Gregory Bodenhamer Mechanicsburg Carter's foreign policy. Carter was a strong advocate of human rights as an element of American foreign policy. He sought better relations with the black nations of Africa, strongly opposed the apartheid policies in South Africa, and pressed countries such as Chile and South Korea to improve the treatment of their own citizens as a criteria for American support. Human rights violations in Nicaragua, for example, prompted the administration to end military and economic aid to the Somoza regime. Additionally, despite considerable conservative opposition, the president persuaded Congress to ratify two treaties that provided for the transfer of the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone to Panamanian control in 1999.

Carter's foreign policy. Carter was a strong advocate of human rights as an element of American foreign policy. He sought better relations with the black nations of Africa, strongly opposed the apartheid policies in South Africa, and pressed countries such as Chile and South Korea to improve the treatment of their own citizens as a criteria for American support. Human rights violations in Nicaragua, for example, prompted the administration to end military and economic aid to the Somoza regime. Additionally, despite considerable conservative opposition, the president persuaded Congress to ratify two treaties that provided for the transfer of the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone to Panamanian control in 1999.

In June 1979, Carter and Brezhnev signed the SALT II accord, which reduced the nuclear arsenals of both nations. But the progress of détente between the two nations came to an abrupt halt in January 1980 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support its threatened communist government. SALT II was withdrawn from Senate consideration, an embargo on grain shipments to the USSR was put in place, and the president called for an international boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. None of these actions brought about any change in Soviet policy.

The Middle East represented the high point and the low point of the administration's foreign policy. Carter was responsible for the signing of the first peace treaty between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors, Egypt. After the unprecedented visit of President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt to Israel in 1977, both Sadat and Israeli leader Menachem Begin were invited to the United States to work out a permanent settlement to their countries' differences. Under the Camp David Accords (September 1978), Israel completely withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and normal diplomatic relations were established between Israel and Egypt. The formal peace treaty was signed in Washington in March 1979.

Carter's success at Camp David was offset by his failure to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis. In November 1979, Islamic militants overran the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year. The president seemed to be at a loss on how to handle the situation. He tried negotiations, and when those failed, he ordered a rescue attempt that turned out to be poorly planned and unsuccessful. His inability to free the hostages was a major factor in his defeat in the 1980 election. Iran let the hostages go on the day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president (January 20, 1981).

America in the 1970s

The activism of the 1960s continued into the '70s, particularly for women and other minorities. As the war in Vietnam came to an end, new social causes came to the fore, especially environmentalism. The country celebrated the first “Earth Day” on April 22, 1970, and while the environmental movement was successful in raising awareness about the need to protect the environment, it did not win all of its political battles. Activists triumphed, for instance, when plans for SST (Supersonic Transport) planes were scrapped because of noise pollution and danger to the ozone level. However, they were unable to prevent construction from starting on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1973. Besides continued activism on several fronts, the United States also faced significant changes in its demographic portrait because of the economic problems the country faced and changes in immigration laws.

The women's movement. Women continued to campaign, with mixed success, for both political and economic equality through such organizations as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Women's Political Caucus (1971). In 1972, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” The constitutional amendment was quickly approved by 28 states before determined opposition mounted, and it failed to win ratification by the required three-fourths of the states. Meanwhile, in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court struck down laws in 46 states that limited a woman's access to abortions in the first three months of pregnancy. Those opposed to abortion began to organize as the “Right-To-Life” movement, pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Congress cut off Medicaid funding for most abortions in 1976, limiting the access of poor women to the procedure.

Economic equality of the sexes still proved an elusive goal. Even as women moved into nontraditional jobs and many companies established new job-training programs and opened day care centers for working mothers, disparities in pay for men and women doing the same job remained significant. Businesswomen pointed to the existence of a “glass ceiling,” meaning that women could go so far up the corporate ladder but no farther. At the same time, gender stereotyping began to wane. The use of gender-neutral terms for certain jobs became part of the American lexicon — policemen became police officers, firemen became fire fighters, mailmen are now mail carriers, and stewardesses are flight attendants.

The status of minorities. With Jim Crow discrimination essentially eliminated through civil rights legislation and court decisions, the issue for minorities in the 1970s was how to combat inequality not rooted in laws and how the impact of past discrimination could be remedied. Desegregation efforts in public education shifted from the South to the urban North, where housing patterns resulted in all-minority inner-city schools. The reliance on busing to achieve racial balance in Los Angeles and Boston generated considerable controversy, and the Supreme Court ruled in 1974 that requiring the transfer of students from city to suburban schools to achieve integration was unconstitutional. Through affirmative action programs, employers were expected to make every effort to hire and promote minority workers, and a similar approach was taken to increase minority enrollment in higher education. Critics maintained that such programs were tantamount to reverse discrimination, or discrimination against the dominant group in the population, especially white males. In 1978, the Supreme Court limited the use of numerical quotas but recognized that race could be used as one of the factors in admissions policies of colleges and universities. The case involved a white applicant who was not accepted to a medical school that set aside a specific number of places for nonwhite candidates.

Among minorities, Mexican-American and Native-American groups especially achieved significant advances in the '70s. The Mexican-American-based United Farm Workers, for example, won an important victory in 1975 when California required growers to collectively bargain with the elected representatives from the union. Additionally, La Raza Unida (The United People) party, which was founded in Texas in 1970, promoted Mexican-American candidates for political office in the Southwest and West. Meanwhile, in 1973, Native Americans occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota, the site of the last confrontation between the Sioux and the Army in 1890. Although the occupation attracted headlines, the government was already making considerable changes in its Native-American policy. Nixon rejected “termination” in favor of supporting tribal autonomy, and as a result, the Indian Self-Determination Act (1974) gave the tribes control over federal-aid programs that benefited them. The tribes also became more active in legal action pressing for the treaty rights to land, mineral resources, water, and fisheries.

Demographic changes. The 1980 census revealed that the composition and distribution of American society was changing. First, the growth rate of the population during the '70s was one of the lowest in U.S. history; the baby boom was clearly over. Divorce became more and more common, as did “nonfamily” households in which people lived together who were not related. The population was getting older, and the mandatory retirement age had been raised from 65 to 70 in 1978. New York State actually lost population during the decade, and population growth was extremely modest in the industrial states of the East and Midwest, causing them to be known as the Rust Belt. In contrast, populations in the Sun Belt — Florida, Texas and the Southwest, and California — grew considerably.

