A Liberal Lives In Wisconsin

This is from the past: today is September 18th, 2020. I just decorated my room for Halloween, and I am still anxiously awaiting the results of the election from my abode next to a small wooded area interrupted by the winding flow of a brook. I sit on my deck, the only sounds being the water, the chirping of birds, and the gentle roar of a personal plane. Not far is the relative hustle and bustle of the city of Green Bay. Going into town is like staring ignorance in the face: lines of "Trump-Pence" signs litter the street, the property value plummeting like the collective IQ of the nation. Last time, my region of my state won the election for a man who is not my president. When I created this blog I vowed not to change anything, but set a goal of changing the perspective of at least one person of sound mind. Voting is amazing; getting a different person to vote is even better.      I know not what the results of the election are and I will not know for almost 7 w...

       With the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives maintained and Joe Biden in the White House, a special election in Georgia scheduled for January 5th, 2021 could determine the fate of COVID relief, racial justice, LGBT2SQIA+ rights, economic recovery, and environmental protection. The Senate is currently divided 50-48, leaning in favor of the Republicans. If Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were to win, the 50-50 split would allow for milestone legislation to pass, with Kamala Harris breaking the tie.      The fact that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are still in power is insane. Raphael Warnock has given his life to the church, and Jon Ossoff has made a massive impact in investigative journalism in Africa and the Middle East. The incumbents, on the other hand, neglected to tell their constituents of the severity of coronavirus as they shifted investments to protect their portfolios. Well-placed priorities, GOP. Maybe old, bu...

       Republicans' attack on Obamacare has been among the most egregious of their abuses. This program ended discrimination by insurance companies against those with preexisting conditions, and its mandate for health insurance insured nearly 25 million Americans. As evidenced by the stories on the White House page, for many, Obamacare was a literal lifesaver.      Republicans like to say they will try to "fix" Obamacare and protect preexisting conditions, and for a decade, every 2 weeks, they have said they will have a plan to replace it. 250 times they have failed to produce a plan. Trump's defense? They have a plan, but Obamacare has to be repealed before they will go into any detail.      If this replacement they alleged they had were better and cheaper while protecting the American people, why not tout its benefits to the people and secure bipartisan support, as Obamacare did from the likes of John McCain and Susan Collins? The solu...

       There can only be one explanation to the Republicans' loss in the 2020 election. They have already declared their intent to nominate Trump for president in 2024, and I hope they do, because they will get the same result.       The absolute refusal to disavow Trump, even by those who did not support him, was their downfall. From the conservatives fed up with Trump to the people left of left, and everyone in between, Biden's was a broad coalition, while the Republicans made it clear that only those absolutely loyal to Trump were welcome. Perhaps nothing is more indicative of this than the fact that his family holds key positions of leadership and his family also made up more than a quarter of RNC speeches.      They have failed to recognize that most Americans are not loyalists to a single party. Reelections are a referendum on the president, and 2020 was the worst year a president has ever had, from being impeached to mishandl...

       Everyone knew Joe Biden was not a man to be underestimated. The kid from Scranton who performed poorly at law school, overcame a stutter, and lost the elections of 1988 and 2008 became the Democratic presidential nominee and winner in 2020 against all odds. His career has been one of ups and downs, but throughout he has been in the forefront of issues and crises.      Rising to the U.S. Senate before the age of 29, his wife and daughter were killed and his 2 sons wounded in a car crash before he took office. Still, he chaired the Judiciary Committee and Foreign Relations Committee and made remarkable contributions to American society.      What to expect of him as vice president? Few would know he would redefine the office. While Trump supporters tout Mike Pence's 13 tie-breaking votes, they ignore that they are mostly of appointments that even most Republicans realized were incompetent and ill-fit to suit public office.  ...

       Franklin D. Roosevelt is almost always ranked as among the 5 greatest presidents in American history. His steady leadership took the United States through the worst economic recession in history and through World War 2, and in the end the country came out better for it.      What he did was controversial. From creating job corps to Social Security, he was called a socialist, but this socialist was elected to serve 4 terms in the executive mansion.       Like Roosevelt, Biden faces twin crises: the coronavirus pandemic may prove to be the dealiest event in American history, with 500,000+ deaths forecast in less than a year. Its economic impact has been an obvious devastation, with 9 million jobs permanently lost and 10+% of small businesses shut down. He, additionally, faces a nation in turmoil from race relations.      Like Roosevelt, Biden also faces the ineptitude of his predecessor, with Hoover and Trump both bei...

