Category: Government, Policy, & Politics

The country’s intensifying efforts to redraw maritime borders have its neighbors, and the U.S., fearing war. But does the aggression reflect a government growing in power—or one facing a crisis of legitimacy?

However willy-nilly these provocations may at first appear, the struggle that China has launched for dominance of the western Pacific is anything but indiscriminate.

paradoxically, China’s new behavior appears to be a reflection not only of rising capability or self-confidence, but also of rising insecurity among the Communist Party leadership, whose legitimacy in the country’s post-ideological era has always rested on the narrow twin pillars of strong economic performance and nationalism.

Source: China’s Dangerous Game – The Atlantic

To make it, they used what they call the shortest splitline algorithm. Basically, they used the shortest possible line to cut a state into two halves with roughly equal populations. Then they did so again, and again, and again, until they had the proper number of overall districts.

Source: This is what America would look like without gerrymandering – Vox

 

To put it more bluntly, pretty little districts could actually be pretty terrible. That is, they could be terrible at doing what districts are supposed to do: engender good representation.

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t entertain reforms to the redistricting process, such as having more independent commissions, and fewer incumbent legislators, draw the lines. But whoever draws the lines, there’s no reason to draw straight ones. Representation is about people, not polygons.

Source: Why weird congressional districts can be good congressional districts – The Washington Post by John Sides

when one looks at the state of Republican public opinion (especially among the likely caucus and primary voters), at the consistent and persistent messages coming from the information sources they follow, and at the supine nature of congressional leaders and business leaders in countering extremism, it is not at all likely that what passes for mainstream, problem-solving conservatism will dominate the Republican Party anytime soon.

Source: When Extremism Goes Mainstream – The Atlantic

 

“It is not our job to see that anyone gets an education.”

— Oklahoma state Representative Mike Reynolds

 

“I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change. But I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”

— Kentucky state Senator Brandon Smith (fact-check: the average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees)

Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in recent history. And these trends manifest themselves in myriad ways, both in politics and in everyday life.

Source: Political Polarization in the American Public | Pew Research Center