The Immigration Act of 1965 had ended the national-origins system that had been in place since the 1920s, favoring Northern and Western Europeans. It had also ended the race-based restrictions on immigration from Asia, and these changes in the law were immediately reflected in the '70s statistics that showed the overwhelming majority of legal immigrants to the United States coming from Asia and Latin America. The fall of South Vietnam created a refugee crisis of major proportions, and 500,000 South Vietnamese entered the country in the last half of the decade. As was historically the case, economic conditions in immigrants' native countries and the opportunities offered by the United States were the factors that triggered the movement of peoples from around the world. The same factors accounted for increasing illegal immigration during the decade, particularly from Mexico and Central and South America, a trend that continued into the 1980s.

The Reagan Administration

The last two decades of the twentieth century were a time of bold contrasts. During the 1980s, the Cold War intensified, and both the United States and the Soviet Union were menacing superpowers. With the breakup of the USSR, however, the focus of American foreign policy shifted from containing communism to controlling rogue nations (such as Iraq), ethnic conflicts, and international terrorism. The economy remained problematic throughout much of the '80s, with recession and an exploding deficit. But during the '90s, the country experienced the most sustained period of economic expansion in its history; talk of keeping the budget balanced gave way to discussions on how to spend the surplus. Meanwhile, beginning with the Reagan presidency, cultural conservatives gained considerable influence in politics through such groups as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. Their impact clearly waned at the end of the century, however, as demonstrated by the country's lack of support for the impeachment and removal of a president for a sexual affair.

The new millennium opened with the closest election in American history. While the campaign focused on domestic issues, the attacks of September 11, 2001, pushed international terrorism to the top of the national agenda. Fighting in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq stretched the country's military resources. Significant increases in defense spending and the added costs of homeland security quickly eliminated the surplus and the federal deficit began to balloon once again. The Republicans kept control of the White House and Congress in 2004, but growing opposition to the war gave the Democrats a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives two years later. But whether divided government or not, no progress was made on key legislation — social security reform and immigration policy, for example — in the years after September 11.

Although President Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge in the primaries from Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, he was clearly a weakened president as the 1980 election approached. He was haunted by the Iranian hostage crisis, which seemed to underscore his lack of leadership, the economy had not rebounded, and the Democratic Party remained splintered. The Republicans had gone through primary battles as well but came out of their convention unified behind the ideologically balanced ticket of conservative Ronald Reagan and George Bush (who had attacked Reagan's economic program as "voodoo economics" before being chosen as his running mate). Although Republican moderate John Anderson of Illinois ran as a third-party candidate, his defection from the Republicans did not effect the outcome of the election. Reagan's message of lower taxes, smaller government, and renewed American power struck a responsive chord among those people who actually voted. Voter turnout was the lowest since 1948, especially among African-Americans — a group that had supported Carter strongly four years before. Not only did Reagan win an easy electoral and popular victory, but the Republicans also gained a majority in the Senate.

Reagan's economic policies. Reagan proposed using supply-side economics to cut inflation and increase employment. He believed that lower taxes would lead to an expansion of the economy through greater investment, and more revenue would be generated as business grew. In August 1981, Congress passed the Economic Recovery Tax Act, which cut personal income taxes by 25 percent over a three-year period, reduced the maximum tax rate from 70 to 50 percent, and lowered the capital gains tax. In addition to this act, more than $30 billion was cut from an array of social programs, including housing, job training, and school lunches. The theory did not work as planned, however. Although the president claimed that there was still a "safety net" for those truly in need, the number of Americans living in poverty rose. The tax cut was accompanied by a dramatic increase in the military budget, which not even reduced spending on domestic programs could offset. As a result, the budget deficit and the national debt soared to unprecedented levels.

To combat inflation, the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates. With world oil prices falling at the same time, inflation was brought under control. However, the high rates produced a recession, and unemployment climbed to more than 10 percent in 1982. The balance of trade also suffered. Foreign money poured into the United States, as did imports — particularly consumer electronics and cars from Japan. The economy did not begin to recover until 1983, when interest rates fell as inflation dropped and the tax cuts began to stimulate economic growth. With the stock market, consumer spending, and production all up, Reagan coasted to an easy victory in the 1984 election against Carter's vice president Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run on a major party's ticket. Mondale did not help his cause when he announced at the Democratic convention that he would raise taxes if elected.

Reduction in the size of government was an important element of Reagan's domestic agenda. This deregulation of key sectors of the economy, such as airlines, savings and loan institutions, and communications, was done with the belief that increased competition would ultimately benefit the consumer through better service and lower costs. At the same time, federal agencies and departments either eliminated or did not aggressively enforce regulations already in effect. This policy loosened air pollution control requirements, restrictions on the private use of public lands, and motor vehicle safety regulations (causing a delay in the introduction of air bags).

The Cold War revisited. Reagan was a cold warrior of the old school, and he viewed the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" intent on promoting communist revolutions around the world. This perception was reflected in American policy in Central America and the Caribbean. In El Salvador, for example, the United States provided military advisers and financial aid to the right-wing junta (a small administrative council) that was fighting leftist guerrillas backed by Cuba and Nicaragua. Additionally, breaking with the Carter administration's policy, Reagan turned against the Cuban-supported Sandanista government in Nicaragua and used the CIA to arm and train an opposition force known as the Contras. Even after Congress imposed a ban on such interference in Nicaraguan affairs, assistance to the Contras continued covertly, which contributed to a major scandal during the president's second term. Meanwhile, in October 1983, American troops invaded the island nation of Grenada and overthrew the leftist, pro-Cuban government.

Attempts to project American power beyond the Western Hemisphere were not as successful. In June 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon and drove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) north to Beirut. This action only further weakened the Lebanese government, which was already facing a civil war between rival Muslim and Christian militia groups. The United States, along with France and Italy, agreed to send troops into Lebanon to maintain order. The peacekeeping force became a target of terrorist groups, and on October 23, 1983, suicide bombers from the Islamic Jihad blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing more than 200 U.S. soldiers. By early 1984, all American forces in Lebanon were withdrawn to ships in the Mediterranean. Terrorism continued to plague the region as Americans and other foreign nationals were taken hostage in Beirut by Iranian-backed factions. The Reagan administration had little success in handling the continuing problems in Lebanon or the long-standing issues between Israel and the Palestinians.

Arms buildup and the Soviet Union. The perceived threat from the Soviet Union increased Reagan's commitment to strengthen the military position of the United States. Military spending grew by more than $100 billion during his first term, with the bulk of that money spent on nuclear weapons, such as the cruise missiles that were based in Western Europe. In 1983, the president proposed the most controversial element of his military buildup plan — the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a space-based system that would have the capability to destroy incoming missiles. Critics of SDI dubbed it "Star Wars" and stated that the project did not seem technologically feasible, was far too expensive, and violated the SALT I antiballistic missile provisions.