       Wisconsin Republicans have dragged their feet on issues for nearly 2 years: from gun control, to racial justice, to farmer aid, to LGBT2SQIA+ rights. However, perhaps their most heinous move has been their refusal to assist the efforts to combat COVID-19.      They were the only state whose congresspeople all voted against coronavirus aid, and yet they were all reelected handily. They took Tony Evers's mask mandate, stay at home order, and public building quota to court while flaunting the regulations in place. Then, they had the nerve to claim the regulations they are intentionally violating are ineffective.       Now, the situation in Wisconsin is dire. Of the 20 most impacted cities by population, 10 are in the state. The death toll and case counts climb by thousands, and Wisconsin is 7th overall in the nation for cases. Republicans have recently announced they will collaborate on a limited basis with the governor.   ...

       Donald Trump has broken tradition in the ugliest ways time and time again:      1. He was the only president to be impeached, defeated for reelection, AND to lose the popular vote. (3 were impeached, 5 lost the popular vote, and several were defeated, but Trump was the only one to do all of them.)      2. He is the only president to publicly wage war on the electoral process. While his loss was confirmed long ago, Trump has spent nearly 3 weeks claiming fraud and losing lawsuit after lawsuit. He claimed, as he did in 2016, that the election was rigged. Nixon and Gore swore they were cheated in 1960 and 2000 respectively, but both conceded.      3. He will likely be the first president since John Quincy Adams, nearly 200 years ago, to not attend the inauguration of his successor.      4. He is the first president since Benjamin Harrison, in 1892, to not deliver a concession speech.      ...

       Joe Biden has a long track record and a promising future with regards to LGBT2SQIA+ rights, which earned him the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign.      Beginning in the 1990s, Senator Biden was among the first to support gay marriage, and he has spoken on various issues on a regular basis since then. He was considered the leading voice behind the shift in Obama administration policy toward gay marriage, and that administration saw the repeal of a ban on gay military service, the legalization of gay marriage, and the expansion of hate crime laws to encompass sexual orientation.      As President Biden has a long list of goals, including:      1. Reversing the Trump ban on transgender military service.      2. Passing the Equality Act, which would expand civil rights protections to include sexual identity and orientation.      3. Banning conversion therapy on minors and the use of...

     No president has done what Donald Trump has done. Presidents have boycotted the inaugurations of their successors, refused to congratulate the winners, and sworn privately that they were cheated.      Nobody, however, has publicly sought to preserve their own power by cutting faith in the electoral process. Swearing the election was rigged even though he lost in the first election and only performed miserably as president, filing frivolous lawsuits and then having them dismissed, withholding resources from President-Elect Biden, trying to stop votes from being counted, sending armed terrorists to polling places, and publicly announcing that there will not be a peaceful transition of power with the full backing of the GOP that has witnessed dozens of peaceful transitions of power is crossing the line.      Knowing he was low in the polls, he and his party cut around all protocol by confirming an intern to a lifetime appointment to the Sup...

       Those who decry assaults on civil liberties conveniently ignore those that occur at the United States detention center at Gunatanamo Bay. While President Obama was unable to shut the place down as he had hoped, he did do more than anyone to curb its power.      Immediately upon taking office, he placed a moratorium on the transfer of prisoners there. The notorious human rights abuses included holding people without charge and even torturous practices like waterboarding, which top military officials dismiss as ineffective, a stain on America's reputation, and a source of martyrdom and hatred for terrorists.      President Obama later transferred approximately 150 prisoners away from the camp, or about 75% of those there. In the legislative front, he was able to ban the use of torture, which has remained in place. When President Biden takes office, he will have a decent chance at shutting it down permamently and keeping the nationwi...

     Donald Trump is anything but a peacemaker. Aside from his disgusting remarks referring to dead soldiers and captured soldiers as losers and suckers, his so-called peacemaking has been a bitter failure and smoke and mirrors.      His recent treaties in the Middle East fit that smoke and mirrors part-- none of the countries were in active conflict.      North Korea is no example of peace, either. He called Kim Jong-Un "Rocket Man" and failed on three separate occasions to accomplish a single thing.      He has done nothing for homeless vets. Barack Obama started an initiative that cut veteran homelessness in half, while it actually increased slightly under Trump.       Troop withdrawal is also a bitter failure. During Obama's administration, 90% of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were withdrawn. However, he replaced ground troops with a calculated plan for drone strikes. Peace cannot exist without justice,...

