Luke is an attorney, campaign consultant, lobbyist, and historian with a passion for liberty and a nerdy sense of humor.
He holds a Jurisdoctorate Degree in law and a Bachelors degree in communications.
December 7, 43 BC What does it take to be a philosopher-statesman? To dedicate one’s life to public service, to approach the issues of the day with a level head, to remain reasonable in the face of radicalism, and, above all, to carry your convictions through to their logical end, even if it costs your
More
This article is a follow-up to my piece about the possibility of an Electoral College tie, available here. We haven’t had a non-partisan White House since before there was a White House. George Washington didn’t affiliate with any political party, though his policies and appointments leaned somewhat to the Federalist end of the spectrum. By
More
It’s not likely. We’ve been told our whole lives it’s not possible. But here we are, a week from the general election, and we are the closest we have been in our lifetimes to a Twelfth Amendment crisis. The two least popular major party nominees that anyone seems to remember continue their race to the
More
October 29, 312 – To the victor goes the spoils, but even the victor lives and dies by the ideas he brings with him. Roman General Constantine, then claimant to the imperial throne of Rome and all her glory, paraded into the eternal city at the head of his victorious legions. Constantine, who is known
More
First, I had to pick myself up from the floor from laughing. Second, I started seeing the flood of gloating comments and “I told you so’s.” It turns out Hillary Clinton’s emails did have some evidence that would sink her ambitions and, this just in: the only way for the FBI to find it amid
More
Yes, you read that correctly. If there’s one thing our politically correct culture has told us, it’s that we have the right to speak our minds unless, of course, someone gets offended. But there’s so much misinformation and confusion about what free speech means, honestly to the point that liberals and conservatives routinely hold themselves
More
What do millennials, Hispanics, and Muslims have in common? They’re three of the fastest-growing demographics in this country, and they should be exactly where both political parties focus on winning the electoral future. Let me preface this whole discussion by saying I have no particular allegiance to any political party beyond its effectiveness for policy
More
Thank you, government, for giving us all things so good and beautiful. Without you, there would be riots and chaos in the street, or possibly even disabled middle school girls bringing their service dogs to school with them. This just in from Napoleon, Michigan. Brent and Stacy Fry are suing their local school district because
More
Welcome to American politics, where election season never really ends. By the time one election is close, the next year’s campaign is well underway. The battle for the soul of the House GOP is no exception. Republicans in the House of Representatives have been having it out internally since the day they took the speakership
More
The electoral map is looking pretty blue this year, but one case study looks even more interesting than the others. Like most southern states, North Carolina has a long history with blue dog Democrats at the state and local level and reliable Republican voting patterns at the federal level. Nothing too radical there, just a
More
Kingdom of Kent, Saxon England, 932 – Newly anointed King Arthur tours his realm seeking knights for the round table at Camelot. He bore with him the decree of none other than God Himself, ordained by Heaven to rule the Angles and Saxons. Alas, for yon head-choppy days of yore were dark times for God’s
More
October 24, 1945 – The United Nations is founded in San Francisco as a very well-intentioned check against the excesses of failed states and colonial imperialism. The Weimar Republic, left to its own devices, had swept Hitler’s Nazi Party into power with a mere quarter of the popular vote. The fanatical regime of Premier Tojo
More
It’s a cliche in our day and age. Whenever a grassroots movement or talking head in the Grand Old Party talks about nominating a presidential candidate to the right of the center, the same thing happens. The high-dollar consultants, State Central Committee chairs, and Capitol Hill staffers pull the ancient reference from their file cabinets,
More
From the moment Roe v. Wade came down from the gavel of the nine gods to the lives of our unworthy peasantry, social conservatives and the religious right have been debating tactics to achieve the impossible: Overturning a 7 to 2 Supreme Court decision. It’s a task not many activist movements have been able to
More
October 22, 1836 – Freedom isn’t free, but sometimes it is more costly to live for than to die for. Deep in the hill country of south Texas, Col. William Barret Travis and 181 of his fellow patriots hunkered down in a crumbling adobe church and fended off over a thousand professional soldiers under the
MoreThe latest link in a long chain of electoral drama, Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump sparred mercilessly in Wednesday’s debate and following press conferences over whether the losing side would “accept the outcome” of the national election. What exactly does that mean? Usually, accepting the outcome of the election means you concede the election
More
October 21, 1805 – The social order of the western world hung in the balance. Britannia’s mighty empire hailed its heritage of Magna Carta, Parliamentary rule, and “God and my right” in the face of a revolutionary invader. The war coffers of her far-flung realms were strained to the breaking point by the horrors of
More
This article is Part 3 of a 3 part series. See Parts 1 and 2. Suppose hypothetically that the Electoral College vote is close this year. Suppose also that someone other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton wins more electoral votes than the difference between them. This could be another candidate carrying a state, say
More
This article is Part 2 of a three part series. Part 1 is available here. So say you run a third party campaign so successful that its vote causes the nearest major party to lose to the other major party. Now, candidates in both major parties see an organized group of very angry voters who
More
With the general election cycle in full swing and the two most hated major party nominees in living memory, Google is hopping with search queries about alternate options. Gary Johnson polls at an undisputed third place in the national polls, but envies the serious prospects of Evan McMullin for winning a state of his own.
More
This is Part 2 of a series on term limits. See Part 1 here. 2. The people will naturally tend to vote for smarter choices for their representatives if given open elections free of incumbents. This is, again, just not true. The same people who send back an incumbent you don’t like will probably send
More
All but dead since the fizzling of the Tea Party between 2010 and 2012, the Republican populists have exhumed yet again the perennial token policy proposal that comes out whenever you need to get the attention of that niche of voters who care passionately about it, while not offending the rest of people who largely
More
Another presidential debate? Honestly, at this point, why bother? Don’t get me wrong, I’m as political as they come. I eat it up as much as the next politico, hang on every word, read between the lines, and debate the finer points with my fellow nerds for weeks. I have no lack of interest in
More
If you’ve seen the news, opened social media, or generally lived anywhere other than a desert island for the past few months, you’ve inevitably seen a plethora of presidential polls that all say the same thing: Donald Trump is losing to Hillary in every swing state and a good number of red states. Badly. Like,
More
The 1760’s called, they want their economic policy back. Am I the only one who’s a little tired of both major party platforms scraping the bottom of the barrel for economic theories that’ve been disproven since before we were born? I’m a libertarian. A deep, cynical, state-is-obsolete libertarian who finds his views overlapping heavily with
More