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Americans love horse races, especially the political kind. News organizations know this, so they make sure to create a horse race or two every four years—even when (and perhaps especially when) a race promises to be a dull ride and a foregone conclusion. I don’t mind this much. Politics have been a form of entertainment in the United States since the very beginning. This is better than being, as it is in many countries, a blood sport. But sometimes the imperative to turn a political election i

Although Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders Saturday in the Nevada Caucuses, Fox News reported on Friday a poll that shows him ahead nationally by three points. With the appearance of some support for Clinton eroding, the idea of the self-professed Democratic Socialist being the Democratic Party's nominee for president has become a real possibility. From the perspective of anyone who supports "limited government," the idea of endorsing someone who wants Washington to play a much bigger rol

Should the government be able to access encrypted data on your smartphone? That's the question surrounding the very public pushback Apple is giving the FBI, which is seeking to recover data in the iPhone of one of the shooters in the recent San Bernardino terror attacks. It turns out that what your elected officials think about this question might have a lot to do with the campaign contributions they receive from technology companies and their employees. After Apple issued a public letter to it

The Independent Party of Oregon scored a major ally in the party's effort to protect ballot access for third parties in Oregon this week, when Oregon's Senate Republicans sent a letter to Senate President Peter Courtney (D), asking him to take steps to ensure that the Independent Party and several of Oregon's minor parties would not lose ballot access as a result of the state's new "Motor Voter" law. Small parties in Oregon are threatened by the passage of Oregon's new voter registration system

The standoff in Oregon that began on January 2 appears to have reached its conclusion. On Tuesday, January 26, several occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were arrested, and one occupier, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, was killed in a confrontation with law enforcement. The leader of the occupiers, Ammon Bundy, has since called on the occupiers to return home. Only four occupiers remain, and a federal judge has denied the release of several apprehended individuals until the occupation ha

We are in the middle of our “One California” tour SundheimforSenate.com\tour, #DufTour on Twitter. This 6-week tour will take us from the California-Oregon border to the California-Mexico border. We have had as many as 18 events in three days. At several events I have been asked whether I support a pathway to legal status for those who are in the country illegally. After 32 years of marriage I am beginning to learn it is not what I say that counts, but what my wife hears. And even though I bel

In recent news, Ohio state officials told Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley that he could not be on the Democratic primary ballot. The petition to be on the ballot required 1,000 valid signatures from a single county. O’Malley submitted 1,175, but only 772 were considered valid. Both of his fellow Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, are on the ballot. Presidential primaries are often reserved only for partisan candidates, but that does not nec

As around a dozen armed protesters gathered at the unoccupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon, angry over the federal government’s resentencing of local ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, in an arson case related to locally-controversial Bureau of Land Management regulations on land use, the mainstream media cast aside its journalistic responsibility and instead took on the more profitable role of a fight promoter. The sum of the deceptive click-bait headlines swirling throug

A new era of voting in California is fast approaching. Why, you might ask, in a world where information and services are accessible at the tips of our fingers almost any time of day, is voting so ”old fashioned”? As comedian Chris Rock famously observed, “They don’t want you to vote. If they did, we wouldn’t vote on a Tuesday. In November. You ever throw a party on a Tuesday? No. Because nobody would come.” There's even an election reform organization called Why Tuesday? which is dedicated to

Since the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13, various mainstream news outlets have noted that the politics of surveillance have shifted. A shift would indicate that instead of rolling back surveillance policies in favor of more privacy, more invasive policies could be enacted. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio used the attacks to accuse fellow Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul of forcing a "weakening of our intelligence-gathering capabilities" that ultimately "leaves America vul