I am being manipulated, and so are you. Conservatives are being manipulated. Progressives are being manipulated. We the people have lost control of our government and are being used by selfish and partisan interests hostile to our common good.

Most citizens have at least some vague notion about this manipulation. But then the latest eloquent political hate message - one that really puts the other side in its place - appears on our Facebook page. We share it, as if launching a rhetorical grenade against “the enemy.”

We exclaim to ourselves, “Take that you evil morons!”

Recent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended violently, as white supremacists clashed with counter-demonstrators, and a car driven by 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., ploughed into a crowd full of anti-racist and anti-fascist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others.

T.J. is joined by two prominent election reform attorneys: Lawrence Lessig with Equal Citizens and Chad Peace with the Independent Voter Project.

“Too much of a good thing” isn’t usually an argument applied to education. But a recent Gallup survey found a sharp partisan divide in how Americans view higher ed, with just a third of Republicans confidant in U.S. colleges.

The reason why? Politics.

Those Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who make up the other two-thirds “are most likely to cite their belief that colleges and universities are too liberal and political."

CNN Polls has been asking respondents since 1992 whether they have a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward each of the two major parties. The latest poll shows that only 29% approve of the Republican Party, and only 41% approve of the Democratic Party.

See this story. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, along with additional studies have compared the health care coverage options and outcomes of policies in 13 of the world's highest-income countries.

These included the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada and Australia.

In a case that has deepened in seriousness with astonishing regularity since the February revelations about a Capitol Police investigation, a Freedom of Information Act request has uncovered even more damning police reports about Imran Awan, the House Democratic IT staffer at the center of the investigation.

In April 2017, San Diego adopted an ordinance permitting and regulating retail marijuana outlets (shops that dispense recreational or medical cannabis).

On September 11, 2017, the San Diego City Council held a public meeting to discuss whether marijuana cultivation, distribution, manufacturing and testing businesses should also be allowed within the City.

The council debated two (2) options:

Option 1 presented a complete ban on marijuana production in the city, only allowing for the new use of marijuana testing.

Alabama's closed, partisan Republican primary pits two candidates, Roy Moore and Luther Strange, that prove the value of open, nonpartisan primaries.

Put simply, the "I'm a bigger right-winger than you are" themed campaign is exactly what works in closed, partisan primaries. This, of course, is also true of the "I'm a bigger left-winger than you are" campaign that flourishes in closed Democratic primaries.

The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debate’s (CPD) 15 percent rule exacerbates the political divide in the US, leaves millions of voters unrepresented in presidential elections, and undermines fundamental democratic principles in order to protect the two-party duopoly.