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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA - Earlier this year, an investigation by the Associated Press revealed a disturbing sexual assault problem on some of the nation’s military bases around the world. Since the initial story broke, it seems the problem is worse than originally thought and Congress wants answers and changes, something that the Pentagon is fighting against. Since the story broke in March, the AP has found that there are now nearly 700 cases over the last 10 years of child-on-child sexual assault

The partisan bickering in the Legislature has claimed another victim: Clean Elections. In 1996, Maine voters decided they’d had enough with how campaigns were funded, and they passed the Maine Clean Election Act. Candidates who choose to run “clean” can accept only a certain number of contributions to start, and only $5 contributions from voters in their district qualify the candidate to receive public funding. It’s a great idea – you get local support and public financing, keeping big-money d

Throughout slavery, Reconstruction and the movement for civil rights, African Americans in the U.S. have faced racism, social disparities, and oppression. While things have advanced for us significantly, black Americans still encounter subtle and blatant social disenfranchisement.For instance, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the people behind bars in the U.S. are disproportionately black. Chronic diseases like diabetes, arthritis, HIV, and cancer are more pr

A few weeks ago we witnessed in disbelief the seductress of reality tv Kim Kardashian swap her greased and puckered internet-breaking social media posts for an austere and fully-clothed Oval Office photo op with President Trump in her new role as hot celebrity prison broker. And yet again, in a stranger-than-fiction redux last week, we did a double take as tatted and pierced former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman, in MAGA cap and pot cryptocurrency T, got all ferklempt on CNN as he relayed how being

Iowa independent voters are watching the nation's politics as closely as the nation watches Iowa to understand political trends. As goes Iowa, so goes the nation. So they've been saying since at latest 2000, and probably even before that. One letter to the editor of the New York Times, dated January 28, 2000, noted how remarkably close national presidential vote tallies tracked Iowa's votes in 1992 and 1996: "In November 1992, Iowa voted: Bill Clinton, 43.3 percent; George Bush, 37.3 percent;

“Look Around the Poker Table; If You Can’t See the Sucker, You’re It” In the year and a half that Donald Trump has served as president, one of his most consistent punching bags (save for Robert Mueller’s investigation) has been US trade relations with China. Almost all of us have seen his tweets criticizing previous administrations for being “dumb,” “stupid,” and “weak” in their negotiating tactics. Additionally, we have also all heard his promises to use his self-proclaimed superior negotiati

Most of America hates Big Pharma. You can quantify it. But many of the sins committed by the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex fall outside the reach of brand name pharmaceutical companies that tend to take the most heat. Gallup regularly polls the attitudes of Americans toward various industries and institutions. In the most recent survey, just 33% of those asked had a positive opinion of the pharmaceutical industry. Only the federal government has fewer fans, at 28%. While bad actors like Tu

Partisan gerrymandering. Money in politics. The Electoral College. Undue restrictions on who votes and how we vote. Every contentious election issue discussed today was either inherited from 18th-century England or came out of a compromise in our democracy’s incubation when there were few voters and

Iowa went Trump in 2016, which saw the Democrats blown out of the water that year. Iowa Democrats are seeking to un-fracture their party which saw supporters defect from establishment candidate Hillary to outsider Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary caucuses. In fact, in 2016, Republicans stole the state Senate, making the state a trifecta of GOP control beginning in the 2017 legislative session. Governor Incumbent Gov. Kim Reynolds is alone representing the Republicans and

This month, I invited Frank Fear to review the book, Independents Rising: Outside Movements, Third Parties, and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan America. Jacqueline Salit, the president of Independent Voting and author of the popular IVN column "The Neo-Independent" wrote the book in 2012. After the Politics for the People Book Club read Greg Orman’s book, A Declaration of Independents: How We Can Break the Two-Party Stranglehold and Restore the American Dream, I was struck by how the two books