Relations with the Soviet Union were decidedly cool until Reagan's second term. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev — a proponent of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform) — came to power, and détente seemed to be back on track. The two leaders met in Geneva in 1985 and in Reykjavik, Iceland, a year later without coming to any agreement on the major issues that separated the two countries. The key stumbling block in U.S. — Soviet negotiations was Reagan's insistence on moving ahead with SDI. Reagan and Gorbachev finally achieved a breakthrough on arms reduction in December 1987 during the summit in Washington, D.C., where they signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated medium-range missiles from Europe. In the treaty, both sides agreed to destroy more than 2,500 nuclear warheads with ranges between 300 and 3,000 miles. The treaty also allowed for on-site inspection to verify compliance. Relations between the two countries visibly improved, and Reagan received a warm welcome when he visited Moscow in May 1988, while Gorbachev announced the start of the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan at the same time.

Reagan's second term. Outside of the INF Treaty, political scandals and problems on Wall Street marred Reagan's second term. In November 1986, the country learned that the United States had sold arms, primarily antitank missiles, to Iran. The administration justified the arms sales by saying that the United States was supporting moderate elements in Iran. However, it soon became clear that the arms shipments were intended to win the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups, even though the president had promised on several occasions that the United States would never negotiate with terrorists. The scope of the controversy widened when it was revealed that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a Marine on the staff of the National Security Council, had funneled profits from the arms sales in Iran to the Contras in Nicaragua. This support of the Contras was a clear violation of congressional legislation against providing aid to the guerilla army. In what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, hearings before a joint House-Senate Committee in 1987 implicated two National Security advisers, the director of the CIA, and the secretaries of Defense and State, and handed down indictments by a special prosecutor. Although the president was not directly implicated in the arms sales or the diversion of the funds, his popularity declined.

As Iran-Contra played itself out, the long rise in stock prices during the 1980s came to an end. On October 19, 1987, the stock market crashed, losing more than 500 points in a single day. Reagan claimed that the American economy was fundamentally sound, and many on Wall Street believed the collapse was due to "program trading" — the use of computer programs to buy and sell large blocks of stock. Even so, economists also recognized that the nation's budget deficit was too high, both the federal government and individual Americans borrowed too much, and imports were far outstripping exports. Many of the problems created during the "Reagan Revolution" would need to be faced by his successor.

From Vice President to President: George H.W. Bush

The Democrats had regained control of the Senate in 1986 and were confident as they went into the 1988 presidential election. During the primaries, there were several interesting challengers for the Democratic nomination, among them Reverend Jesse Jackson, the African-American civil rights leader. In the end, the party turned to Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, who had balanced the state's budget and had a reputation as a good manager. On the Republican side, Vice President George Bush was chosen as Reagan's successor, and Reagan campaigned hard for the Bush ticket, which had a relatively unknown senator from Indiana, Dan Quayle, in the second spot. Dukakis ran a surprisingly weak campaign and squandered the substantial lead he had secured in the early polls. Bush went on the offensive with negative ads that attacked Dukakis as being soft on crime, and he questioned his patriotism. The campaign generated no public enthusiasm. Less than half of those eligible to vote actually voted — the smallest turnout in American history — and Bush won a clear victory.

The savings and loan crisis and the budget. A former envoy to China, United Nations ambassador, and CIA director, Bush was more comfortable dealing with foreign policy than he was with domestic issues. But domestic problems - especially economic difficulties — plagued his administration. One of the first economic crises Bush faced was the savings and loan (S&L) crisis. Deregulation of the S&L industry in the 1980s had allowed thrift institutions (S&Ls, credit unions, and savings banks) to compete with commercial banks. They began to put money into real estate development, junk bonds, and other high-risk investments. When these investments went bad, hundreds of S&Ls failed. To recoup the depositors' losses, the Resolution Trust Corporation was set up in 1989 to sell off the banks and their assets. Estimates are that S&L bailout cost American taxpayers between $300 billion and $500 billion.

At the Republican convention and during the campaign, Bush had repeatedly emphasized that he would not raise taxes, stating "Read my lips: ‘No new taxes.'" Faced with a national debt that was approaching $3 trillion and a deficit that was out of control, the president was forced to renege on that pledge. The budget agreement worked out with Congress in the fall of 1990 combined tax increases with spending cuts both in defense and on social programs and was intended to reduce the deficit by almost $400 billion by 1995. By the time this compromise was worked out, the country was already in the midst of a serious recession.

Recession and social problems. The recession began in the summer of 1990 with the typical signs — a fall in retail sales, a drop in the number of new houses being built and, most important, a rise in unemployment. While inflation was not a problem, the unemployment rate reached about 7 percent and affected both white- and blue-collar workers. Many of the nation's largest companies announced they were downsizing, or dramatically cutting their labor force to trim costs and remain competitive. As many as 25 million Americans were out of work at some time during 1991, and the number of Americans living in poverty rose by two million. Bush's plan to deal with the recession included a middle-class tax cut, financial help to families buying their first house, tax credits for health insurance, and lower taxes on capital gains. In the eyes of many, these actions came too late.

Social ills that had surfaced in the 1980s continued to plague the country. Little progress was made in stemming the tide of the homeless, who included not only drug addicts and the mentally ill but entire families who had slipped from working-poor status to living on the streets. Although the black middle class grew, African-Americans made up a much larger percentage of those in poverty than either Hispanics or whites. Teen pregnancy, violence, and drug addiction were endemic problems in minority communities across the country. Bush declared a war on drugs, but his policy of emphasizing stricter law enforcement, wider use of drug testing, and the interdiction of supply rather than focusing on prevention and treatment proved to be ineffective.

Additionally, the federal government had responded slowly to the AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) epidemic when it surfaced in the early 1980s; gay rights activists claimed this was because the disease afflicted homosexuals and intravenous drug users. By the '90s, the profile of AIDS victims began to change as more women and male heterosexuals were infected. Even without the AIDS crisis, it was becoming very clear that there were serious problems with the nation's health care system, not the least of which was that more than 30 million Americans had no health insurance at all.

The end of the Cold War. In July 1989, Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine, which had justified the intervention of the Soviet Union in the affairs of communist countries. Within a few months of his statement, the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed — Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, followed by Bulgaria and Romania. The Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, and East and West Germany were reunited within the year. Czechoslovakia eventually split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia with little trouble, but the end of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991 led to years of violence and ethnic cleansing (the expulsion of an ethnic population from a geographic area), particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Soviet Union also broke up, not long after an attempted coup against Gorbachev in August 1991; the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were the first to gain their independence. That December, eleven of the former republics of the Soviet Union formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Gorbachev resigned. The CIS quickly disappeared, and the republics that had once made up the Soviet Union were recognized as sovereign nations. The end of the Cold War led directly to major nuclear weapons reduction agreements between Bush and the Russian leaders, as well as significant cutbacks in the number of troops the United States committed to the defense of NATO.

