The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track
by Thomas E. Mann (Author), Norman J. Ornstein (Author), Paul Mantell (Narrator)
New!:
Human Rights
A National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle finalist, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy is a remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens
Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them.
How Fox News KO'd The Republican Party chronicles the history of the Tea Party as a movement and as an ill fitting political party within the Republican Party.
1. INTRODUCTION
Anyone who follows politics knows that the Grand Old Party (GOP) is in deep trouble. The Republican Party is in total disarray and that may be an understatement. Republicans in the Senate and House snipe at each other and House members refuse to do anything constructive. Instead like lemmings being drawn to their death, they continue meet the definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result—by voting 43 times to defund the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare.
This aberrant behavior didn't happen overnight. Nor was it accidental, it wasn't. That's not to say it was planned, it wasn't. The seeds for what is taking place in federal and state governments now were sown way back in November 2008.
It started with the election of a personable, African American man with the strange, non-Anglo, sounding name, Barack Obama. Charming and intelligent with empathy for working class people, Barack Obama had caught the imagination of much of the electorate—enough to win a decisive, almost landslide, victory.
I may be wrong, but when Barack Obama shocked the right and the world by winning the 2008 presidential election, the right didn't know what to think or do at first. The right wing media machine hadn't kicked into gear yet. I actually had the distinct feeling that the right didn't hate Obama, yet. Not only that, but it seemed as if many right wingers were willing to give BO the benefit of the doubt and withhold judgment until he actually did something.
Unfortunately, this moment of détente passed and by the time he was inaugurated, Fox News and the hate radio dwarves had demonized the President elect for two and a half months—drilling into their minds how evil he was and that he would ruin the country.
Not surprising, the Republican Party was unhappy with the results of the election and within hours of the new President's inauguration, party apparatchiks and consultants unscrupulously met at a DC supper club and plotted a policy of total obstruction against the duly elected President of the United States. To me, if this isn't treasonous, it's seditious or at least shamelessly unethical.
Nevertheless, the Republican Party weren't the only discontented parties. Rich and powerful interests were also displeased and vowing to do something about it, set something in motion, which may ultimately destroy the Republican Party as a national party.
Online social media are changing the face of politics in the United States. Beginning with a strong theoretical foundation grounded in political, communications and psychology literature, Tweeting to Power examines the effect of online social media on how people come to learn, understand and engage in politics. Gainous and Wagner propose that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter offer the opportunity for a new information flow that is no longer being structured and limited by the popular media. Television and newspapers, which were traditionally the sole or primary gatekeeper, can no longer limit or govern what information is exchanged. By lowering the cost of both supplying the information and obtaining it, social networking applications have recreated how, when and where people are informed.
To establish this premise, Gainous and Wagner analyze multiple datasets, quantitative and qualitative, exploring and measuring the use of social media by voters and citizens as well as the strategies and approaches adopted by politicians and elected officials. They illustrate how these new and growing online communities are new forums for the exchange of information that is governed by relationships formed and maintained outside traditional media. Using empirical measures, they prove both how candidates utilize Twitter to shape the information voters rely upon and how effective this effort was at garnering votes in the 2010 congressional elections. With both theory and data, Gainous and Wagner show how the social media revolution is creating a new paradigm for political communication and shifting the very foundation of the political process.
"How to Use the Internet to Win in 2014" is a comprehensive guide to effective online political campaigning and advocacy. Its focus is practical, concentrating on using today's digital tools to elect candidates and move issues in tough political fights. Though based on earlier guides written in 2010 and 2012, this new edition is expanded, rewritten and completely reorganized to highlight the latest developments in the tools and tactics of online politics. Incorporating important lessons from the 2012 and 2013 U.S. elections, it's essential for anyone running for office in 2014. The book is also extremely useful for individual activists, nonprofit political advocates and journalists covering political campaigns.
Chapters include:
*The Internet: What's It Good For?
*Essential Tools and Infrastructure: Creating a Basic Online Campaign
*Preparing an Outreach Outreach Strategy
*Social Media
*Online Advertising
*Grassroots and Field Organizing
*Mobilization and GOTV
*Online Fundraising
*Data and Analytics
*Logistics, Budget and Staffing
*A Sample Online Campaign Plan
"How to Use the Internet to Win in 2014" is written by Colin Delany, a seventeen-year veteran of internet politics and advocacy, a sought-after speaker and trainer and a columnist for "Campaigns & Elections" magazine. As a consultant, he has worked with dozens of nonprofit groups, candidates and companies to help them achieve their advocacy, electoral and communications goals using digital tools. This e-book reflects his own years of experience as well as lessons learned from campaigns across the political spectrum.
Delany's previous e-books, "Learning from Obama" -- the definitive guide to Barack Obama's 2008 online campaign -- and "Online Politics 101" have together been downloaded tens of thousands of times from Epolitics.com. The site itself was named "Best Blog - National Politics" at the 2007 Politics Online Conference and received a "Victory Award" as "Best Blog (non-Spanish-language)" at the 2012 Poli Conference. Besides being honored as one of the "Ten Who Are Changing the World of Internet Politics" at the 2010 World E-Gov Forum in Paris, Delany has spoken at venues ranging from Harvard University and the London School of Economics to the South By Southwest Interactive conference.
This book is the first comprehensive, systematic investigation of the connection between civil society and political change in Asia—change toward open, participatory, and accountable politics. Its findings suggest that the link between a vibrant civil society and democracy is indeterminate: certain types of civil society organizations support democracy, but others have the potential to undermine it.
Further, the study argues that while civil society is a key factor in political change, democratic transition and consolidation hinge on the development of effective political parties, legislatures, and state institutions. Rooted in a common definition of civil society, a strong analytical framework, and rich empirical material, the analyses and conclusions of the book will have a lasting impact on the understanding of civil society and its relation to democracy in Asia and around the world.
The debate over the Affordable Care Act was one of the most important and public examinations of the Constitution in our history. At the forefront of that debate were the legal scholars blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy, who engaged in a spirited, erudite, and accessible discussion of the legal issues involved in the cases - beginning before the law was even passed. Several of the Volokh bloggers played key roles in developing the constitutional arguments against the ACA. Their blog posts and articles about the Act had a significant impact on both the public debate and the legal arguments in the case. It was perhaps the first time that a blog affected arguments submitted to the United States Supreme Court on a major issue. In the process, the bloggers helped legitimize a new type of legal discourse. This book compiles the discussion that unfolded at the Volokh Conspiracy blog into a readable narrative, enhanced with new context and analysis, as the contributors reflect on the Obamacare litigation with the advantage of hindsight. The different bloggers certainly did not always agree with each other, but the back-and-forth debates provide momentum as the reader follows the development of the arguments over time. A Conspiracy Against Obamacare exemplifies an important new form of legal discourse and public intellectualism.
Successful campaign manager and three-time mayor of Ashland, Oregon, Catherine Shaw presents a clear and concise, must-have handbook for navigating local campaigns. This handbook gives political novices and veterans alike a comprehensive and detailed plan for organizing, funding, publicizing, and winning local political campaigns. Finding the right message and targeting the right voters are clearly explained through specific examples, anecdotes, and illustrations. Shaw also provides in-depth information on assembling campaign teams, precinct analysis, canvassing, and dealing with the media. The Campaign Manager is an encouraging, lucid presentation of how to win elections at the local level.
Updates to the fifth edition include an entirely new chapter on social media and its influence on campaigning, new coverage on how to put together a campaign plan, and a new appendix on how to campaign on a budget.
The extraordinary story of how a team of international forensic scientists pioneered ground-breaking DNA technology to identify the bodies of thousands of victims of the Yugoslav Wars, and how their work is now giving justice to families from Iraq to Bosnia
What would it be like to be tasked with finding, exhuming from dozens of mass graves, and then identifying the mangled body-parts of an estimated 8,100 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia? A leading forensic scientist likened it to “solving the world’s greatest forensic science puzzle,” and in 1999 one DNA laboratory, run by the International Commission on Missing Persons in Sarajevo, decided to do just that. Thirteen years on, the ICMP are the international leaders in using DNA-assisted technology to assist in identifying the thousands of persons worldwide missing from wars, mass human-rights abuses and natural disasters. Christian Jennings, a foreign correspondent and former staffer at the ICMP, tells the story of the organization, and how they are now gathering forensic evidence of those killed in Libya and Iraq, and tracing the victims of brutal regimes in Chile and Colombia. He describes too how they helped identify the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami , in this moving and fast-paced story about the power of science to bring justice to broken countries. Now used as evidence at war crimes trials in The Hague, the technology described in Bosnia's Million Bones is an amazing story of modern science, politics, and the quest for truth. It is real-life CSI in action.The never-before-told full story of the 1971 history-changing break-in of the FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania, by a group of unlikely activists--quiet, ordinary, hardworking Americans--that made clear the shocking truth and confirmed what some had long suspected, that J. Edgar Hoover had created and was operating his own shadow Bureau of Investigation.
The book shows how the break-in, and subsequent release of the contents of the FBI's files to newspapers across the country, upended the public's perception of the up-till-then inviolate head of the Bureau, paving the way for the FBI's overhaul for the first time since its inception forty-seven years before, in 1924, and setting the stage for the sensational release three months later by Daniel Ellsberg of the top-secret seven-thousand-page Pentagon study of U.S. decision making regarding the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers.
In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.
With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness.
While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.
After forty years of protest and debate, we all know one thing for certain about abortion: it’s a women’s issue, right?
Wrong, says Brian Fisher in his groundbreaking book Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women. In it he reveals long-forgotten or never-known facts to show that abortion is very much a man’s concern—and it’s part of a long and tragic pattern of men oppressing women. Which is why the original author of the Equal Rights Amendment, feminist Alice Paul, called abortion the “ultimate exploitation of women.”
