They came.  They saw.  They conquered.  The world met in London.  Athletes competed while under a flag of five rings... one for each continent (Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/Oceania, and the Americas).  In these days of competition, there has been a bigger understanding of our cultural differences and a bigger exchange of human understanding.  For these past couple of weeks, the nations of the world have been united in friendship, harmony, and peace.

I think of this game every time they raise the debt ceiling:

...and every time they pass a new appropriation without having the revenue to pay for it (which is currently every time they pass a new appropriation), every time there's a new round of monetary "easing," every time we get involved in a new country's conflict, and pretty much every time Congress is in session.

Is it just me?

Undecided voters are of course getting quite a bit of ink this election cycle, as both parties target their support.

The New York Times had a chat with an independent voter in Ohio.

Here's an open question for the entire IVN community:

When reporting news about a politician, should non-partisan media list their party affiliation as is customary in a lot of news reports?

I was thinking about this the other day. If what should matter is the person, their record, their platform, their credentials, and their character, not their party, then as new non-partisan media emerge, should we set a different journalistic convention and decline to offer up a politician's party affiliation unless it's somehow necessarily relevant to the story?

A border security bill has languished in Congress for months. It would provide much-needed tougher penalties for constructing and using underground border tunnels and seems a victim of our gridlocked politics.

Over just three years since the following infographic was first made, citing 2009 data on the US national debt, Washington has already run the figure up by trillions more, putting it at nearly $16 trillion. Even at 2009's levels, the scope of Washington's debt problem is breathtaking. The following infographic helps visualize just how much money America's federal government owes:

In a fundraising email sent out on Wednesday, Aug. 8, the Republican candidate for Governor of Vermont claimed that Governor [Peter] Shumlin is making marijuana decriminalization one of his top priorities, although Republican Randy Brock doesn't cite any source for that assertion.

Texas U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz has been added to the list of speakers for the Republican National Convention. GOP officials have confirmed that the Tea Party star will have a key slot during the convention.