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alan-greenblatt

Alan Greenblatt

Editor

Alan Greenblatt — Editor. He is the coauthor of a standard textbook on state and local governments. He previously worked as a reporter for NPR and CQ and has written about politics and culture for many other outlets, print and online. He can be found on Twitter at @AlanGreenblatt.

Lately, I've been thinking about "nanny state" issues. Sometimes governments require citizens to do common-sense things, but at what point do such laws ...
We've seen the trend toward strong mayoral control in many large cities in recent years, with Richmond, San Diego, Oakland and many others taking big ...
Obama is one, of course. So is Clinton -- actually, both Bill and Hillary are. Even Junichiro Koizumi is one. I refer, of course, to ...
I was hunting around for examples of dumb laws -- never mind why -- and found one that was just repealed. For decades, Pekin, Illinois, ...
The Bay Area is a rich source of stories today concerning federalism. First, there is what appears to be the final chapter in the federal ...
John Chichester, a 29-year veteran of the Virginia Senate and a 2004 Governing "Public Official of the Year," has announced his retirement. He gets ...
Rich Smith, a British journalism student, spent one Christmas day playing board games. He came across reference to an obscure law in Florida that made ...
By now it's become a tired cliche that independent voices, granted new power and tools by technology, have up-ended traditional public discourse, challenging both media ...
Here's a legislative example of the phenomenon I described the other day with the anti-Hillary YouTube video. Two videos have been posted on YouTube deriding ...
There have been a lot of prominent public officials prosecuted in recent years. Here on the 13th Floor, we often have internal debates about whether ...