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Jessica A. Cooke and the Border Patrol. When the Border Patrol stopped Jessica A. Cooke at a checkpoint, the 21-year-old was about to earn her degree in law-enforcement leadership from New York’s public-university system. Due to her course work, she knew her rights as an American. She chose to complain when her rights were violated. And, as a result of that decision, the unarmed woman was pushed, thrown against her car, and tased. The Watertown Daily Times tells her story, but there’s no substitute for watching the altercation that left her on the ground screaming in pain and incomprehension: Cooke is an American citizen.

The Border Patrol stopped her inside the United States. This video suggests that there was no probable cause to search this woman’s trunk, which was later shown to contain nothing illegal when it was opened without her permission. His article adeptly runs through the relevant case law. Trump could spur the rise of a new, not-so-liberal world order. These foreign admirers are cheering Trump. What do they have in common? Much of the world has been shocked and dismayed by Donald Trump’s electoral success, but there are those who are delighted. “This was a victory for the forces which oppose globalization, are fighting illegal migration and are in favor of clean ethnic states,” declared a spokesperson for Golden Dawn, Greece’s far-right party, which is sometimes characterized as neo-Nazi. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has said he wants to build an “illiberal state” in his country, hailed the results as “great news.”

The deputy leader of France’s right-wing National Front Party, historically seen as ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic, was exultant as well. “Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built,” he said. You cannot be judged by those who approve of your actions, but it’s worth trying to understand what Trump’s admirers are celebrating. For others, it is the sense of kinship among strongmen who are unconcerned with human rights. Opinions Orlando Shooting Updates post_newsletter348. The elevation of Steve Bannon to a powerful position in the White House is an epochal event in American politics.

This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see. Gerrymandering -- drawing political boundaries to give your party a numeric advantage over an opposing party -- is a difficult process to explain. If you find the notion confusing, check out the chart above -- adapted from one posted to Reddit this weekend -- and wonder no more. Suppose we have a very tiny state of fifty people. Thirty of them belong to the Blue Party, and 20 belong to the Red Party. And just our luck, they all live in a nice even grid with the Blues on one side of the state and the Reds on the other.

Now, let's say we need to divide this state into five districts. Fortunately, because our citizens live in a neatly ordered grid, it's easy to draw five lengthy districts -- two for the Reds , and three for the Blues. Now, let's say instead that the Blue Party controls the state government, and they get to decide how the lines are drawn. With a comfortable Blue majority in this state, each district elects a blue candidate to the House. Please provide a valid email address. The evangelical campaign against birth control is really about Obama.

On July 19, 2011, a report released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended that all American women be provided with free contraception. Catholic charities were immediately in an uproar, knowing that this would like result in a provision for free contraception as part of the recently-passed Affordable Care Act. In addition to Catholic institutions, evangelical organizations were also sounding the alarm bells.

“Yet another untruth about Obamacare has been uncovered,” said Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, on July 20. Land’s strong words mark the first major evangelical objection to the contraception mandate. The Hobby Lobby lawsuit encouraged other evangelicals to join the battle against the mandate. With the Hobby Lobby’s case to be decided by the Supreme Court in June, many Americans are still confused about the evangelical role in this fight. The reality is much more complicated. The War on Contraception. Red States, Green Power - Todd Woody. Wind energy is supplying up to 60 percent of electricity demand on record-setting days in some states.

The rap against renewable energy is that it doesn’t provide what energy wonks call “baseload” power around the clock. While a fossil fuel power plant will keep cranking out kilowatts 24/7 as long as you keep shoveling in coal or piping natural gas, solar and wind farms are at the mercy of the vagaries of the weather to generate electricity. No wind, no sun, no power. (The exception is carbon-free geothermal power plants, which operate continuously.) Then there’s the fact that despite the explosive growth in wind and solar projects over the past five years and the billions of dollars poured into subsidies, green energy still only supplies a fraction of the United States’ electricity demand. But that’s the wrong way of looking at the balance of power.

On April 7, the nation’s most populous state, California, tapped wind farms for to meet 17.5 percent of its electricity demand. Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Image copyright Thinkstock A review of the best commentary on and around the world... Today's must-read The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite. So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page. This is not news, you say. Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion.

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power. The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. On the other hand: They conclude: South Korea Argentina Algeria Ukraine. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Bernard “Bernie” Sanders, U.S. Senator for Vermont.

Thank you for giving GovTrack a try. Like OpenCongress, GovTrack is for researching and tracking legislation before the U.S. Congress. Things here should seem very familiar to you. OpenCongress and GovTrack have always had a data sharing partnership, so you’ll find the exact same information here as what you had on OpenCongress, just arranged a little differently. And GovTrack has actually been here for more than a decade.