Other parts of the world presented a challenge to American foreign policy. In the spring of 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations led mostly by students began in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government's decision to use force to end the protests impaired relations with the United States. Closer to home, Bush ordered the invasion of Panama (December 1989) with the goal of removing President Manuel Noriega from power and bringing him to the United States to stand trial for drug trafficking. U.S. forces easily defeated the Panamanian army, but Noriega escaped the dragnet for a time. When he finally gave himself up to American officials, he was tried, convicted, and sent to prison for drug-related crimes, and in the process he revealed his long-time connections with the CIA. However, the most serious challenge to the United States came from Iraq.

The Persian Gulf War. In August 1990, Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, invaded and occupied its neighbor Kuwait in a clear act of aggression. The United Nations Security Council condemned Iraq and imposed an international trade embargo on the country. The United States responded with Operation Desert Shield, a buildup of military forces — including troops, aircraft, and ships — in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. This effort quickly became an international operation, with Great Britain, France, and a number of Arab countries providing troops and equipment. By the end of November, the United Nations had approved the use of force to free Kuwait and set January 15, 1991, as the deadline for Iraqi withdrawal. A few days before the deadline, both the House and the Senate authorized the use of the more than 500,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf.

The Persian Gulf War, officially known as Operation Desert Storm, began on January 17 with a massive air campaign against Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Iraq proper, including Iraq's capital, Baghdad. Hussein attempted to weaken the international coalition by attacking Israel with SCUD missiles. He hoped that this action would bring Israel into the war and alienate the Arab nations, which were normally anti-Israel, from the coalition. With American Patriot antimissile missiles protecting Israel, Hussein's attempt to widen the war failed. The ground war began on February 23 and lasted only a few days. The Iraqi troops were decimated, thousands surrendered without a fight, and the remainder fled back to Iraq. The war had freed Kuwait, but it had also left Saddam Hussein still in power, and despite extremely heavy losses, left the Republican Guards — the best of his army — intact. Several other important problems remained unaddressed as well, such as the extent of Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons program and the fates of the Kurd minority in the north of the country and that of the Shiite Muslims in the south. Many believed at the time that the international forces should have invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power. Iraq and Hussein remained problematic for the United States throughout the 1990s.

The Clinton Years

In the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Bush's popularity reached its high point, and conventional wisdom was that he was almost guaranteed a second term. He and Dan Quayle easily won the Republican nomination for the 1992 election, while Bill Clinton, the little-known governor of Arkansas, headed the Democratic ticket along with Tennessee senator Al Gore. Both Clinton and Gore were baby boomers, and their platform called for job creation, environmental protection, and health care reform. During the primaries and in the campaign, Clinton overcame allegations of marital infidelity to gain popularity in the polls. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the 1992 campaign was the third-party candidacy of H. Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire who understood that the election hinged on Bush's weakness — the economy. Perot offered an array of solutions to the country's economic problems, but he was an erratic candidate, dropping out of the race in July and reentering it in October. Although he did not win any one state, Perot took 19 percent of the popular vote, mainly from Republicans. Clinton won the election with 370 electoral votes to Bush's 168.

Health care reform and NAFTA. Clinton's strength was expected to be domestic policy, but he faced a number of setbacks early in his first term. Congress balked at his $30 billion economic stimulus package, and his proposal that homosexuals be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces generated strong opposition from the military and criticism from the public. Clinton was forced to compromise with a policy of "Don't ask, don't tell," which satisfied neither the Pentagon nor gay rights activists. The most significant early setback for the Clinton Administration was the failure of health care reform. There was widespread agreement that the health care system in the United States was in crisis, both in terms of spiraling costs and availability of coverage. The president appointed his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to head a task force examining the problem, but the program that was developed was considered too complicated and relied too heavily on the federal government and employer mandates to win congressional support.

One of the major issues of the 1992 election was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which would establish a free trade zone between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA was strongly opposed by organized labor, which feared that American companies would shift production to Mexico to take advantage of a cheap workforce. Environmentalists also attacked the agreement, noting that Mexican industry was not subject to the same pollution controls that applied in the United States. The president supported amendments that addressed these concerns, and NAFTA was approved in November 1993. A month later, Clinton won approval for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which lowered trade barriers around the world.

The economy rebounds. The Democratic Party suffered a major political defeat when the Republicans gained control of both the Senate and the House in the 1994 midterm elections. Under the leadership of the new Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Republican conservatives put forward a legislative program known as the Contract with America that included a balanced budget. Although Clinton appeared to be seriously weakened politically by the election results, the president was able to hold his own against the Republican Congress. Indeed, as the deficit was reduced and unemployment declined, Clinton sought and received the lion's share of the credit for the improving economy. (Economists and the administration recognized that the policies of Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan to control inflation were also an important factor.) Part of the reason for Clinton's success was that he began taking a more moderate position on a number of key issues. For instance, despite the opposition of his core liberal constituencies, the president signed the Welfare Reform Act (August 1996) that changed Aid to Families with Dependent Children distributions from direct federal assistance to individuals over to block grants to the states to use as they saw fit. Along with its work and training requirements, the legislation marked a major change in welfare policy.

The strength of the economy was a key factor in Clinton's victory in the 1996 election against Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, and he became the first Democrat reelected to the White House since Franklin Roosevelt. Although the Republicans continued to hold a majority in the House and Senate, the president and Congress were able to compromise on deficit-reduction legislation in 1997. The economic growth was so robust that the reduction targets were met much sooner than expected. The budget shortfall that had stood at $290 billion in 1992 turned into a surplus of almost $80 billion in 1999. The stock market remained strong throughout the Clinton presidency, and the unemployment rate dropped to just over 4 percent, which many economists consider full employment.

From Whitewater to impeachment. The Clinton administration was plagued by scandal. Early in Clinton's first term, a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate the Whitewater real estate deal in Arkansas that both the president and first lady were involved in before the 1992 election. After Kenneth Starr became special prosecutor in 1994, the probe was expanded to include the firing of White House travel office personnel, the suicide of a White House lawyer, and the inappropriate use of FBI security files. There were also charges, examined by a Senate committee, that the Democrats had engaged in illegal campaign fundraising activities in 1996. Ultimately, however, it was the allegations of sexual misconduct that led to Clinton's impeachment.

