Tag: Heart

As the second year of the Trump administration comes to a close, here are five moments from this year's political news that everyone can find something to smile about, no matter your political leaning. Michelle Obama and George W. Bush's friendship Since President Barack Obama took office, protocol has placed these two next to each other during official events. Tammy Duckworth's baby on the Senate floor In April, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth gave birth to a baby girl, making her the first U.S. senator ever to give birth while in office. Weeks later, after Davidson shared a troubling Instagram post indicating he may have been feeling suicidal, Crenshaw reached out. "I told him everyone had a purpose in this world," Crenshaw said. On Elizabeth Warren's 38th wedding anniversary, her husband Bruce brought home a golden retriever named Bailey. "A few weeks ago, Bruce said, 'We're getting a dog,'" the senator wrote on Instagram. Bush enlisted the help of a new family member in his final months -- a yellow Labrador retriever service dog named Sully. Sully was set to go back into service to help other veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, according to a post on Instagram by former President George W. Bush. High Election Day turnout Voters turned out in record numbers this year, with an estimated 118 million people casting their ballots in the 2018 midterms.

Dark money is cash whose source is not made public, and which is spent to change political outcomes. Tax-haven transparency won’t stop money laundering in Britain | Prem Sikka Read more The problem is exemplified, in my view, by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Raab credits the IEA with supporting him “in waging the war of ideas”. Hancock, in his former role as cabinet office minister, notoriously ruled that charities receiving public funds should not be allowed to lobby the government. All that distinguishes organisations such as the IEA from public relations companies such as Burson-Marsteller is that we don’t know who it is working for. When this funding was exposed, the IEA claimed that its campaigns against tobacco regulation were unrelated to the money it had received. Curtis credits him with founding 150 such lobby groups around the world. Charity Commission rules state that “an organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political”. How much more political can you get? Surely no organisation should be registered as a charity unless any funds it receives above a certain threshold (say £1,000) are declared.

You can not make rules to fix a problem that is at its heart not about rules. The problem is, when one side abandons those ideas there isn't much that can be done. The only thing we can do is keep those anti-democratic forces from power. It's a dangerous time, but it's much bigger than just Trump or McConnell, and we can't think that it can be solved with just a few tweeks. Most of those countries saw their democracies fail. We are not still a democracy because of our constitution, we are still a democracy because of the democratic outlook that has been around for most of our existence. The only way to fix things is to get out the people who do not share this democratic outlook. Yet in a century and a half as a nation, the filibuster was used only 37 times, almost all by southern Senators shortly after reconstruction. That's a much bigger loophole than anything we have, but it wasn't abused because we only put into the Senate people who were not willing to use it except in the absolute most dire of situations. That doesn't mean we don't try to work on patches, but that should only be done after a spiral has been stopped.