Breaks my heart to think how this country might have been different had Hannibal Hamlin succeeded Lincoln. I don't think you would have gotten the massive land redistribution Thaddeus Stevens and others wanted (and which was desperately needed), but Hamlin, unlike Johnson, wouldn't have stopped redistribution of…

Agreed on the importance of the diary, but I think you can distinguish presidents by greatness. You can acknowledge Lincoln's flaws — first and foremost, a certain self-superiority that manifested itself in strained relationships with those he considered rivals, most tragically his father and his eldest son. And you…

Stop it from happening? Hard to say, and positions were already hardening on slavery before 1844. But key to the Civil War was the collapse of moderate opinion (to be sure, moderate white male opinion) in the South after 1845. The southern Whigs were against expansion for decidedly selfish, horrible reasons — they…

Well (and before I begin: The gold standard is stupid and fiat currency is the way to go): The greenbacks were redeemable for gold at first, but the expense of the war grew to the point where Congress quickly suspended that, so they were a fiat currency. The greenback was a more stable currency than anything the…

Historians traditionally have been enamored of Polk for that reason. (FWIW: He died of cholera.) But keeping those promises cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Tyler interpreted Polk's victory's as a mandate to annex Texas. Whether or not he would have proceeded with the resolution had Clay won (and particularly after the Senate had rejected annexation) is debatable, but it certainly would have been harder. And the Union printed its share of greenbacks during the war.

That's a great question. One guess is that it likely would have happened regardless (Sutter and Sam Brannan moved to California before the war erupted) but a President Clay would not have fought a war with Mexico and would not have been in a position, as Polk was, to formally announce the discovery, which really got…

You're thinking of Franklin Pierce.

In a spiritual sense, in that he was a major reason we got Eisenhower as president.

Yes, yes . . . a Know-Nothing.

Polk for years had a reputation of being the only good president between Jackson and Lincoln, in part because he did everything he said he would in within a single term. But now (Daniel Walker Howe's "What Hath God Wrought" is a good example of this) there's a real sense that Polk put the country on a path to the…

Obligatory:

Tha ah-ccumulated filth of all their sex and moidah will foam uppa bout their waists, and all the ho-was and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"… and ah'll whisper "no."

Έγκαυμα!

Alan Moore hates this, too.

Ditto my pitch: Joe Steady Income and Sensible Spending Habits.

To be fair, polite suburban living doesn't make compelling television.

Thirteen suitors will live in a house together as they try to woo the not-yet-known eligible gay bachelor, who will eliminate suitors one by one until he finds The One.

The AV Club gave Every Open Eye an A, but none of the AV Club's critics put it on their end-of-the-year Top 10 list. And if there were 10 albums better than that one, so be it, but it was such laudatory review (and accurate, I think) that I expected it to be in the Top 5 on someone's list.

Omnipotentnin the red states; despised in the blue. The Irish church was a power *everywhere*.