Reports surfaced in January 1998 that Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Although the affair itself was not illegal, Starr asserted that the president lied about the affair in testimony he gave in a sexual harassment case (stemming from events that occurred when he was governor of Arkansas). Starr maintained that Clinton had encouraged Lewinsky to lie in her affidavit in the same case, and that Clinton had not told the truth about his relationship with Lewinsky before a federal grand jury investigating his conduct. Starr submitted his evidence to the House Judiciary Committee in September. Despite the fact that Clinton's approval rating remained high, the House of Representatives voted, for only the second time in history, to impeach a sitting president. The Senate refused to convict and remove him from office on either the charge of perjury or obstruction of justice.

Clinton's foreign policy. In the 1990s, the United States became the world's only superpower. Relations with Russia and the People's Republic of China primarily revolved around trade and economic assistance, rather than strategic confrontation. In Haiti, Clinton's Administration was successful in forcing the military regime to step down in favor of an elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In other parts of the world, Clinton tried, as Bush had done, to exercise American foreign policy within an international framework, such as the United Nations or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The president used military force against Iraq to enforce UN sanctions (particularly inspections seeking evidence of weapons of mass destruction) and to respond to Saddam Hussein's provocations against his neighbors and the Iraqi Kurds. One of the most intractable problems in the 1990s was the Balkans.

In 1993, the United States pressed its NATO allies to take action to stop the ethnic cleansing occurring in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Although reluctant to commit American ground troops, the United States allowed American aircraft to take part in United Nations-approved attacks against Serbian forces in the region. U.S. soldiers participated as peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the Dayton Accords (November 1995), which were negotiated by State Department official Richard Holbrook. Clinton was determined to keep the ethnic conflict from spreading throughout the region, but this goal proved impossible to accomplish. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosovicz intensified his campaign against ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo in 1998. Although the conflict was a civil war between the ethnic-Albanian-based Kosovo Liberation Army and Serbian troops and police, acts of violence against the ethnic Albanian civilian population by Serbian forces brought international condemnation. When Milosovicz refused to end the conflict through a political settlement, NATO — with the United States assuming the lead — began a massive air campaign against targets in Serbia and Kosovo.

The Clinton Administration was deeply involved in efforts to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In September 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chair Yasir Arafat signed an agreement at the White House that provided for mutual recognition and Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho; another agreement brokered by the United States two years later extended self-rule to the West Bank. Although Clinton brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders together several more times right up to the end of his term in office, peace was ultimately elusive. In July 2000, for example, a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat on so-called "final status" issues — settlements, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem — was held at Camp David. The two-week meeting ended without an agreement. The president presented new proposals on these questions in late December, again to no avail.

Terrorism — foreign and domestic. Islamic terrorists, often associated with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, targeted the United States during the 1990s. A bombing at the World Trade Center in New York killed six people and injuried a thousand in February 1993. The Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which housed American Air Force personnel, was attacked three years later. In August 1993, car bombs destroyed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania with significant casualties. Clinton blamed bin Laden, and ordered military strikes against terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan. A small, explosive-filled boat rammed the American destroyer U.S.S. Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000; 17 soldiers died and more than 30 others were hurt. But bin Laden was not the only threat to the United States. Right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, in the worst instance of domestic terrorism in the nation's history.

George W. Bush Takes Office

The Democratic candidate in 2000 was vice president Al Gore; the Republicans chose two-term Texas governor George W. Bush, the son of the former president. Gore's selection of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate was historic; Lieberman became the first American Jew to run for national office on a major party ticket. The election showed just how evenly the country was divided. Although Gore's strength in the Northeast, Illinois, and California gave him a large lead in the popular vote, the electoral college map was a different story. As returns came in from across the country, it was clear that Florida would determine the outcome. News outlets went back and forth on who won the state's 25 electoral votes; at one point, Gore conceded defeat, and then retracted his concession. The final vote in Florida was so close that state law required a recount. As the recount proceeded, both sides filed legal challenges in state and federal courts. On December 12, the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore ordered recounts of the ballots stopped. The 5-4 decision effectively gave the election to Bush.

The domestic agenda. The creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives early in his first term was a good example of Bush as a "compassionate conservative." The goal was to make it easier for charitable community organizations, including religious ones, to gain access to federal funds for their programs in such areas as crime prevention, drug education, poverty, and family relations. The administration pushed regulatory changes in a number of executive departments to help these groups work with the federal government. The No Child Left Behind Act (2001) demonstrated that public education was another high priority. Teachers must hold state certification, annual testing is required to measure academic progress, and students of poor performing schools have the opportunity to transfer to another public school, a charter school, or receive supplemental education services. Supporters of No Child Left Behind argue that it introduced accountability into elementary and secondary education, while critics point to a lack of federal funding to support its goals.

Reducing taxes was a key element of the administration's economic policy. Congress passed three rounds of tax cuts between 2001 and 2003, which many argued mainly benefited wealthy Americans. The president argued that the cuts created jobs and helped bring an end to the mild recession during his first year in office. There is no disagreement that federal revenues declined at a time when spending grew significantly. In addition to the costs associated with Iraq and the war on terrorism, the administration supported expensive new programs, such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit known as Medicare Part D. The initial projected ten-year cost was put at over $500 billion. Enacted in 2003 and effective in 2006, the benefit provides financial assistance for Medicare recipients, particularly those with low income, who have out-of-pocket expenses for their medications; by June 2006, 22.5 million Americans were enrolled in Medicare Part D plans.

Bush's environmental record is not strong. In 1997, the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that required the world's industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (gases produced from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal) that cause global warming. Under its terms, the United States must cut its emissions by 7% below the 1990 levels by 2012. The president came out against the Kyoto Protocol soon after taking office. He was concerned about its impact on the American economy, troubled that rapidly developing countries like China and India were not obligated to take any action, and not fully convinced about the science behind global warming. The administration gradually changed its position on the last point, and came up with its own program for dealing with climate change. The president also consistently supported opening up the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration as a means of reducing American dependence on foreign sources; environmentalists strongly oppose the proposal.

9/11 and Its Aftermath

On September 11, 2001, hijackers flew commercial airliners into the two World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon; a fourth plane heading for another Washington, D.C., target was taken over by the passengers after it was hijacked, and crashed in Pennsylvania. Intense fires from the jet fuel caused the twin towers to collapse not long after impact. Almost 3,000 people died in the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were identified as the principal suspects. Within a matter of days Congress gave the president authority to use military force against the perpetrators and their supporters; the mutual defense provision of the NATO treaty was implemented for the first time to support any American action. Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which provided material help to al Qaeda and tolerated its training camps, began in October. American and British forces along with anti-Taliban Afghanis in the Northern Alliance overthrew the government by the end of the year; Hamid Karzai was chosen as the interim prime minister. Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership, however, escaped capture.

