Economics and Elections →

It's a wonder democracies function as well as they do:

...Voters have fairly short memories, and they judge economic policy not by long-term results but by recent growth. Over five years, the coalition’s record looks terrible. But over the past couple of quarters it looks pretty good, and that’s what matters politically.
In making these assertions, I’m not engaged in casual speculation — I’m drawing on a large body of political science research, mainly focused on presidential contests in the United States but clearly applicable elsewhere. This research debunks almost all the horse-race narratives beloved by political pundits — never mind who wins the news cycle, or who appeals to the supposed concerns of independent voters. What mainly matters is income growth immediately before the election. And I mean immediately: We’re talking about something less than a year, maybe less than half a year.
This is, if you think about it, a distressing result, because it says that there is little or no political reward for good policy...

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance (HBO) →

This really is such a great piece. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. The end of it goes to show how out of touch the average American is with laws around technology. Good reminder to try to stay informed!

There are very few government checks on what America's sweeping surveillance programs are capable of doing. John Oliver sits down with Edward Snowden to discuss the NSA, the balance between privacy and security, and dick-pics. Connect with Last Week Tonight online...

What did the Clinton administration know about Rwanda? →

Turns out, quite a lot more than it let on...

This week marks 21 years since the onset of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which more than 500,000 people, mostly members of the Tutsi ethnic minority, were slaughtered. While the Rwandan genocide has become an iconic symbol of the need for international humanitarian intervention, at the time, governments were very slow to react. In the aftermath of the genocide, as the extent of the devastation become clear, governments said they were unaware of what was happening. A growing body of evidence, however, demonstrates what those of us living in Rwanda in the period before the genocide saw clearly — there were ample warnings that violence was approaching. The lack of political will, rather than the lack of information, prevented the world from acting to stop the killing.

Chinese riot police crush grasslands protest over chemical pollution →

Riot police have crushed a three-week-long protest against toxic waste from a chemical refinery complex in China’s Inner Mongolia region, according to local villagers and the government.
It was the latest in a series of demonstrations about pollution on the country’s northern grasslands.
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Tensions have been rising in Inner Mongolia in recent months, as herders protest pollution and land grabs by mining and mineral resources industries, the mainstay of the region’s economy. Herders say that their grasslands and livestock have been poisoned and that little compensation has been paid for losses and land seizures.
Villagers said more than 2,000 riot police officers were deployed over the weekend near Daqintala village in Naiman county in the eastern part of Inner Mongolia, to break up a protest involving about 1,000 locals over pollution originating from the Naiman Chemical Refinery Zone.

Iran’s grass-roots politics and the nuclear deal →

The recently agreed-upon nuclear framework between Iran and the P5+1 world powers is a great example of how grass-roots participation at the level of domestic politics can interact with important changes at the level of international politics. The nuclear breakthrough could not have happened without important developments that led to the election of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani in June 2013. If this agreement turns in to a comprehensive deal by June 2015, it will have important ramifications for Iranian domestic politics.
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Other users have connected the nuclear deal to the upcoming parliamentary election in February 2016. A prominent reformist activist wrote that the next round of the battle for political change would be the elections for both the parliamentary and the Assembly of Experts. Comments from other reformist activists and politicians also show that they perceive the nuclear breakthrough as a big boost for the victory of reformist and moderate alliance in the 2016 parliamentary election. Reformists appear to expect that this international success could give more leverage to Rouhani’s administration in domestic politics against hardliners and potentially open up space for reformists organizing around elections and collective action without direct political demands within civil society. While it does not seem likely that the Guardian Council will approve prominent reformist figures to run for the election, it is possible that moderate figures in the same vein as Rouhani – or less known reformist politicians – will be able to pass the filter of the Guardian Council.

Tales from the Trenches: I was SWATed →

It's not like we haven't had people prank call the police on others. But 1. the number of false calls is rising, 2. probably because fancy new anonymizing services are making it very hard to find out who's making the calls, and 3. it's far more dangerous than previously, since SWAT has been taking over for more and more traditional police calls.

It's now turned into an intimidation tactic against people's [small-time] political opponents, and police haven't caught on yet. And even those that are aware have no good way of legally or practically dealing with it.

It’s not as simple as homophobic thugs vs. civil rights in Indiana →

These conflicts happen all the time. Sometimes, balancing them is easy. In January, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the state of Arkansas had to allow a Muslim prison inmate to grow a short beard. It weighed the state’s interests in security against the inmate’s First Amendment rights, and the case was a slam dunk. (Then again, it was deemed worthy of review, so maybe not.)

Other times, the balance is difficult. In a powerful concurring opinion in the Elane Photography case, a New Mexico judge confessed that he struggled with his decision. The law was clear: if you open a business, you play by the rules of the market, and that includes anti-discrimination laws. But he also understood the religious convictions of the photographer, and the difficult choice he was forcing her to make.

Indiana’s RFRA, like others, would likely cause that case to come out the other way. And so, both RFRA’s supporters and opponents are right. Indiana’s RFRA, like others, is both a “license to discriminate” and a “protection of religious freedom.”

Is there no way forward, then? Must the two sides continue to talk past one another, each more irate than the other?