       Joe Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, and during this time he made some of the most significant contributions as a legislator. Working with Senator Orrin Hatch, the National Association of Police Organizations, and others, he drafted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and the Brady Bill, which contributed the following to American society:      1. The Brady Bill mandated background checks and waiting periods on the purchase of handguns.      2. The Brady Bill banned the possession of firearms by felons.      3. The Violence Against Women Act made domestic violence a federal crime and created the Domestic Violence Hotline.      4. The VAWA created a rape shield law that banned using past sexual behavior of the victim as a defense against rape charges.      5. The VCCLEA created mandatory sentencing for federal ...

     The death penalty is on its way out in the United States, and, by 2035, it is certain to be entirely gone. Since 2004, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Connecticut, Maryland, Washington, Nebraska, Virginia, and Illinois have abolished it. 13 states had abolished the death penalty prior to 1976. States like California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Oregon have moratoriums in place, and these states, along with Montana and Kansas, have death penalty repeal campaigns under way. South Dakota has only had one execution in the last five years, while numerous other states have had none. When all is taken into account, of the 50 states, only eight are firmly behind the death penalty. 42 states are in a position to phase it out. To create a constitutional amendment, which would be more likely than getting a 67% consensus in Congress, 34 would need to agree. The death penalty could be outlawed at the federal level, and states are in no position to disobey a constitutional amend...

       Hateful Republicans are nothing new. During the election of 2008, supporters of John McCain called Barack Obama a "Muslim terrorist." The reason? As a finance minister for Kenya, Obama's father brought his teen son to live with him there as a teenager. Increasingly in recent years, Muslim factions have come to power in the country. Apparently, in the eyes of Republicans, living somewhere means you were born there, which makes sense, as many are inbred rednecks who can't take a long enough break from having sex with their cousins to leave the barns they were born in. They also think that a Muslim majority works retroactively. Makes sense.      When Obama won, he was burned in effigy, called a "chimp," and threatened with death. South Park  even lampooned the Republican reaction, with Randi organizing residents into a post-apocalypse shelter and later admitting, "Maybe we overreacted, just a little bit."      What is different ...

       Joe Biden claimed in a debate that he was a pioneer in tackling climate change, and he was absolutely correct in that assertion. While Al Gore may have been the first to discuss the subject of climate change in Congress, starting in 1974, Joe Biden was the first to introduce climate change legislation in the United States. He was very active on numerous fronts during the Reagan administration, and his bill, which called for the creation of a task force to mitigate climate impacts from the U.S. government, opened the floodgate of climate legislation from 1986 onward.      In 2015, he continued to expand upon his legacy. Aside from fighting for stricter pollution controls and creating massive carbon sinks with new national parks, as VP under the Obama administration, his foreign policy experience played a critical role in the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement that began the fight in earnest against climate change and led to a 13% reduction in...

       As a senator, Joe Biden chaired the Judiciary Committee and Foreign Relations Committee, and the latter position saw him confront an international crisis. In 1999, he, along with Senators John McCain and Bob Dole, held the Clinton administration and NATO responsible and introduced a resolution authorizing bombing after reports surfaced that  Slobodan Milošević engaged in ethnic cleansing, rape, torture, kidnapping, and even organ harvesting against ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia, particularly in Kosovo.      The operation was a success after two months of bombing, and  Milošević  was arrested a year later and charged with war crimes. He killed himself via quasi-suicide shortly before his expected trial.       Biden later supported Kosovo in its movement for independence from Serbia, and in 2009 he was given the Golden Medal of Freedom by the country.

     Donald Trump,      What don't you understand? Without question, you will go down as among the worst presidents in United States history. You are the first president without political or military experience. You spent 40 years without having to worry, your father having ensured you would be taken care of. Your university and charity were shut down for fraud and you were sued on multiple occasions by the Justice Department. You are nothing but a washed-up reality star with allegations of sexual assault dating back 25 years who admitted to groping women.       You rolled back environmental protections, banned Muslims while calling for a Muslim registry, said that white supremacists were good people and had parents in the KKK, and tear-gassed peaceful protestors while standing by the bad cops. Your mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic will result in up to a million deaths and put millions of people out of work; you are the first pres...

