What is the conference?

The Independent Voter Project legislative exchange conference is an annual event that began in the 1980s. The goal of the conference is to bring together policy makers, policy experts, and business leaders to have the open and honest conversations.  These conversations are increasingly difficult to have around the capitol culture that rewards partisanship and punishes compromise.

The Founders never assumed indefinite free speech. They assumed that after two weeks, any protest would be wiped out by smallpox.
STEPHEN COLBERT, on why it was okay for Mayor Bloomberg to send in cops to crack down on Occupy Wall Street protestors while he claimed to be protecting their right to free speech, on The Colbert Report (via inothernews)

Ralph Nader has put out a call for a "grand series" of twenty-one nationwide presidential debates in 2012, arguing that control over topics and format should be wrested from the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates and placed in the hands of local communities all over the country.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has released a statement on the USDA's recently completed tally for fiscal year 2011 farm exports. As it turns out, one area of the country's economy is operating on a trade surplus and raking in record revenues.

Before arriving at the most recent police eviction of Occupy Oakland demonstrators from Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, California, let's review the series of events-- and policy flip flops-- that got us here.

As the mainstream media delivered yet another dose of the silent treatment to Congressman Ron Paul at this weekend's CBS/National Journal presidential debate, there's an approach that could be embraced by his loyal supporters looking to disrupt the media's definition of a "presidential" candidate.