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Nicholas’ power as an Autocrat was indeed so absolute that any command, even as extreme as the one to march on France, was fully within his power should he choose to exercise it

Throughout his reign, Nicholas jealously guarded the recognized prerogatives of the ruler in all aspects of government and he exercised a more personal control in state affairs than any other ruler since Peter the Great

Only a strong Emperor could bear the crushing burden of such a system of personal government and, as events after 1848 made clear, even Russia’s iron-willed Emperor himself could not bear such a burden in the face of serious crises.

In 1785 Tomas Lopez, Royal Geographer to King Charles III and Spain's foremost cartographer, published his Piano Geometrico de Madrid

That Lopez should include on his map uncompleted structures is not surprising. Since the accession of Charles III (1759-88) to the throne of Spain and its extensive and increasingly prosperous overseas empire, much of Madrid had been turned into a dusty construction site.

The Enlightenment was as varied and multifaceted in Spain as in most other European societies, the ideas and programmes of enlightened reformers moulded by differing social and cultural conditions

Neither the Protestants nor Catholics won that war between the faiths: The instrumentalists did, the Machiavellians, the Westerners who wanted political and economic life set free from the meddling of troublesome priests and turbulent prophets

, it’s their propaganda that deserves the most scrutiny, the most skepticism, the strongest doubts.

At the heart of that propaganda is a simple story about authority and the individual. First, this story goes, Protestantism replaced the authority of the church with the authority of the Bible. Then, once it became clear that nobody could agree on what the Bible meant, the authority of conscience became pre-eminent — and from there we entered naturally (if with some bloody resistance from various reactionary forces) into the age of liberty, democracy and human rights.

America badly needs corporate tax reform.

The United States pretends to tax corporations heavily. But those heavy tax rates are perforated by randomly generous rules such that many tax-efficient firms pay nothing at all, or even receive money back from the U.S. Treasury. The result is heavy unfairness between industries and firms, an unfairness that many economists believe systematically distorts investment decisions. U.S. productivity growth has been sluggish since the Great Recession—and had actually turned negative by the beginning of 2016.

Lowering the corporate rate while tightening collection—with a view to raising more revenue, in a more rational way—has been a good-government cause since the late 1980s. John Kerry campaigned on it in 2004, as NBC News reported at the time:

It showed the House, most notably the chamber's conservative block, willing to back off a centrally held tenet of their ideological beliefs in order to clear the path for tax reform.

There's a reason the President had to get onto the House GOP conference call Sunday afternoon.

Period. Every time someone gets angry about a change (see: state and local deduction repeal), t

Within hours of 10 people being gunned down at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado on Monday – the second such bloody rampage in seven days – the calls had begun for Congress to tighten up America’s notoriously slack firearms laws.

at the time of the Aurora cinema shooting that killed 12 people in 2012, opined that “our country has a horrific problem with gun violence. We need federal action. Now.”

The most prescient comment came from Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was one of 20 six- and seven-year-olds shot dead at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in December 2012. His heart was with the grieving families of Boulder, he said, adding that he hoped this year the country would “finally expand access to background checks”.

Political commentators continue to wonder whether President Joe Biden can deliver on his promise of national unity and healing.While his prospects for doing so seem increasingly limited, there is one area that offers some hope: criminal justice reform.

In 2010, Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, a bipartisan bill that reduced the racist disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. Over the course of his administration, he granted clemency to 1,715 people behind bars -- more than any president in US history, according to his administration. And to give people a fair shot at getting their lives back on, he signed an executive order banning federal agencies from asking about criminal records during the hiring process -- a reform known as "ban the box."

The result was the First Step Act -- a bill that addresses many aspects of the criminal justice system: curbing mandatory minimum sentencing, increasing compassionate and elderly release, reducing sentences for people who complete rehabilitative programs, and more. The bill, which passed in a bipartisan landslide during the Trump presidency, has already led to more than 16,000 people coming home early from federal prisons.

Just look, for instance, at this ad from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, in which actors doing their best worried faces say, “Politicians may call it Medicare-for-all, Medicare buy-in or the public option, but they mean the same thing: higher taxes or higher premiums, lower quality care, politicians and bureaucrats in control of our care.”

Although a single-payer system obviously presents the greatest threat to their profits, their belief is that any reform that allows large numbers of people to move on to government programs makes genuine cost control more likely, and that’s what they want to avoid.