       Pete Buttigieg is a history-making hero, and sources have confirmed that he is almost certain to serve in the cabinet of President-Elect Joe Biden. A Harvard graduate, Rhodes scholar, and concert pianist who speaks 7 languages, Buttigieg worked as a consultant before serving as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020. He served in the military reserves from 2009 to 2017 and was actively deployed in 2014.       In 2015, he became the first elected official in Indiana to come out as gay and the first openly-gay executive in Indiana. As mayor, his greatest achievements were in the areas of housing and urban development. In 1,000 days, he purchased 1,000 delapidated properties and converted them to commercial and residential property, destroying any blights that were unable to be repaired.       In 2020, he ran for president. The son of a Maltese immigrant from a small town in Indiana came in 3rd in the Democratic pr...

  Good night, Diet Coke button on the desk. Good night, daily press conferences about how you're the best. Good night, hourly Tweets showing you're truly insane. Good night, saying white supremacists are good people. Good night, tear-gassing peaceful protestors. Good night, soliciting foreign help in American elections. Good night, saying 250,000 dead is no big deal. Good night, vice president who can't inflect his voice. Good night, dozens of advisors indicted for fraud. Good night, tax cuts for only the very rich. Good night, letting children die at their desks. Good night, spending $150 million on golf. Good night, letting oil spill on the Arctic ice. Good night, letting gays around the world die. Good night, grabbing women by the pussy. Good night, illegal immigrant wife. Good night sons who've never had to work a day. Good night, sleep tight, and wait for justice to bite.

       Joe Biden has had a prominent and successful career, but it has not been without its struggles and even temporary defeats.       After performing poorly in college, he made it to Syracuse Law School and managed to graduate, but he soon found law to be repetitive and unfulfilling. He preferred public service, and from 1970 to 1972 he served on the New Castle County Council, one of only 3 in the state.      In 1972, he became among the youngest senators elected in United States history at 29. However, his life was altered that December when his wife and toddler daughter were killed in an automobile accident shopping for Christmas trees. Despite this, he continued to serve in the Senate from 1973 to 2009, where he chaired the Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees for a decade apiece, with such notable acts as passing the VCCLEA, VAWA, and Brady Bill; overseeing several Supreme Court confirmations; creating the first climate...

        Beau Biden was a hero. After losing his sister and mother in a car crash that he sustained severe injuries from at age 3, he decided to live the best life possible. He worked as a federal prosecutor from 1995 and 2004 and served in the Delaware National Guard. He was deployed to active service in 2008 and went by his mother's maiden name, "Hunter," to avoid any special treatment. He won a bronze star medal, which he refused to wear. From 2007 to 2015, he served as the Attorney General of Delaware, a position in which he toughened restrictions against sex offenders and prosecuted Earl Bradley, a notorious serial child rapist whose prosecution he placed above his run for the Senate. After he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, he still chose to run for governor, and he made his father promise to not let his death in 2015 be the end of his career. It was not-- Joe served as VP until 2017, secured $2.2 billion in cancer research funding in both the pub...

       Joe Biden ran on the promise of rebuilding the "backbone of America," the middle class. If he is able to win control of the Senate when the races in Georgia are decided in January, he could confirm one of the best friends American workers could wish for, Bernie Sanders.      Republicans may scream that Bernie is a "socialist," but that should be considered a compliment when one is the Secretary of Labor. American states, Florida being the latest, are working toward a $15 minimum wage, and, if anyone in a cabinet could push the necessary legislation through to achieve this nationwide, it would be a man who has almost 30 years of legislative experience and a lifetime of dedication to the people.      That is not the only change we could see. We could stop states from infringing on the right to organize in unions and provide 9-month maternity and paternity leave, which would be considered a conservative amount of time in the dozen or...

