As reported on IVN this week, the Supreme Court will be considering two legal efforts to shut out voters from publicly-funded primaries: Ravalli County Republican Party v McCulloch and Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago.

Today, we talk about Electoral College reform as if the only options are to keep it or get rid of it.

But what if the Electoral College today looks nothing like the Electoral College that the Founders envisioned?

Americans' approval of Congress is at its highest level since 2009, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. Nearly 28 percent of respondents said they approved of "the way Congress is handling its job."

Although the overall trend line might appear to suggest that the partisan divide is healing, a closer look at the survey suggests otherwise.

“Before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.”—John Adams

I voted for Bernie Sanders.

Not because I’m a liberal. Not for any particular ideological reason, actually.

I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary because, to me, he represented the only real challenge to the Democratic AND Republican Party establishment that continues to put their own partisan interests and rhetoric ahead of actually governing.

The recent healthcare debate has mainly focused on individuals who are covered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and how a repeal would impact them. Less time has been spent asking about the effect the ACA has had on most people -- those who use employer provided health insurance.

How has the ACA impacted the private market?

A bill designed to close Virginia's primary elections failed Monday. SB821 sponsored by Del. John Cosgrove (R-Chesapeake) was voted down in the Senate with 11 voting in favor and 29 opposed.

This was just one of the compelling statistics discussed on Wednesday, February 1 at the very first forum hosted by the newly-founded California Latino Economic Institute (CLEI), which is a collaboration between the California Legislative Latino Caucus and the California Business Roundtable.

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism." —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism