Pegging the President


Book Description

In the 1960s Jerry Cornelius was the coolest assassin on the Ladbroke Grove block. By the 1970s The Condition of Muzak had won the Guardian Fiction Prize and The Final Programme was a feature film starring Jon Finch, Jenny Runacre, Hugh Griffith and Sterling Hayden. In the 1980s the world s first cyberpunk continued to inspire a generation of writers including William Gibson, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and bands like the Human League. By the 1990s he was up and running towards the guns again in stories like The Spencer Inheritance , The Camus Referendum and Cheering for the Rockets , which dealt with the icons and key events of the day. At turn of the millennium, in Firing the Cathedral, he responded to the attacks on America of September 2001 and their consequences, to the realities of global warming and global terrorism. Now, in Pegging the President, Jerry Cornelius is back; the ambiguous, amoral, androgynous English Assassin, cooler, sharper, his fingers still firmly on the pulse of the twenty-first century, counting names and taking heads, showing once again that colonialism and despotism the roots of empire gone sour do not change. The apocalypse has never seemed more terrifying, never been more fun, and modern life will never feel the same to you again -- Provided by the publisher.




The Media, the Court, and the Misrepresentation


Book Description

The Court’s decisions are interpreted and disseminated via the media. During this process, the media paints an image of the Court and its business. Like any artist, the media has license regarding what to cover and the amount of attention devoted to any aspect of the Court and its business. Some cases receive tremendous attention, while others languish on the back pages or are ignored. These selection effects create a skewed picture of the Court and its work, and might affect public attitudes toward the Court. Indeed, studies of media coverage of other governmental institutions reveal that when, and how, their policy decisions are covered has implications for the public’s understanding of, compliance with, support for, and cynicism about the policy. This book uncovers and describes this coverage and compares it to the confirmation hearings, the Court’s actual work, even its members. Rorie Spill Solberg and Eric N. Waltenburg analyze media coverage of nominations and confirmation hearings, the justices’ "extra-curricular" activities and their retirements/deaths, and the Court’s opinions, and compare this coverage to analyses of confirmation transcripts and the Court’s full docket. Solberg and Waltenburg contend that media now cover the Court and its personnel more similarly to its coverage of other political institutions. Journalists still regurgitate a mythology supported by the justices, a "cult of the robe," wherein unbiased and apolitical judges mechanically base their decisions upon the law and the Constitution. Furthermore, they argue the media also focus on the "cult of personality," wherein the media emphasize certain attributes of the justices and their work to match the public’s preferences for subject matter and content. The media’s portrayal, then, may undercut the Court’s legitimacy and its reservoir of good will.







Cases and Exceptions


Book Description










Congressional Record


Book Description

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)




Shades of Sovereignty


Book Description

This comprehensive book traces the role of money in the creation of the state. Starting in the early modern era, Paul Wilson explores the monetary systems of empires and new states in the age of nation-building in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Spanning a wide geographical and historical range from the creation of the United States of America to the establishment of the European Union and the breakup of the Soviet Union and beyond, the author examines changing attitudes toward monetary sovereignty as dozens of new states created new currencies since the end of the Second World War. Wilson analyzes the decision–making of newly independent states in their choice of an appropriate currency, considering the complex factors involved—ranging from the purely economic to questions of security, international recognition, and outright nationalism that have played a part. The author challenges the notion that each country must necessarily have its own currency and explains why some newly independent countries have chosen to adopt the currency of another state. Citing the examples of international currency unions of the nineteenth century and the present day, he contends that sharing a currency does not represent a surrender of political sovereignty. Instead, Wilson argues for a more rational attitude toward money as a facilitator of transactions rather than as a symbol of national identity.