Is anything less immutable these days than a political party’s orthodoxy? We all like to mourn the death of compromise, but the truth is this: even the Republican and Democratic parties aren’t that far apart once everybody’s working from the same set of facts.

One way or another, the following six political leaders broke with their party’s orthodoxy. Some wish to pursue real and lasting change in health care, while others were perhaps a little more cynical about their motivations. Whatever the case, health care is here to stay as a household issue in the United States.

Five government officials were fired and 13 criminal cases were filed against local and state officials in Flint, Michigan, resulting from the 2014 Flint water crisis that put 100,000 residents at risk.

An investigation found that the drinking water source for the city was switched to the Flint river in 2014, and, compounding the problem, officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the water. The investigation also found elected officials knowingly "dismissed and belittled attempts" to control the outbreak.

Editor's note: The following article was written by #UNRIG co-founders Robert David Steele and former US Rep. Cynthia Ann McKinney

God bless Bernie Sanders. God bless Donald Trump. God bless the 26% that voted for Hillary Clinton, and God bless the 47% that did not vote at all.

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.