     By any metric, historians are not likely to rate Donald Trump favorably. While they do tend to be more liberal than the average person, people like John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan are almost always placed on the bottom and definitely deserve to be there. The average rating for one-term presidents is 30th place. George H.W. Bush, at 20th, is rated most favorably. This in itself does not bode well.      However, deeper examination only reveals further evidence. He presided over an economic collapse and a pandemic that, like Herbert Hoover, he failed to respond adequately to. Herbert Hoover, whom even Trump was worried about being compared to, ranks 36th. Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan chose laissez-faire government when the country needed solid leadership to avert a civil war, and Trump's actions echo those of his aforementioned predecessors, all of whom are in the bottom 5-10. In 2...

     Joe Biden's inauguration has a number of historical implications:      1. He will be the second Roman Catholic president. John F. Kennedy was long the first and only, but now he will be the first but not the last.      2. He will be the first president from Delaware. Although born in Pennsylvania, he moved to Delaware with his family when he was 10, attended school there, and represented New Castle County from 1970 to 1972 as a councilman and 1973 to 2009 as a senator. He continues to make the state his home.      3. He will be the oldest president in history, as he turns 78 on November 20th.      4. He will be the first president to have a female vice president, a black vice president, or an Asian vice president.      5. His dog, Major, will be the first rescue dog to live in the White House.      6. He is the second non-incumbent vice president, and the first Democratic one (R...

       The most common claim touted by Trump supporters is that the election of Joe Biden means chaos, while they ignore the rioting and rapid spread of COVID under Trump. Joe Biden, however, has a long history of law, order, justice, and passion:      1. Like President Obama, he was a practicing lawyer and a law professor for a number of years.      2. As a senator, he oversaw the conformation processes of several Supreme Court justices.      3. As a senator, he was the leading figure behind the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act, which created sex offender registries, created the three-strikes law, created the domestic violence hotline, made domestic violence a federal crime, instituted a rape shield law, banned assault rifles for a decade, and collected information on hate crimes against disabled people, reducing crime by nearly a third.       4. As a sen...

Turning 18 provides a certain sense of relief, but not moreso than with regards to one's ambitions and aspirations to achieve something remarkable. I first became fascinated with the American presidents when I was a boy of nine, and within a month, I had them all memorized and began a search for trivial and other knowledge that has thankfully failed to pass, fade, or otherwise absolve itself of any necessity in my mind, not merely ecompassing those formerly-esteemed or reviled men, but all of the history of this nation. My teachers told me I'd be president someday, and I found myself the only fourth-grader wearing suits and preferring literature to television. I was by no means entertaining, but by high school I had learned to liven up my dour personality, a sort of balance between business and pleasure that always leans toward business. I love my family dearly, but I, like many other students in my acquaintance, do firmly believe that the best way to express this love is ...

  Here's what a Joe Biden presidency means: It means the oldest president of the United States and the president with the longest record of public service. It means the end to Trump's racist Muslim ban. It means that the United States will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and work toward replacing fossil fuels with clean energy by 2035. It means the United States will protect endangered species and habitats. It means we will greatly expand rights for the LGBTQIA+ by passing the Equality Act, revoking Trump's ban on transgender service, and banning conversion therapy. It means we will end tax giveaways for the wealthy and make them pay more. It means we will abolish the Electoral College and secure voting rights for all. It means we will increase funding for education and make college more affordable. It means we will work to reform the police and create a positive community relationship.  It means we will take steps to end the War on Drugs and legalize marijuana. It means...

  America's politics would make George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison turn in their graves. It has become a world in which greedy, selfish men and women make themselves millionaires and enter the arena for the sheer purpose of this wealth and notoriety. Donald Trump ran for president to promote his multi-billion dollar business interests. Laws that are passed hold no regard for the interests of citizens, serving merely as gains for the wealthy benefactors of those in power. One thing is abundantly clear: it is time to restore integrity, justice, and purpose to politics. Unfortunately, these are not virtues that can be learned; they must be buried in the hearts of the individuals. Purpose is a direct result of integrity, and I hope to bring this into politics. I am working on a list of goals based on issues that matter to me. From halting violent and sexual offenders, to helping addicts recover; from pr...

