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Since 2001, nearly 1,000 bills that would tighten voting laws have been introduced in 46 states. 24 voting restrictions have passed in 17 states since 2011. This fall, new laws could affect more than 5 million voters in states representing 179 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. In the past two years, 5 battleground states (Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) have tightened their voting laws. As of April, 74 restrictive voting laws were on the table in 24 states... Between 2000 and 2010, there were: 649 million votes cast in general elections 47,000 UFO sightings 441 Americans killed by lightning 13 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation

UFO Sightings Are More Common Than Voter Fraud | Mother Jones

Trent Lott and Tom Daschle make an unlikely pair. Trent is gregarious, talkative and loud. Tom is retiring, mild-mannered and quiet. Interview them together and their differences are pronounced. But what makes them almost unheard of as a couple is that Lott is a Republican and Daschle is a Democrat. Specifically they are both former leaders of their respective parties in the US Senate. They believe they were in US government at a time when it actually worked, when Republicans and Democrats certainly disagreed but it didn't stop them co-operating in order to get things done. That was the 80s and 90s - even the first few years of this century. But in American politics today, functioning, supportive, respectful bipartisan teams are like dodos - they simply don't exist anymore. Which is exactly why these two men, who have spent more than 50 years between them in Congress, have decided to work together to try to fix this broken system. Their new book Crisis Point is the result.

Two former senators want to undo US political 'crisis point' - BBC NewsBillionaire VC says that most companies will eventually pay an Amazon 'tax' - Yahoo Finance

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) faces intensifying criticism for its finding that hydraulic fracturing has no "widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water" — and the pushback comes not from activists, but from the agency's own science advisors.

Scientists disagree over EPA fracking ruling - Business Insider

Of course, the US is not the only country where fringe demagogues are now poisoning mainstream politics. Religious language is less often heard in Western Europe, but all the more in parts of Eastern Europe, Turkey, and Israel. And the message of populism is similar everywhere in the democratic world: Liberal elites are to be blamed for all our ills and anxieties, from Europe’s refugee crisis to the inequities of the global economy, from “multiculturalism” to the rise of radical Islam.

An Unhinged Democracy in America by Ian Buruma - Project Syndicate