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No one could accuse former CIA Director John Brennan of being a peacenik or too soft on the United States' enemies. The lifelong CIA man (he started with the agency as a Mid-East analyst and station chief for 25 years) has faced criticism for overseeing a substantial increase in CIA drone strikes on targets in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan. When he was nominated to head the CIA in 2013, Senator Rand Paul even stood speaking for 13 hours to filibuster his nomination. In resp

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon seems poised to attack the rising costs of health care one way or another. In April of this year, Dimon used his annual letter to shareholders to add to what we know about the Amazon, Berkshire & Chase joint healthcare venture. The 247 words about the joint venture comes amongst nineteen pages of public policy. In the other eighteen pages of public policy, Dimon wades into immigration, the national debt, the US relationship with China and infrastructure spending.

People frequently speak about how divided the United States is right now. This comment is often associated with things like left-wing protests on college campuses, discussions of partisan media, and gridlock in Washington DC. This divisiveness is frequently attributed to “tribalism.” But “tribalism” doesn’t strike me as a very informative explanation. It is merely a description of the effect but, doesn’t say a lot about the cause. The question then is, what makes our society more or less tribal

Editor's note: this article was co-authored by Cathy Stewart (introduction) and Caroline Donnola (main article). The Politics for the People (P4P) Book Club brings together independent-minded Americans to read a wide range of books—both fiction and non-fiction—of interest to independents.  With each selection, we have a lively dialogue on the P4P blog culminating in an hour conference call conversation with our author. We just finished reading Greg Orman’s book, A Declaration of Independents:

Byline Note: This article was co-written by Harry Kresky, general counsel for Independent Voting, and Wayne Griffin, chairman of the SC Independence Party and Greer City Councilmember. T  he South Carolina Republican Party is asking voters on primary day to weigh in on whether voters “believe they should have the option to choose to affiliate with a political party when they register to vote. …” This “advisory” vote seems innocent enough. Until you take a closer look. Here’s why voters should

Another election season, another increasingly bizarre redrawing of the electoral map. In states across the U.S., voting districts are elongated and chopped, stretched like taffy to cover certain state regions and amputated to avoid others. All these calculations and measurements work to ensure that our democratic system of government doesn’t function the way it is intended. The process of redrawing favorable district lines — affectionately termed “gerrymandering” — is an unfortunate outgrowth o

Just two weeks before Earth Day, President Trump announced his plan to launch a missile strike against Syria, stoking the flames of the War on Terror. Following the strike, Trump tweeted “Mission Accomplished,” a proclamation that sounds eerily familiar. Here we go again. The past 3 years have experienced a surge of political activism from all sides. However, it is concerning that there is little support for antiwar efforts. The Nationwide Solidarity March for Peace, which occurred last Octobe

The DNC must have been high when it filed a lawsuit on April 20th against the "Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump." Well certainly the Trump campaign was part of a very open conspiracy to tilt the election to Donald Trump. That's called an election campaign, amiright? And what are they suing WikiLeaks for? Engaging in journalism? After all this talk from D

If 2016 taught me anything, it is how disastrous political polls have become. And as we head into the 2018 midterms, we should take a hard look how we are conducting them, crunching the numbers and using the results. Voters deserve it. On November 2nd, 2016 Marquette University Law School in Wisconsin issued it’s highly regarded presidential polling results. It was memorable for two reasons. The first reason is that it was conducted between October 26th through the 31st, the time frame in which

This week, Attorney Michael Attanasio and those representing the SoccerCity initiative filed a lawsuit to toss out the SDSU West initiative on the grounds it violates state law. Attanasio said, "Public university names are the property of the state and its citizens, and this law was specifically intended to prevent their exploitation by private business interests." The suit claims the SDSU West effort violated the provisions of California's Education Code by using the SDSU name in the title for