The United States terrorist watchlist includes the names of 72 employees at the Department of Homeland Security, according to one Democratic lawmaker.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), who was one of 47 Democrats in the House of Representatives to support a GOP bill that would increase the screening of refugees from Iraq and Syria, claimed that DHS has major problems within its own system.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez recently took a trip to Colorado to take notes on ways to increase election turnout.

In the 2014 general election, Colorado’s voter turnout was more than 54 percent, the third highest in the nation. In that same year California had a record low voter turnout, just 42 percent.

In Ronald Reagan's first year in office (1981), he faced the enormous task of handling two of the greatest refugee crises our government has ever faced.

The 1980 Mariel boatlift brought almost 125,000 Cuban refugees to the United States, while continued pressures of the Indochina refugee crisis were continuing from America's departure from Vietnam and the fall of Saigon in 1975 -- as well as the Khmer Rouge genocides in Cambodia.

Climate change is real and is caused by humans.

To many, this statement will seem partisan -- a liberal viewpoint. It does not have to be nor should it be, however.

Environmental issues as of late have become some of the most bitter, partisan contests of the day. Yet there was a time when this was not so, when environmental policy enjoyed widespread support from both parties.

Following the suspected terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, two senators have introduced a bill that privacy advocates could see as a means of enhancing surveillance powers that were reformed earlier this year.

How Independent Voters in Florida Are Reshaping Political Landscape

Source: Steve Bousquet, Miami Herald

My Take: A well-written look at today’s Florida voters, why they are registering independent--particularly first-time voters, and how issues vs. politics affects this pattern.

This week I had the opportunity to present a journal article at a symposium on social responsibility.

While topics wildly varied, my own focused on the historical perspectives of capitalism -- and how many of the uglier aspects of capitalism have been with us since the very beginning.

Dissident Politics advocates a set of three political principles or morals that foster objectivity in politics. The proposal comes despite the innate intuitive-subjective nature of human cognition and American politics.

Two core premises underpin the argument. The first is that modern politics is subjective and ineffective because the two-party system understands the intuitive aspect of human behavior and relentlessly exploits that biology to its own advantage, usually at the expense of the public interest.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that there have been 355 mass shootings so far in 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1gXZZ_qxjE

You might have seen the headlines this week—the NSA is no longer collecting your data.

But is that true?

What is it that the NSA can no longer do, and who is doing it for them?

This is a Reality Check you won’t see anywhere else.