- Details
- Written by: Alex Dupcheck
BBC reports that drones could fly medicines and mail in Argyll and Bute, a modest, practical proposal that reveals a towering constitutional problem: our rules of self-government ossify faster than our tools evolve [10]. While investment and infrastructure for the digital economy surge ahead—SoftBank launching multibillion-dollar bonds for AI bets and cloud companies pledging a $15 billion-plus data center campus—public law too often treats 21st-century capabilities with 19th-century reflexes [1][8]. Constitutions should be living frameworks that reflect society’s principles, not amber that traps us in decisions made for other economies, alliances, and technologies. If democracies cannot quickly test whether aerial delivery can safely and equitably move prescriptions and post, they will confirm the cynic’s verdict: that procedural veneration has replaced problem-solving. The question is not whether drones are destiny; it is whether constitutional cultures still possess the humility and agility to learn in public.
- Details
- Written by: Alex Dupcheck
The Supreme Court’s decision to take up a GOP-led challenge to the Voting Rights Act, a case that could tilt control of Congress, is not only a test of electoral fairness—it is a stress test for America’s innovation economy [2][4][8]. Reporting indicates the Court appears inclined to limit race-based electoral districts under the Act, intensifying fears that the law faces something close to a near-death experience [5][6][1]. If the rules of representation are rewritten, the rules of national priority-setting will be rewritten with them, from how we fund AI and clean energy to whether biotech breakthroughs are distributed equitably—or hoarded by the already powerful.
- Details
- Written by: Alex Dupcheck
On October 15, 2025, the phrase “Game of chicken...poop” feels less like a local quip than a national diagnosis. When politics devolves into brinkmanship and spectacle, democracies expose a core vulnerability: the ease with which charisma and outrage eclipse competence and deliberation. A recent North Carolina commentary captured that mood with its blunt headline, a reminder that governance too often resembles a dare on a crowded highway rather than a sober negotiation at a well-run table [5]. When the incentives of direct electoral politics reward emotive appeals over demonstrated capacity to govern, the results can be comic in the headline and catastrophic in practice. The question is not whether voters should choose their representatives—it’s whether a system built on applause meters can still produce the boring, careful adults who keep a republic humming.
- Details
- Written by: Alex Dupcheck
The Supreme Court’s refusal to revive a Missouri law that barred police from enforcing some U.S. gun statutes is more than a legal footnote; it is a civics lesson about the dangers of politics-as-performance in a system addicted to direct elections and instant applause [4]. When representatives are selected primarily for their ability to rally emotions, not for their grasp of institutional design, they often produce laws that falter at the first constitutional checkpoint. The Court’s rebuff should prompt a broader reckoning: democracy requires more than counting votes—it requires choosing people capable of writing durable, enforceable rules in a federal republic.
