Ronald Reagan

Conservatives as Environmentalists

Environmentalism isn’t an aberration in conservatives. It has deep roots going back to the 1960s.

Scott Pruitt’s appointment as head of EPA illustrates how conservatism has become synonymous with anti-environmentalism.  But that’s really a drastic oversimplification, as I explain in a new paper about the history of conservative environmentalism. There were moments of strong environmentalism in the earlier days of the conservative movement.  When he was running for mayor of New York City, William …

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Senator Rubio Goes to Moscow

In Internet time, it’s already an old story, but worth repeating.  Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Tea Party guy, was asked in a GQ interview how old he believes the earth is.  His reply: I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, …

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Warren B. Rudman, 1930-2012

Former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman, who served from 1981 to 1993, has died at the age of 82.  Lawyers  and law professors throughout the country should mourn, although they probably will not. Hundreds if not thousands of men (and women) have served in the United States Congress since the creation of the Republic, and the vast …

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Ranking the Presidents on the Environment

Keith Poole has spent years devising measures of political ideology.  The late Phil Frickey and I used his scholarship in our work on public choice theory.  He has now produced similar information about Presidents, incorporated in the following chart: It would be useful to have a similar measure for environmental policy. The early part of …

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