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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

The spirit of America is strong; the state of our union is fragile. That is my conclusion after 100 days driving 14,128 miles through 34 states as an independent candidate for President of the United States. I met with over 1,000 people individually and in small groups. I mostly stayed away from big cities and college campuses. I had learned on two short campaign trips before this long one that very few Americans understand there are independent candidates running for office so I got in the ha

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

American beer, wine, and spirit enthusiasts recently celebrated Repeal Day on December 5. It was on this day in 1933 that the United States officially passed the 21st Amendment, effectively ending the failed “noble experiment” known as Prohibition. This was not only a good day for liberty and libations; it also marked the end of a violent era in American history. The transport and sale of illicit booze became a prolific criminal enterprise backed by well-armed, violent gangs. The result: A hom

"This is not a day care. This is a university!" This was the reaction from the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Dr. Everett Piper, in response to a student's complaint about a sermon he had delivered on the topic of love. The student, Dr. Piper wrote, said he felt "victimized" by the sermon because he was made to feel guilty about not showing enough love toward others. "Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic," Piper says. "Any time their fe

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. Perhaps Colorado’s higher voter turnout was due, in part, to the fact that it was the first time every registered voter in Colorado re

Historically, presidential races have come down to only a handful of toss-up states being the difference between victory and defeat -- the red/blue map has become fairly well-defined. Enter John Bel Edwards (D) who won the governorship of Louisiana on November 21 by a fairly resounding margin, capturing 54 percent of the vote. State governorships can give a glimpse into the 'at-large' intentions of a state, but this is hardly a sure thing in politics. Louisiana has a long history, since WWII,

A gunman walks into a public building and begins to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd. His goal is utilitarian: He wants to inflict the most harm and create the most panic possible within the crowd. He has no specific target other than the symbolic nature of the venue he is attacking—a symbol worthy of his violent outrage. The gunman sees no faces of his victims; instead, he sees hapless enablers of a status quo that he finds immoral, repugnant, and evil. This could easily have described wh

One of Obama’s most prominent campaign pledges included a promise to close Guantanamo Bay. The prison camp has housed hundreds of prisoners in the war on terror since 2002, acting as a location to both detain and interrogate what the United States considers “extraordinarily dangerous people.” Since it first opened though, the prison has come under increasing scrutiny. In addition to charges of torture, Amnesty International has called the facility the Gulag of our time, and the facility has dra

Enough signatures were collected in Colorado this month (with more than 60,000 to spare) to place a $25 billion tax increase on the ballot in 2016 to pay for a single-payer type insurance for the whole state. Vermont passed a similar measure several years ago, but lacked a funding mandate for the program, which has been derailed by politicians refusing (or at least stalling) on paying for the ballot-approved measure. Single-payer insurance was supposed to be one of the hallmark traits of the O