When I read articles about what is happening in Washington DC, I almost always come away thinking that Americans deserve a better government than we have. But when I read the comments under these same articles, I realize that we have exactly the government we deserve. It would be hard to imagine a government more dysfunctional and divided than the comments section of the Washington Post.

What we want now is more important than what we want most.

You’ve probably heard about the famous experiment, or some variation of it, where a young child has to choose between a small reward now or a much larger reward later. When experimenters give four- and five-year old children a choice between a marshmallow right now and two marshmallows in 15 minutes, about two thirds of them choose the marshmallow now. If you increase the time frame to an hour, you can offer an ice-cream sundae to those who wait and most kids will still eat the marshmallow.

26 percent of Americans who were at least 5 years old at the time, the events of that day will forever be seared into their memory.

We have so many political and societal issues being discussed in regards to 21st century American citizens, yet it is truly rare to hear any issues relating to present day American Indians. “Present day” being the key phrase.

U.S.-Iranian relations, it would seem, are on the mend.

According to Michigan State University, an examination of high school seniors in the United States from 1976-2006 reveals that when it comes to qualities like individualism and egoism, there hasn’t been much change at all.

When the federal government passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and forcibly transitioned New York from what most agree were reliable lever-based voting machines to the new, unexplored frontier of electronic balloting in 2010, the New York Board of Elections gave part-time Election Day poll workers many more new and different tasks that must be completed in order to properly administer elections.

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear a case brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center which challenged the NSA's authority to collect massive amounts of call data (also known as metadata) from Americans without reasonable suspicion of terrorist ties.