, the consultant “removed three paragraphs from a draft of Kelker’s op-ed that pointed out that the United States 'clearly spends significantly more on health care per capita than other developed nations.’” This is one of the most important facts about our health-care problem, but it’s the last thing the Partnership and its backers want anyone thinking about.

Now that Donald Trump’s time in the White House is ending, an urgent task is the reform of the presidency that for four years he sought to shape in his image and to run in his personal and political self-interest. What the those years have shown is that the array of laws and norms that arose after Watergate and Vietnam requires an overhaul.

Congress should by statute supplement the executive reforms. Three should have broad public support and should be easier for Republican legislators to vote for once Mr. Trump is out of office.

These tactics exploited loopholes in federal vacancies law. Compounding this problem is that the number of Senate-confirmed executive branch positions has grown (it is now around 1,200), and the Senate in recent decades has become more aggressive in using holds and filibusters to block or delay confirmation. Congress should significantly reduce the number of executive positions requiring confirmation in exchange for substantially narrowed presidential discretion to make temporary appointments.

hristianity is the most widely practiced religion in the world, with more than 2 billion followers.

The Christian faith centers on beliefs regarding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Christians are monotheistic, i

Our highest court is facing a legitimacy crisis and is in desperate need of reform. And yet, due to the deadlock that seems to be Congress these days, I too often hear the rebuke to US supreme court reform, “None of these reforms will happen, so what is the point of talking about them?”

We need only look to the number of justices who have felt the need recently to speak up on behalf of the court, in an attempt to justify its egregious abuse of judicial norms and processes, to know the justices are listening.

Most recently, Justice Samuel Alito gave a speech at the University of Notre Dame that can only be described as an attempted takedown of the press.

Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.

But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.

Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

For many, democracy is not delivering; people like democracy, but their commitment to it is often not very strong; political and social divisions are amplifying the challenges of contemporary democracy; and people want a stronger public voice in politics and policymaking.

Across the 38 countries polled, a median of 66% said “a democratic system where citizens, not elected officials, vote directly on major national issues to decide what becomes law” is a very or somewhat good way to govern their country.

In all of the publics surveyed, fewer than three-in-ten say the political system should not be changed at all.

in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play

"Why is it that when the whole of Europe is casting off its borders and unifying they don't become the Neo-Romans or the New Holy Roman Empire, but when we call for the peoples who lived together just a century ago to come together once again, we are accused of being Neo-Ottomans?"

In that same speech, the foreign minister spoke of the need for a "great restoration" where "we need to embrace fully the ancient values we have lost." Praising the historic bonds that connected the peoples of Turkey over the "new identities that were thrust upon us in the modern era," Davutoglu maintained that the road to Turkey's progress lies in its past - an assertion that has terrified the government's detractors enough for them to make it a losing political platform each new election.

The drive for change comes not from the 16th century Middle East or even 7th century Arabia, but rather 19th century Japan.

I agree with Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that the current nihilist extremism of the current Republican Party is “the central problem in American life.”

And yet I find the chances of getting reform from within close to impossible, given how far they’ve now gone over the edge. And this is a tragedy not just for America, but for the GOP itself.

Here, for example, was a man whose family life would make him a cult hero if he were a Republican, but who has been demonized as an alien threat to America from the get-go. Here’s a Democrat who adopted Heritage Foundation ideas for healthcare exchanges. Here’s a Democrat who has actually cut Medicare. His stimulus was one-third tax cuts. Domestic energy production has soared under Obama, even as record numbers of illegal immigrants have been deported. There were and are so many ways in which the GOP could have used Obama for their own advantage – both strategically and culturally. But they refused to, opting instead for visceral, dumb, self-defeating short-term tactical political advantage. All tactics and emotion; no strategy and reason.

Held on October 31, this celebration commemorates the posting of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany back in October 31, 1517. These were translated and shared all over Germany resulting in the Protestant reformation. This involved a protest against the evils in the Roman Catholic Church at the time and also the rediscovery of the doctrine of justification which assured salvation by Grace and faith in Christ alone.

2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation

He explains the illusory appeal of nostalgia-driven politics in the United States, the kind that Trump stokes in coarse, simplistic terms.

he offers a path forward for the American right after this campaign, whether it is adjusting to life in Trump’s America or coping again with another electoral setback.

Levin wants a humbler, more local conservatism, one less concerned with tearing down Washington or promoting hyper-individualism than with creating space for America’s “mediating institutions” of family and community to blossom

The French Revolution: A radical reform

The Revolution pushed the progress of humankind towards the ultimate goal of universal freedom – liberty, equality and fraternity