In late 2002, the National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission, was established. The independent, bipartisan commission was charged with investigating the attacks, the response to them, and making recommendations on the prevention of future attacks. The Commission's 2004 report, which became a national bestseller, noted that terrorism was not a high priority for the government over several administrations, and pointed to specific problems in dealing with the threat by the FBI, CIA, and aviation security. The Commission also expressed concern over the difficulties in sharing intelligence information among various agencies. The Bush administration did implement several of the Commission's recommendations — the appointment of a National Intelligence Director and the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center among them.

There were domestic consequences to the attacks of September 11. The USA Patriot Act (2001) made it easier for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to share information, expanded the authority of the federal government to conduct searches and surveillance, and provided for the detention/deportation of aliens suspected of terrorism. The act was often criticized for undermining civil liberties; greater protection for individual rights were included in the legislation's 2006 reauthorization. Although initially opposed by the president, the Department of Homeland Security was established in 2003. The new executive department consolidated the work of 22 federal agencies responsible for preventing and responding to a terrorist attack or other threat to the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service), the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (formerly U.S. Customs Service and U.S. Border Patrol), and the U.S. Secret Service now all fall under Homeland Security.

The War in Iraq

In his 2002 State of the Union address, the president outlined the danger from countries seeking weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) whether biological, chemical, or nuclear; he named three states as an "axis of evil" — North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. The Bush Doctrine took shape over the next several months. It stated that the United States had the right to preemptively use military force against nations that were a threat to us and were seeking WMDs. It became increasingly clear that the first target of preemption was to be Iraq. The administration argued that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons and was developing a nuclear program; there were possible links between Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein, September 11, and al Qaeda; overthrowing Hussein's regime and establishing a democratic Iraq could serve as a model for the entire region. In October 2002, Congress gave the president the authority to take military action against Iraq. While insisting on the return of weapons inspectors and threatening "serious action" for noncompliance, the United Nations Security Council refused to support a use of force resolution. The Unites States, along with Great Britain and a small contingent of troops from other nations, invaded Iraq in March 2003. Within a few months, Operation Iraqi Freedom captured Baghdad and other major cities, and Saddam Hussein's government was overthrown; Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003. But peace was to prove harder to win than the war.

Contrary to American expectations, Iraqis quickly saw coalition forces as occupiers rather than liberators. As the opposition grew, insurgent attacks became more deadly; car bombings, kidnappings, and "improvised explosive devices" (IEDs) took a high toll of civilian and military lives. The slow pace of reconstruction under the Coalition Provisional Authority, appointed by the United States to administer the country and incidents such as the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, added to the problems. The Provisional Authority's decisions to disband the Iraqi army and abolish the Baath Party were likely counterproductive. The fact that no WMDs were found after the invasion and the recognition by the 9/11 Commission that Saddam Hussein did not have any connection with the attacks underminded the administration's justification for the war. Progress was also slow on the political front, but there were notable successes. An Iraqi Governing Council was in place by July 2003, and sovereignty was turned over to the interim government in June 2004. The country's first democratic election for the national assembly was held on January 30, 2005; a majority of the seats went to Shiites because many Sunnis boycotted the election. By the end of the year, voters approved a constitution with a federal system and elected members for parliament. Despite these positive developments, the insurgency intensified. Foreign fighters associated with al Qaeda in Iraq and growing sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis brought American casualties to over 3,000, while tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Many Americans were convinced that the administration had mismanaged the conflict and there were calls in and out of Congress to withdraw the troops.

Bush's Second Term

The war in Iraq and terrorism were the key issues in the 2004 election, along with taxes, the economy, and health care. The Democrats nominated Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Vietnam veteran whose political career was based on opposition to that war. While supporting the use of force in 2002, he consistently criticized Bush's Iraq policy during the campaign, recognizing that a majority of Americans now believed the war was a mistake. But the president won a narrow popular and electoral vote victory, and the Republicans increased their control in both the Senate and the House. Despite opposition to the war, voters apparently trusted the Republicans more than the Democrats to handle the ongoing threat from international terrorism.

Early in his second term, the president focused on reform of the social security. Projections indicated that the system would begin to pay out more than it took in by 2018 as the baby boom generation began to retire. He proposed allowing younger workers to put part of their money that went to social security taxes in personal retirement accounts. Critics charged the proposal was tantamount to the "privatization of social security," and were able to block action on his proposals. Another policy area high on the administration's reform agenda was immigration. Initial attempts to address the issue were put on hold by 9/11, but a renewed effort began midway into the second term. Unlike social security, the president did find bipartisan support for comprehensive immigration reform. The legislation contained four main provisions—increased attention to and funding for border security, greater accountability for employers who hire illegal immigrants, a guest worker program, and a process by which illegal immigrants in the United States could qualify for citizenship. The last item was widely attacked by conservatives as "amnesty," which was enough to kill the bill in 2007.

The retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, followed by the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 2005, allowed the president to make two nominations to the Supreme Court. The appointments of John Roberts, who became the new chief justice, and Samuel Alito were widely believed at the time to strengthen the conservative forces on the Court even though it remained closely divided. This was apparently borne out in several recent 5-4 decisions. The Roberts Court ruled the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (2003) was constitutional, held that race cannot be used in plans either to achieve or maintain integration in the public schools, and struck down key provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (2002).

Iraq and the war on terrorism remained the top foreign policy priorities. With pressure mounting for a change in direction, the president approved an increase in American forces in Iraq to pacify Baghdad and other key areas. The 30,000 troop "surge" was in place by the summer of 2007. In Afghanistan, the coalition faced a growing Taliban insurgency, and NATO troops replaced Americans in early 2006 in the southern part of the country. International support for the fighting in Afghanistan was broadly based in comparison to Iraq. Failure to show progress in Iraq had political costs; Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 mid-term elections, largely because of dissatisfaction with the war. The administration faced difficulties in the broader Middle East as well. The road map for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia (the Quartet) advanced in 2003, called for the creation of an independent Palestine within two years. Little progress was made toward that goal, however. The United States strongly backed Israel in the 2006 Second Israel-Lebanon War. Iran's ongoing nuclear program, which its government claims is only for peaceful purposes, was strongly opposed. The Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran for failing to stop its uranium enrichment activities. North Korea's development of nuclear weapons was another cause for concern. The United States, along with South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China, participated in protracted talks with North Korea that ultimately produced results. Despite its fall 2006 nuclear test, North Korea agreed to close its main nuclear reactor and allow international inspectors back into the country in mid-2007.