Unlike OpenCongress, we’re funded through advertising and crowdfunding. Hillary Clinton's Voting Records - The Voter's Self Defense System - Vote Smart. The Fringe Left is Exposing Itself by Calling for Elizabeth Warren's Head, and I Couldn't be Happier. I want them destroyed. I despise the rise of the perpetually angry, vengeful, dissatisfaction-fetished rabid Left as much as I detest the hateful repugnant madmen of the Tea Party Right. Why? Because though the Left's fringe is far fewer in number, both of these loud fringes that drown out reasonable voices make it more difficult to compromise and forge a path forward for the good of the country.

And because the Left's fringe is far fewer in number, we do not have to get to Donald Trump-level panic to put them out of their political misery. After Bernie Sanders lost narrowly the Democratic primary in Massachusetts to Hillary Clinton, these rabid Leftist Berniebros descended on her with the ugliest of claws out. That this pronouncement actually belittles their own candidate - this is admission that Bernie can't win a neighboring white liberal state on his own - seems never to have occurred to these angry ideologues.

The moral of the story? If some of that sounds familiar, it should. Bernie Gets It Done: Sanders' Record of Pushing Through Major Reforms Will Surprise You. “I'm a progressive, but I'm a progressive who likes to get things done,” Hillary Clinton said at the first Democratic debate, in response to a question from moderator Anderson Cooper about whether she defines herself as a moderate or a progressive. The implication was that progressive Bernie Sanders is too far to the left to accomplish anything—all of his ideas are pie-in-the-sky. You have to be able to find the bipartisan, “warm, purple space” as Clinton said earlier this year, to get anything done. Slate's Jamelle Bouie was super-impressed by this rationale, saying Clinton has “skilled use of bureaucratic power.” The problem with this narrative is that it is completely false.

The Amendment King Congress is not known to be a progressive institution lately, to say the least. Bernie Sanders was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1990, and many immediately doubted his efficacy. Greening the U.S. Using the Power of a Senator Sanders is probably not so unsure of himself. Bernie Sanders' record in Congress shows little socialist progress. Sen. Bernard Sanders‘ promises of a democratic socialist revolution have enthralled liberal voters this campaign season, but the Vermont independent’s legislative record shows he has had a tough time turning his progressive vision into reality. During his quarter-century in Congress, Mr.

Sanders has been the chief sponsor of just three bills that were signed into law: two renaming U.S. Postal Service offices in his home state of Vermont and one that increased the annual cost-of-living raise for veterans’ benefits, which he secured as chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee in 2013. It’s a record matched by most other members of Congress, who struggle to find legislative niches where they can advance their priorities. All told, Mr. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Mr. Mrs. “I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive who likes to get things done,” Mrs.

“I think this does pose a problem for him because [Mrs. He said it was a fair criticism of Mr. But Mr. Story Continues → Germany increasingly appears to be the strongest remaining bastion of liberal democracy. Bernie Sanders' Voting Records - The Voter's Self Defense System - Vote Smart. Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally. OK, so that just happened. Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated, low-information white people.

As Bloomberg Politics reported back in August, Hillary Clinton was enjoying a giant 25 percentage-point lead among college-educated voters going into the election. (Whether that trend held up remains to be seen.) In contrast, in the 2012 election, college-educated voters just barely favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Last night we saw something historic: the dance of the dunces. Never have educated voters so uniformly rejected a candidate. But never before have the lesser-educated so uniformly supported a candidate. Trump owes his victory to the uninformed. Just why voters know so little is well-understood. Consider: If you go to buy a car, you do your research. Not so with politics. That, in a nutshell, is how democracy works. Most voters are ignorant or misinformed because the costs to them of acquiring political information greatly exceed the potential benefits. The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming. Shortly after the Presidential election, a small piece of good news came over the wire: the Thomas Mann villa in Los Angeles has been saved.

The house, which was built to Mann’s specifications, in the nineteen-forties, went on the market earlier this year, and it seemed likely to be demolished, because the structure was deemed less valuable than the land beneath it. After prolonged negotiations, the German government bought the property, with the idea of establishing it as a cultural center. The house deserves to stand not only because a great writer lived there but because it brings to mind a tragic moment in American cultural history. The author of “Death in Venice” and “The Magic Mountain” settled in this country in 1938, a grateful refugee from Nazism. He became a citizen and extolled American ideals. By 1952, though, he had become convinced that McCarthyism was a prelude to fascism, and felt compelled to emigrate again. Lies have long legs: they are ahead of their time.