     While Americans nervously await the results of the presidential election, there are victories to be celebrated: 1. Mississippi voters overwhelmingly decided to remove the Confederate flag from their state flag. 2. Rhode Island removed "and Providence Plantations," a reference to slavery, from their name. 3. Arizona, New Jersey, Montana, and South Dakota voted to legalize marijuana, while Mississippi voted to legalize medical marijuana.  4. Oregon gave credibility to the movement to legalize shrooms by doing so, as legalization had thusfar been limited to cities. Washington, D.C. also decriminalized them, which is the biggest symbolic victory we could hope for. 5. Oregon also decriminalized all drugs, instead offering fines or rehab, which is the first step toward ending the war on drugs in the United States. 6. The first 2 LGBTQIA+ black men, both from New York, were elected to Congress. The first transgender woman, Sally McBride, was elected to a state legislat...

       On Election Day 2020, Arizona, New Jersey, and Montana voted to legalize possession of recreational marijuana. The following six states and territories could legalize recreational marijuana within five years: 1. Hawaii: With medical marijuana legalized and possession decriminalized relatively recently, they also have a solidly-Democratic justice system and government. 2. Mississippi: Despite being deep red, they long ago decriminalized possession. 3. New Hampshire: Despite having Republican leanings, they have recently decriminalized and legalized recreational and medical marijuana respectively. 4. North Carolina: With a growing Democratic movement and decriminalization and limited medical legalization, recreational legalization could be coming. 5. North Dakota: Despite being pretty Republican, they have decriminalized possession and medically legalized marijuana rapidly and have solid support for recreational legalization. 6. Ohio: Long having decriminalized ...

Judge John Tyler was a prominent man, the governor of Virginia, a teenage friend of Thomas Jefferson and later a confidant of founding fathers like John Marshall, Edmund Randolph, George Washington, George Wythe, James Madison, and James Monroe; his son, also named John Tyler, served as a representative, senator, president of the Senate, governor of Virginia, vice president, and tenth president of the US, an office in which, despite his antiquated views on slavery and states, he pulled America out of a long economic crisis, ended the Second Seminole War, opened up trade with China, brought Florida and Texas into the union, set the Maine-Canada border, and, most importantly, set the precedent of presidential ascension. Judge Tyler often said, "Better that wise and good men govern than be governed." A powerful statement, but what does it mean? Democrats, Republicans, and all other citizens of this nation have opinions on how she should be run. The difference between g...

 

  1. A racist: Joe Biden opposed desegregation busing because he felt it did not go far enough, as he proposed a housing program decades before its time. As for that "poor kids" quote, it was taken out of context in an article in which he describes the disparities faced by poor kids regardless of race. He stuttered when he said it, and the clip was edited to make him appear racist. 2. A man who raises taxes: Joe Biden's tax increase would affect only those who make over $400,000, which includes himself (the top 5%). Trump cut taxes by 50% on corporations and also cut them for the wealthy, and the result was the highest national debt in history with no difference for American citizens. You pay more for Netflix than Netflix pays for taxes, and Donald Trump paid 0.000025% of his net worth in taxes last year.  3. A rapist: Joe Biden's photos of him "kissing" children are all relatives, including the most notable one, which was him kissing his grandson at the fun...

  America's founders had a vision for this nation. They saw a place where hard work and a vision were all that was necessary to succeed, a place where people dedicated to serving the interests of the people were elected democratically and not subjected to unjust treatment or persecution. While the spirit of America remains, it has been placed in serious jeopardy, and, on this election day, Americans have the obligation to make a choice. There is Joe Biden. He has a concrete plan to curb coronavirus, halt climate change, address racism, make college affordable, fight big business and the commercial medical industry, fix the broken criminal justice system, and lower taxes on the middle class. This is backed up by his half-century career of public service. A practicing lawyer, he served on the New Castle County Council before becoming among the longest-serving senators. In that position, he created the Violent Crime Control And Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Wom...

Benjamin Harrison, if he is remembered at all, is remembered as the president between the two terms of Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States; or as the only grandson of a former chief executive to hold the office himself. However, his single term in office was arguably one of the most consequential of the era. Although his attempts at civil rights and federal funding for education were not successful, he admitted six states to the Union; signed the Dependent Pension Act, which saved former Union soldiers and dealt with the budget surplus; passed the Sherman Antitrust Act that was famously used by Teddy Roosevelt and William H. Taft; allowed for the creation of national forests with the Land Revision Act of 1891; modernized the U.S. Navy; saved a multibillion dollar industry by passing the Meat Inspection Act; averted war with Chile and Britain over a number of issues; and annexed Hawaii. His foreign policy and domestic reforms served as the precedent f...