The Constitution, which was approved by the delegates to the Convention on September 17, 1787, established a republican form of government, explained the organization of that government, and outlined the federal system.

Republican form of government

The Constitution established the United States as a republic in which power ultimately is in the hands of the people and is exercised by their elected representatives. The Republic was not a democracy in the modern sense, however. The framers of the Constitution, many reluctantly, accepted slavery. There were property qualifications for voting, and some states denied the right to vote to religious minorities. Women did not get to vote in the national elections until 1920 (Nineteenth Amendment). The original draft of the Constitution did not include protection of basic civil liberties.

The organization of government

The government's functions are divided among three branches: the legislative branch that makes the laws (Congress), the executive branch that carries out the laws (president), and the judicial branch that interprets the laws (courts). This division is known as the separation of powers. In addition, under the system of checks and balances, the powers of one branch of government are limited by the powers given to another branch. Congress makes laws, but the president can veto legislation. Congress can override a president's veto with a two-thirds vote of both houses (a check on a check). While the president appoints judges to the Supreme Court, the Senate can reject an appointee through its power to give "advice and consent."

The federal system

Federalism means the division of power between the national government and the states. The Constitution does not clearly define, however, the areas in which these powers are exercised. Keeping in mind that the framers were determined to strengthen the national government, it is not surprising that the powers belonging to the states were left vague.

The Constitution was a spare document, providing few details about how the U.S. government would run itself. It explained the rough organization of the three branches, how they would interact with the states, and how the document could be amended. Filling in the details was left to future leaders.

Article I

The longest article in the Constitution vests legislative power in the Senate and the House of Representatives. It describes the organization of Congress and lists its specific powers, known as enumerated or delegated powers. Through the necessary and proper clause (also called the elastic clause), Congress can make laws needed to carry out its enumerated powers. Article I also lists the powers denied to Congress and the states.

Article II

This article deals with the executive branch and describes the election of the president (and vice president), the qualifications for holding the office, and the procedures if a president can no longer serve. The powers of the president include serving as commander in chief of the army and navy, making treaties, and, with the "advice and consent of the Senate," appointing ambassadors, officials, and Supreme Court justices. The president is required to periodically report to Congress on the state of the union, can propose legislation, and can call Congress into special session.

Article III

This article established the Supreme Court and authorizes Congress to establish lower federal courts. The types of cases the courts have jurisdiction over are given, and a provision is made for the right to trial by jury. While not specifically stated, the power of the courts to declare a law unconstitutional is implied.

Article IV

The full faith and credit clause requires that the legislative and judicial actions of one state be honored by the other states. Additionally, a citizen of any state has the same privileges as citizens of all the other states. Article IV also provides for adding new states to the union, guarantees each state a republican form of government, and ensures protection against invasion or domestic violence.

Article V

The process for amending the Constitution is described. The states are responsible for ratifying amendments.

Article VI

The Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties entered into by the United States are the supreme law of the land. This is known as the supremacy clause.

Article VII

Approval by conventions of nine of the states was required to ratify the Constitution.

The First Amendment: Freedom of Religion

 The First Amendment enumerates what many Americans consider to be their basic civil liberties: freedom of religion, speech, and the press, as well as the right to peaceful assembly and to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Exactly what constitutes freedom of religion and freedom of speech are matters that have come before the courts many times.

The framers of the Constitution saw religion as a matter of choice. Unlike many countries, the United States does not have an official or state religion. Indeed, the First Amendment specifically states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . . ." Nevertheless, questions on tax exemptions for religious organizations and on whether public schools should have prayer or Christmas pageants have raised thorny problems for the courts to consider.

"Wall of separation" versus government accommodation

Thomas Jefferson believed a "wall of separation" should exist between government and religion, which meant maintaining a strict separation between church and state. Those who, instead, favor government accommodation argue that government can assist religion if that assistance is given in a neutral manner so that it does not favor one religious group over another or favor religious groups in general over other groups. Both schools of thought have swayed the Supreme Court in the 20th century. Searching for a middle ground, the Court devised the Lemon test, based on the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman that concerned the use of public money for a parochial school. The Court held that, to be constitutional, any law has to have a secular purpose, the purpose can neither advance nor inhibit religion, and the law cannot excessively entangle government with religion. Since 1971, the Lemon test has been applied in a wide variety of cases, and although few justices endorse the doctrine unambiguously, no majority has ever come together to do more than tinker with it. As the Court has grown more conservative, its decisions have tended more toward the position of government accommodation. The Supreme Court upheld school voucher programs that allow students to use public funds to attend the schools of their choice, including parochial (religiously affiliated) schools.

Free exercise of religion

The Constitution does more than forbid "establishment" of a religion. It also guarantees that individuals will enjoy "free exercise" of their own religious beliefs. This guarantee creates a rather difficult situation, though. Policies that work too hard to accommodate the free exercise of religious beliefs stray dangerously close to establishing religion. Policies that force a sharp division between public life and private morality, on the other hand, hamper the exercise of deeply held beliefs. The Supreme Court has worked hard to formulate a constitutional doctrine that avoids either of these pitfalls, but the path is a perilous one. Current Court doctrine protects the free exercise of religion from laws that are not neutral toward a faith, such as laws banning animal sacrifice targeted at a particular religious organization. But general criminal laws, intended to promote a real governmental interest, cannot be invalidated simply because they happen to hinder the pursuit of a particular religious practice. For example, religious beliefs declaring a particular controlled substance sacred are not sufficient to exempt someone from neutral drug laws. Those who felt the Supreme Court went too far in regulating religion passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. It required government at all levels to "accommodate" religious practice unless there was a compelling reason not to do so; if deemed necessary, only the "least restrictive" action was warranted. The legislation was declared unconstitutional.

The list of religious issues that have come before the Supreme Court seems endless in its complexity. There are religious groups who refuse immunizations or medical help for serious illnesses and religious ceremonies in which animals are sacrificed or mind-altering drugs are used. The violations of the restrictions on prayer in the public schools are numerous. The Court has supported religious freedom and recognizes that a "wall of separation" is just too difficult to enforce.

The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech

 The key question with free speech is what constitutes "speech" itself. One view separates public or political speech from private speech, holding that the latter may be limited with respect to the rights of others. The Supreme Court has protected certain kinds of speech in certain circumstances but not all kinds of speech. There are two important limitations on freedom of speech: speech cannot threaten the public order or be obscene.

Political speech

In Schenck v. United States (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated that freedom of speech could be restricted if the speech represented a clear and present danger; the example he gave was that a person could not shout, "Fire!" in a crowded theater that was not on fire. Through the early years of the Cold War, the clear and present danger test was used to limit the free speech of socialists and communists. The Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act (1940) that made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by force. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court took the position that political speech was protected under the First Amendment unless it incited "imminent lawless action" or was "likely to produce such action."

