on Wednesday. Taking to the stage to thank the cast and crew, he sang a line from You'll Be Back - assuming the role of King George III, his sixth great-grandfather. But he cut the song after singing "You say..." Hamilton tells the story of US founding father Alexander Hamilton, and features King George III in a scene-stealing comic role - peacocking around the stage as he expresses disbelief and frustration at America's battle for independence. Lin Manuel Miranda told the audience how...

ormer FBI Director James Comey attended a performance of the Broadway hit “Hamilton” on Tuesday and had his photo taken with the cast. “Many thanks to the DC cast of “Hamilton” for their public service,” Comey said on Twitter after seeing the musical in Washington, D.C. “Great show. Great message,” the ex-FBI chief added, sharing a photo of him with the cast. Comey has been in the public eye recently with his nationwide book tour promoting his memoir, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.” He may also find himself back on the hot seat on Capitol Hill pretty soon....

During his short exile from Revolutionary France, the famously corrupt former French Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, glimpsed the ex-US Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, working by candlelight late at night. Talleyrand couldn’t comprehend why a former cabinet secretary, a finance secretary no less, had to work at all after almost six years in government. Despite his remarkable achievements, I’ve found that many Article V COS opponents unjustly vilify the man who, while impoverishing himself and family through government service, enriched his nation. The often unhinged hostility of these people and others are only surpassed by contemporary Trump Derangement Syndrome. Alexander Hamilton was...

Subtitle: Robert Yates & Alexander Hamilton Debate the Scotus. What happened to the Scotus? In this squib, we’ll find the Framers blameless for today’s runaway federal courts. Background. Under the British system, colonial court judges were appointed by, and served at the pleasure of, the Crown. The ninth indictment of George III in our Declaration charged him with making “judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their Offices, and the amount and Payment of their Salaries.” In a system in which the House of Lords was the supreme tribunal, colonial defendants logically feared political influence against them...

Washington (AFP) - The White House correspondents' dinner will break with tradition next year and forgo a comedian as its featured speaker, opting instead for a historian best known for his biographies of Alexander Hamilton and two former US presidents. The decision came after stand-up Michelle Wolf delivered a controversial star turn this year -- mercilessly sending up White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who was seated on the dais with her. So on April 27, 2019, the guest speech at the black tie gala will come from historian and biographer Ron Chernow, who is best known for his book...

Of late I have been reading Ron Cernow's excellent biography of Alexander Hamilton. I have just finished the period in Hamilton's life of his service as the first Secretary of the Treasury and he leaving to go back to private life. He is visiting his friend George Washington Parke Curtis, President Washington's grandson, when he sees a small copy of the U.S. Constitution. He then says this about the Constitution: "So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and...

The worries and warnings come from across the political spectrum and across the oceans. New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff calls America “an empire enthralled with its own power and unaware that it is fading.” Former Clinton administration official Charles Kupchan concludes that “American primacy is already past its peak.” According to Joseph Nye, who served under Presidents Carter and Clinton, America’s “soft power — its ability to attract others by the legitimacy of U.S. policies and the values that underlie them — is in decline.” Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for the most optimistic of presidents, Ronald Reagan, asserts that “in...

FULL TITLE: Brett Kavanaugh stares down his critics as he finally gets his say at chaotic SCOTUS confirmation - as 70 are arrested and howling protesters dressed as Handmaids force his daughters to be escorted out for their own safety Brett Kavanaugh vows to be an 'umpire - a neutral and impartial arbiter' on the Supreme Court as the first day of his confirmation hearing was disrupted by protesters and Democrats alike. 'A good judge must be an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy,' Kavanaugh told senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday afternoon,...

Donald Trump made a lot of hay on the campaign trail by decrying the foreign adventurism of previous administrations. Trump positioned himself as the righteous outsider ready to rein in the executive overreach of his predecessors. None of that began with Barack Obama or George W. Bush, but Americans with short historical memories readily identified illegal and ill-advised wars as a major problem in America, particularly since some of those wars were often carried on without any congressional input. See Obama in Libya for example. But what if the problem of executive overreach in foreign policy began long before either...

How do you justify entitlement spending under the Constitution? Two words: Alexander Hamilton. Apparently, he’s the only politically correct Founding Father. Don't expect any Broadway shows to open any time soon with titles such as "Adams!," "Madison!," "Jefferson!" or "Washington!" "A Hamiltonian reading of the Constitution is where we're at right now," Greg Weiner of Assumption College said at the annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Dallas on April 1, 2017. The Philadelphia Society is a group of conservative intellectuals formed in the wake of the Goldwater defeat in 1964. Indeed, here's what Hamilton (!) himself had to say...

Although overshadowed by the clemency bestowed on Chelsea Manning, on Tuesday the news broke that President Obama was commuting the sentence of Oscar López Rivera. The push to release the terrorist had been a cause célèbre in Puerto Rico, the U.S. and Latin America for years. He counts among his supporters New York Mayor Bill de Blasio,

Well, today’s the day. The Electoral College will vote to officially instate Donald J. Trump as the duly elected President Elect of the United States. Despite the impassioned pleas from the likes of Joy Behar, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen and Hot Lips Houlihan. Suddenly these constitutional scholars are experts on the machinations if the Electoral College.  Let’s remember that the only distinct skill of an actor is their ability to convincingly read lines written by somebody else.If they understand the words and the context they can reinforce the words with emotive behaviors. If they don’t understand the words, well, that’s...

Alexander Hamilton, a man tagged in modern times with authoritarian inclinations, left no doubt what the sovereign people were to do in the face of ongoing oppression. The great vehicle of oppression to enforce tyranny in the 17th and 18th centuries was a king’s standing army. For centuries after the Norman Conquest, the prerogative of English kings to raise armies was nearly unlimited. This ages-old right, of which Spanish and French kings shared, did not end in England until the close of the Glorious Revolution in 1688. Subsequent to a 1689 Bill of Rights, English kings needed the consent of...

The pull of democracy often overwhelms societies. As men are naturally drawn to the scent of a woman, passion instead of reason lures societies toward all power to the people. Why shouldn’t our representatives, senators and presidents be popularly elected? Because democracy isn’t perfume but rather a poison that terminates in tyranny. The electoral process of Article II was designed to avoid a popularly derived president. In a recent post I showed how the Framers designed their presidential election process around two goals. First, only men of national stature, wisdom, experience and virtue would be considered. Second, the winner would...

In recent decades, a revisionist history of American trade policy has developed an almost religious status in Washington D.C. In this context, the candidacy of Donald Trump has been presented as a deviation from America’s historic “free trade” policy when, in fact, America was founded on Alexander Hamilton’s protectionist economic system whose greatest defenders would become Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party.

“Hamilton,” an improbable hip-hop musical about America’s first Treasury secretary, completed its rapturous march across America’s awards landscape on Sunday, picking up Broadway’s highest honor: the Tony Award for best new musical. The prize capped an amazing season for the show, a smash hit that has been sold out from the start, captivating audiences and the broader culture through its use of today’s sounds and a largely nonwhite cast to explore America’s revolutionary origins and their contemporary relevance.

Tonight at the Tony Awards, the Hamilton cast will not be using their prop firearms when they take to the stage, according to a new report. The cast have consciously decided not to use the musket props during their highly-anticipated performance following the tragic mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in the early hours of Sunday morning that left 50 people dead."Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected. The Tony Awards dedicate tonight's ceremony to them."

In a gripping new look at the important relationship between American founders George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, Stephen F. Knott and Tony Williams – authors of the new book Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance That Formed America, tell the story below of the American founding, which would not have been possible without this grand alliance.  While many historians focus on the friendship and alliance of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Washington and Hamilton reminds us why America would truly not be the prosperous country it is today without this special alliance.Congratulations Stephen & Tony on the paperback release of your new book: Washington and...

Only rarely does water flow uphill, do clocks run backwards, or does hell freeze over. And it’s even more rare when an MSM-er doesn’t trash Donald Trump. Michael Hirsh is a certifiably blue-chip establishment journalist: His resume includes stints at Newsweek and National Journal, and he is now the national editor at Politico.

Politico reports that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is set to announce that Alexander Hamilton will get a reprieve and remain on the $10 bill, while Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20, and Treasury will make other changes including “putting leaders of the women’s suffrage movement on the back of the $10 bill, and incorporating civil-rights era leaders and other important moments in American history into the $5 bill” while relocating Jackson to less desirable real estate (his own Trail of Tears, one might say) on the back of the $20. There are a few...