OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, located in the White House Office of Management and Budget, is often referred to as the “most important office you never heard of.”

Correction Update: The article originally said C. Michael Pickens is the chairman of the Libertarian Party. He is a former state chairman. The current chair is Steve Nielson. The article has been corrected.

Former Washington Libertarian Party (LPWA) Chairman C. Michael Pickens believes that the nonpartisan, top-two primary is the best system in the country to get Libertarians elected to office. Pickens cites recent successes party candidates have had in Washington state to make his point.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new assessment of 2016 presidential candidates by First Budget, a joint initiative of the Campaign to Fix the Debt and The Concord Coalition, finds that while all candidates in both parties say the rapidly growing national debt is a problem, most of their proposals to address it fall far short.

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 27, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In anticipation of the upcoming presidential primaries for the 2016 presidential election, leading personal finance website GOBankingRates.com surveyed nearly 8,000 Americans to find out which candidate they think will be best for their money.  Although Donald Trump was the top pick overall from those surveyed, nearly 50 percent of millennials ages 18 to 24 said Bernie Sanders' policies would be best for them financially.

"...and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, [The President] shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States..." - Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, U.S.

Though Donald Trump has raised and spent considerably less than many of his Republican rivals in the 2016 election season, Trump has never shied away from injecting money into the political process. Over the last several decades, Trump has spent mill

Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign office in New Hampshire was broken into sometime in the past 24 hours, robbed of computers with databases and campaign files, according to social media posts from one of the candidate’s top advisers.

I wrote before that Google’s search algorithm didn’t play politics — facts spoke for themselves, and searcher/voter intent determined the results they found.

That, unfortunately, is no longer the case.

OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, located in the White House Office of Management and Budget, is the nation’s gatekeeper over federal regulatory activity. All executive branch agencies are prohibited from releasing economically significant regulations without first submitting their regulations to OIRA for review.

In the performance of this duty, OIRA is often maligned by one or more parties affected by it decisions. Unfortunately the nation as whole, which is the beneficiary of OIRA decisions, seldom speaks in its defense.

It's incredibly sad that in a country that is supposed to be the "city upon a hill" example to the world, we rank 120th out of 169 countries in voter participation.

In 2012, just under 55 percent of the voting age population turned out to vote, in a presidential race that was decided by 5 million votes.