Public speech

Nonpolitical public speech may not be to everyone's taste, and the Supreme Court has had to consider laws that restrict it. Some statements are deemed fighting words and are not protected. There have been cases in which a speaker was arrested because what was said might have caused a riot or a harmful disturbance. Regarding public speech, the Court has tended to approve laws that are very narrowly drawn and to reject those that paint limitations on public speech with too broad a brush.

Symbolic speech

Some forms of speech involve not words but actions, usually as part of a political protest. Examples of symbolic speech include burning the American flag and burning draft cards during the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court has sometimes protected such actions even though people might find them objectionable because they are, in effect, expressions of political ideas. In United States v. Eichman (1990), the Court declared the Flag Protection Act of 1989 unconstitutional on these grounds.

The First Amendment: Freedom of the Press

 Freedom of the press often presents a conflict of rights. On the one hand is the public's right to know, and on the other is the right of the government to secrecy in certain circumstances, the right of individuals to privacy, and the right of defendants to a fair trial. In addition, an individual may have personal and moral sensibilities that the press should not offend. Laws tackling these polarities fall under the headings of prior restraint and subsequent punishment.

Prior restraint

Laws that call for prior restraint are basically censorship laws that prevent the publication of information before it is officially released. The most famous case in recent years involved the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department contractor, leaked the 47-volume report on American policy in Vietnam to The New York Times and The Washington Post. When the Nixon administration learned that the newspapers were going to publish excerpts from the report, it sought a court injunction to prevent publication. The Supreme Court ruled that prior restraint was an unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of the press.

Subsequent punishment

Subsequent punishment laws hold publications accountable for the information they publish. They may influence a publisher to think seriously about whether a story is libelous, slanderous, or obscene. Publishing statements that are malicious, untrue, and harmful to a person's reputation is called libel. When such statements are spoken, they are called slander. Celebrities and elected officials are often described negatively in the press. The Supreme Court has ruled that such stories can be considered libelous or slanderous only if it can be proved that they were published without regard for the truth or falsity of the statements. This is a difficult standard, and tabloids thrive on making outrageous claims about public figures. Recent cases have narrowed the definition of public figures, compelling the press to prove it was not malicious in making allegedly libelous statements.

Obscene materials

The Supreme Court has also maintained that obscene materials, in words or pictures, are not protected under the First Amendment. The problem is defining what is obscene. The Warren Court adopted a variable standard that set specific limits on obscenity based on the circumstances of publication and distribution. Pornography sold in an adult bookstore that limits entry to persons 21 years of age and older is legal, but showing a pornographic film to an unsuspecting audience is not. Efforts to find a clearer standard have not been successful. The Court has not been willing to turn the definition of obscenity entirely over to community standards.

The Court has consistently found child pornography unacceptable. The Internet has proved a difficult challenge to First Amendment issues. Congress's attempts to protect minors from pornographic material available through the Internet usually failed to win approval from the Court. An important exception was the Children's Internet Protection Act (2000), which requires schools and libraries receiving federal funds for technology to install filtering software on their computers to block access to adult materials.

The Rights of Defendants

 The rights of criminal defendants are protected by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth amendments to the Constitution. Although these protections are intended to shield individuals from abuses by the government, the government also has an obligation to safeguard its citizens against criminal activity. The Supreme Court has had to address both concerns.

The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment is a guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures and requires that a search warrant be granted only with probable cause. If the police exceed their authority and conduct an illegal search, the evidence gathered may not be admissible in court under what is called the exclusionary rule. While initially applied only to federal cases, the rule has been extended to state courts since 1961. In recent years, the Supreme Court has attempted to limit the exclusionary rule amid complaints that a blanket exclusion of all evidence, used even when the police error was a minor one, was letting guilty defendants go free. Under chief justices Warren Burger and William Rehnquist, the Court has adopted the good faith exception to the Fourth Amendment. This exception uses loopholes in the exclusionary rule, such as when the police believed they had a valid search warrant but it turned out to be based on outdated information. The good faith exception has been applied even to searches without warrants for which the police could show their intention was legal. Warrantless searches are based on a broad interpretation of what constitutes probable cause and a reasonable search. The overall trend has been to weaken the guarantee of personal security in favor of controlling criminal behavior.

The Fifth Amendment

The Fifth Amendment is probably one of the most misunderstood safeguards of personal liberty. In the American legal process, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution; the defendant is innocent until proven guilty and has the right to remain silent. Prosecutors can never ask the accused if he or she committed a crime. Too often, we see through news coverage of actual trials or dramatizations on film or TV someone who is obviously guilty "plead the Fifth." The problem is that such a statement has, for many, come to suggest that the speaker is guilty — the exact opposite of the amendment's intent. To ensure that a person is not made a witness against himself or herself, the Supreme Court has issued several landmark rulings. Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) stated that a person has the right to have an attorney present when questioned by the police. In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Court required the police to inform a suspect of his or her constitutional rights. This statement by the police is now known as the Miranda warning.

The Sixth Amendment

The Sixth Amendment deals with the rights of the accused in criminal cases. Although a jury trial is assumed to be a fundamental civil liberty, it was not until 1968 that the Supreme Court ruled that this right is one the states are obligated to recognize in all but the most minor criminal proceedings. The states remain free to set the minimum number of people that constitute a jury, and many do not require a unanimous jury vote for conviction. In Gideon v. Wainright (1963), the Supreme Court held that the right to counsel provided for in the Sixth Amendment extends to the states. The government, at any level, must provide legal assistance to defendants who cannot afford their own lawyer.

Economics Defined

What is economics? Economics is the study of how society allocates scarce resources and goods. Resources are the inputs that society uses to produce output, called goods. Resources include inputs such as labor, capital, and land. Goods include products such as food, clothing, and housing as well as services such as those provided by barbers, doctors, and police officers. These resources and goods are considered scarce because of society's tendency to demand more resources and goods than are available.

While most resources and goods are scarce, some are not—for example, the air that we breathe. A resource or good that is not scarce, even when its price is zero, is called a free resource or good. Economics, however, is mainly concerned with scarce resources and goods. It is the presence of scarcity that motivates the study of how society allocates resources and goods.

One means by which society allocates scarce resources and goods is the market system. The term market refers to any arrangement that allows people to trade with one another. The market system is the name given to the collection of all markets and also refers to the relationships among these markets. The study of the market system, which is the subject of economics, is divided into two main branches or theories; they are macroeconomics and microeconomics.