Free Republic

An intact mortar shell has been discovered at Scotland's Culloden Battlefield by a team of researchers led by Derek Alexander of the National Trust for Scotland and Tony Pollard of the University of Glasgow, according to a Scottish Field report. Fought on April 16, 1746, the battle marked the English government's defeat of Jacobite forces, who supported the return of the exiled Stuart king to the English throne after the Glorious Revolution in 1688. The undetonated shell is thought to have been fired by government troops from a Coehorn mortar and then to have landed on boggy ground, where its...

Spanish aristocrat Fernando Fitz-James Stuart has welcomed his first child with his wife Sofía Palazuelo two years after their lavish society wedding. Fernando, 29, Duke of Huéscar and heir apparent of the dukedom of Alba, was by Sofía's side when she gave birth to their daughter Rosario at Madrid's Hospital Nuestra Señora del Rosario. Further details of the birth, including the date, have not been made public. The baby was named in honour of Fernando's grandmother, the late Duchess of Alba, María del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, who was known as Spain's richest...

In the introduction, I sketched out the distinctions between the electoral and sovereign capacities of the people. Many states inappropriately burden their citizens with a duty for which they are unfit: in no government beyond the size of small towns should direct democracy be utilized to enact statutes or ratify state constitutional amendments. This problem, the conflation of the electoral and sovereign capacities of the people isn’t new; it goes back to the mid-17th century English Revolution and was only sorted out in the minds of some men just as the 1787 federal convention was under way. While our Framers...