But Senator Palpatine Swore He'd Lay Down That Power After This Crisis!

• Terrance Heath (whom you should be reading religiously; he does research) examines Republican discomfort with President Obama:  Part I.  Part II.  Part III.  Part IV.  (I waited until the series was complete.)  The source of that discomfort is obvious, but these articles clarify the issues for anyone not a Republican.
• Jesse Curtis reviews a book about the building of the transcontinental railroads.
  

  The transcontinentals gave birth to the modern corporate lobby and the symbiotic nexus between big business and an activist federal government. After the rise of the railroads, it became impossible to maintain the fiction that the economy was not fundamentally political, for better or worse. The men who ran the transcontinentals transformed America not because they were ruthlessly competent but in spite of the fact that they were not.

  So there, Dagny Taggart.

[ETA:  Forgot the link.]