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Alleged targeting by the Internal Revenue Service may still rile some conservative groups, but the real scandal could lie with a sophisticated phone scam that has bilked taxpayers out of a combined $1 million. The agency’s internal watchdog group called the nationwide scheme “the largest… of its kind that we have ever seen,” with some 20,000 taxpayers reporting being duped this year into providing credit card payments to third-party groups over the phone.“The increasing number of people receivi

Multiple reports over the last month have painted a stark picture of the situation that veterans face when seeking care through the Veterans Administration's (VA) health care system -- a benefit they earned with their service. Some of the incidents have resulted in the deaths of veterans, which just further proves how broken the VA really is. Unfortunately, for victims of substandard care at the VA, there is almost no accountability for these errors. A simple Google search will turn up numerous

It was another article about the antics and dirty politics along partisan lines: As soon as it was known that the elections had given the present House to the Republican party, the leaders of that party began a systematic crusade against the rules of procedure. While this could have easily been taken from any number of news sources today, this was the leading sentence from a piece in the December 1889 issue of The North American Review. In fact, this entire issue covered a range of topics that

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer." John F. Kennedy spoke these words in 1958 regarding the political challenges faced in America. Kennedy called for following a path of compromise -- to move the nation forward by seeking common ground between opposing interests.Over 56 years later, America is clearly off this path; partisan divisiveness once again is the rule. However, I expect Kennedy would have been proud that the Bipartisan Policy Center c

Last week, I wrote about gender parity by state in the U.S. Congress. One of the more astounding facts from that research was that the United States ranks 77th in the world by percentage of legislative seats held by women. Another fascinating tidbit though was that 4 states have never sent a women to Congress at all: Iowa, Mississippi, Vermont, and Delaware. While Vermont and Delaware have had a female governor, but never a representative in Congress, Iowa and Mississippi have not had either to

Spoiler alert: That's one of the concluding remarks in former Senator Olympia Snowe's recent book, Fighting for Common Ground. Tired of government stalemate, congressional inaction, and the declining state of public discourse and civility in America? Snowe outlines a blueprint for change -- a way out of the seemingly hopeless situation the nation is in. But, the former senator is doing more than writing books. She is working both behind the scenes and in public toward the same ideals she held d

Millennials have been a major driving force in politics, especially in recent presidential elections. Since 2008, about half of voters under 30 went to the polls, making up nearly one-fifth of the total vote cast. Coincidentally, they heavily favored Obama, support that tipped several large battleground states in his favor. That may be about to change by the end of 2014. In an interview with IVN, Britt Hysen, a social entrepreneur and editor-in-chief for Millennial Magazine, believes that Mille

Political observers know that California has been a reliable national stronghold for the Democratic Party for over a decade. The party boasts two U.S. senators, over 70 percent of the state's congressional delegation, the governor's office, a super majority in the Assembly, and -- until recently -- the State Senate. In spite of this momentum, Democratic voter registration has dropped from 44.6 percent in 2010 to 43.6 percent in 2013. Similarly, registration with the state GOP shrunk by more tha

In an article, titled "Do The American People Have Freedom?," IVN contributor Michael Hoang introduced the notion that freedom is about belonging to a "mother nation" and being harmonious with the other members of a person's "national family." While the idea is not entirely unconventional, it is fundamentally incompatible with the Western liberal tradition and, specifically, the ideals of the American Revolution. Briefly, freedom is not earned, neither is it given nor received. Freedom is a sta

Occasionally, an editorial from another publication will catch my eye while looking through Google about how independents are either a myth or nothing more than "political hipsters." In a recent op-ed in the Washington Blade, written by Peter Rosenstein, an argument is not only made for the latter, but the author says that if voters feel disenfranchised by the Democratic Party in Washington, DC, then the solution should be simple: join the Democratic Party. "In today’s political world there se