Fisher shows that a select group of compassionate men led the way in the nineteenth century to pass laws strengthening the criminalization of abortion—and worked with feminists of that era to do so. But it was men, not women, who drove the campaign that led to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling giving women an unqualified right to end the lives of their unborn children.
So what’s in it for men? As feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon observes, abortion “does not liberate women; it frees male sexual aggression.” Abortion is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for men with non-committal sex lives. Another agenda is at work as well. Men use abortion to advance their racist, eugenic, and population control dreams and schemes, as Fisher shows, citing their own words.
If men gave us abortion, men can end it as well. Fisher outlines why and how, and he urges men to take up the task with courageous women. He lays out a five-point plan for men to “with humility, faithfulness, and relentless perseverance, commit our time, resources, energy, heart, and testimony to ending abortion in America for the sake of women, men, and the family.”
This unique ebook provides an encyclopedic overview of all aspects of the Uyghur population and the Chinese Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, protests and alleged terrorism by Muslim Uyghurs, Chinese government policies toward the Uyghurs, oppression, history, Chinese human rights, U.S. policy issues, and much more. This massive compendium includes government reports, federal material, military information, and Congressional hearing transcripts.
Contents:
Uyghurs in Xinjiang: United or Divided Against the PRC? * State Department Material * Human Rights in Xinjiang: Recent Developments * Xinjiang * The Islamic Republic of Eastern Turkestan and the Formation of Modern Uyghur Identity in Xinjiang * Uyghur Muslim Ethnic Separatism in Xinjiang, China * Xinjiang and China's National Security: Counter-Terrorism or Counter-Separatism? * Nationalism and Islamic Identity in Xinjiang * The Fracturing of China? Ethnic Separatism and Political Violence in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region * Freedom Fighters or Terrorists? Exploring the Case of the Uighur People * Uyghurs Without Borders? The Economic and Social Status of Uyghurs in Kazakhstan and Its Impact on Interethnic Conflict and Transnational Threats * Protracted Counterinsurgency Chinese COIN Strategy in Xinjiang * Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Xinjiang and Uyghur Coverage * Congressional-Executive Commission on China - Annual Report 2012 * Human Rights in China and U.S. Policy: Issues for the 113th Congress * Investigating the Chinese Threat, Part II: Human Rights Abuses, Torture and Disappearances * The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression? * Political Prisoners in China: Trends and Implications for U.S. Policy
In the past decade, Chinese authorities have carried out especially harsh religious and ethnic policies against Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic ethnic group living primarily in China's far northwestern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Once the predominant ethnic group in the region, Xinjiang's 8.5 million Uighurs now constitute an estimated 40% of the population as many Han have migrated there, particularly to the regional capital, Urumqi. The PRC government asserts that many Muslims in China, including Uighurs, receive preferential treatment due to special policies toward minority groups, that PRC economic policies have benefitted Uighurs, and that firm religious and ethnic policies are necessary to prevent terrorism. In 2010, China's top leadership held the first "work forum" focused on the XUAR. The forum produced an ambitious economic development plan for the region, but did not address longstanding Uighur political and religious grievances.
The PRC government has often conflated the religious and cultural practices of Uighurs in Xinjiang with subversive activities or the "three evils of religious extremism, splittism, and terrorism." It claims that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a Uighur organization that advocates the creation of an independent Uighur Islamic state, was responsible for terrorist attacks in China and has ties to Al Qaeda. In 2011, Xinjiang courts tried 414 cases of endangering state security, up 10% over the previous year. In June 2012, the official press announced that police had arrested six Uighurs in connection with an attempted hijacking aboard a plane travelling from Hotan, Xinjiang to Urumqi. Representatives of the World Uyghur Congress countered that the onboard disturbance was not a hijacking attempt but rather a "brawl over a seat dispute."
The Chinese government uses anti-terrorism campaigns as a pretext for enforcing harsh security policies in the XUAR. The government used security preparations for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, reports of terrorist activity, and protests in Tibetan areas of China and within the XUAR as platforms for advancing repressive security measures in the region.
The question of how the human rights violations of previous regimes and past periods of conflict ought to be addressed is one of the most pressing concerns facing governments and policy makers today. New democracies and states in the fragile post-conflict peace-settlement phase are confronted by the need to make crucial decisions about whether to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable for their actions and, if so, the mechanisms they ought to employ to best achieve that end. This is the first book to examine the ways in which states and societies in the Asia-Pacific region have navigated these difficult waters. Drawing together several of the world's leading experts on transitional justice with Asia-Pacific regional and country specialists it provides an overview of the processes and practices of transitional justice in the region as well as detailed analysis of the cases of Cambodia; Sri Lanka; Aceh, Indonesia; South Korea; the Solomon Islands; and East Timor.