This past weekend, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin openly acknowledged supporting the Assad regime in Syria's civil war against the Islamic State.

Russia has a lot invested in Syria, operating their only fully functioning naval base since the Cold War out of Tartus, as well as numerous other intelligence outposts, some of which are now in ISIS hands.

We all know that the Bill of Rights enshrined in the Constitution contains ten amendments. However, it is less well known that the Bill of Rights sent to the states for ratification originally contained 12 amendments.

What we know today as the First Amendment – the one enumerating our basic freedoms of religion, speech, and so forth – actually appeared third on this list. The current Bill of Rights contains just ten amendments because the requisite number of states – three-fourths of those in the Union – only ratified amendments three through twelve.

Over the last 45 years or so, science has made amazing strides in understanding how people see the world and think about what they see. Those advances in cognitive science came from research in several disciplines, including economics, neurobiology, political and computer science, and especially psychology.

Although those disciplines rarely cross-fertilized, they now often work together. Those cross-discipline collaborations accelerated the progress.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Paul Krugman argues Donald Trump is right on economics.

It was officially time to get the government out of marriage when the Defense of Marriage Act was repealed in 2013, but if our leaders can't see the writing on the wall now, it's hard to guess how much more obtuse they can be.

A SurveyUSA poll this weekend has captured huge headlines: Republican Donald Trump now tops every Democratic contender.

While this makes for great headlines, looking at the actual study data and methodology tells a slightly different story, one that looks at two different sides of the equation.

In Illinois' 15th Congressional District, a candidate once favoring term limits will be running again.

Human Freedom Index has downgraded the United States to the 20th most free country in the world. This puts America well behind its northern neighbor, Canada, which is ranked 6th. And even our mother country – the United Kingdom – far outranks us at 9th.

Between closed primaries, gerrymandering, and a campaign finance system run amuck, independents are the most unequal citizens in the U.S. In 2016, all of that could change.

Labor Day in 2015, to most Americans, is the unofficial end of Summer. Labor Day is nestled in nicely with other American-y holidays that grant permission for BBQs and cheap beer. However, these holidays are firmly rooted in historic dates (except for Cinco de Mayo), or in this case a movement that had a major impact in United States history.

With this in mind, let's take a look at why we get the first Monday of September off.