The Electoral College routinely threatens or produces perverse outcomes, where the will of the voters is thwarted by an ill-considered 18th-century electoral device. It has no place in a democracy that strives for a standard of “one person, one vote.” And most Americans still don’t like it. In a 2018 survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, 65 percent said presidents should be elected by popular vote.

Like the Supreme Court, the Electoral College sometimes frustrates the will of political majorities. That makes it an easy target in this populist age. But while “majority rules” has always been an appealing slogan, it’s an insufficient principle for structuring an electoral system in the U.S.

Presidential elections often do not produce popular majorities. In 2016 neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump won 50%. “Plurality rules” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Today, 48 states use a winner-take-all approach to their Electoral College votes. Put differently, if a candidate wins one of those 48 states by even a single vote, that candidate receives all of that state’s electoral votes. States should adopt a new system in which each candidate receives his or her earned percentage of the state’s electoral votes based on that state’s popular vote, provided that the losing candidates reach a certain viability threshold, say, 25% of the state’s vote.

There was plenty of evidence to show that Ben Ari incites violence against Palestinians. In contrast, the Palestinian and left parties criticize Israel’s constitutional structure, but don’t call for violence.

More important, however, the high court was weighing in at a crucial moment for Israel’s constitutional democracy — crucial because of the nation-state law and Netanyahu’s strident interpretation of it.

This problem wouldn’t exist, if the Chief Justice, or other justices on the Supreme Court, weren’t involved with choosing their own colleagues. Judicial Cronyism and with it, Judicial Tyranny in Israel must end. Israel desperately needs reform of the judicial selection process, if it wants to end the Judicial Dictatorship, and have a true democracy.

We have recently witnessed that the US system of choosing judges to the Supreme Court may be harsh, but is also transparent and makes sense. The Israeli system lacks transparency and it doesn’t really make sense that judges are appointed mostly by other judges and members of the legal community.

As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis. But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.

That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday’s FAA order to ground the plane.

How can a manufacturer of something as complex and potentially dangerous as a passenger jet be allowed to play such a large role in deciding whether its product is safe? It turns out that the F.A.A., with congressional approval, has “over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes,” the Seattle Times said.

the Max 8 is different from previous 737s in one major way: It has larger engines placed farther forward on its wings. The new design increased the risk that the plane could stall if pilots angled the nose too high. To counteract this risk, Boeing introduced the MCAS, which automatically nudges the nose down if onboard sensors detect that the plane risks stalling. The software is designed to work automatically and only in extreme situations. Boeing decided pilots didn’t need any new training to understand MCAS.

Once someone understands narcissistic personality disorder, they understand you—and why you’re unfit and incompetent for the esteemed office you temporarily hold.

George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!

…he did give him the job he wanted! George dropped out, and Trump said he was smart not to work for such a “weak” Sessions.

As a Jewish American-Israeli and a Palestinian Muslim, we understand far too well the consequences of anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, and white supremacy. And as activists who are unafraid to speak the truth, we know we have a duty to call out any bigotry wherever it exists…

We did a double take when we first noticed Chelsea Clinton was at the vigil. Just weeks before this tragedy, we bore witness to a bigoted, anti-Muslim mob coming after Rep. Ilhan Omar for speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby in this country. As people in unwavering solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and human rights, we were profoundly disappointed when Chelsea Clinton used her platform to fan those flames.

It is a dangerous sign of the times when a courageous young woman is attacked for her willingness to publicly confront the evil of anti-Semitism, especially when the attack comes from other Democrats. All people of good will regardless of their party, ethnicity, or religion should commend Chelsea Clinton for her commitment to fight bigotry no matter the source.

Reading the many progressive identity-based defenses of Omar, which repeatedly and pointlessly invoke the fact that she is a hijabi-wearing black refugee being criticized by a white native-born American woman, one gets the impression that this particular legislator can pretty much say whatever she wants and expect to be absolved for it: Her canonization as a left-wing hero is necessary, and irrevocable.

Omar can’t be an anti-Semite because members of “marginalized” groups are inherently virtuous. This is the ultimate logic of identity politics.

…as the novelty wore off, it became more and more apparent what a treasure C-SPAN turned out to be. The network, which can now be seen in more than 90 million households, still gives us daily proceedings from the House and Senate chambers. It also lets us hear important issues explored in committee rooms, helps us size up candidates on the campaign trail, engages us with book authors and saves a seat for us at think-tank roundtables. It challenges us to think for ourselves, without the clatter of punditry.

So happy birthday, C-SPAN. We need you more than ever.

C-SPAN will be incredibly lively the next few years as the radical younger House Democrats collide with the grandparents who currently run the House Democratic Party. There will be a lot of opportunities for Brian Lamb’s invention to bring their government once again to the American people without editing and without distortion.

…the ability to speak live on TV to the nation makes politics less about achieving things directly and more about scoring points. As anyone who watched Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee saw, many members are far more interested in speechifying than in asking substantive questions (much less listening to the answers).