Filibuster

The United States is a country founded and built around law. A significant amount of the country’s founding fathers were lawyers. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton were all lawyers. It is no coincidence that the most important documents in the country specifically lay out the law for the protection of its people. The founders drafted an ingenious system; one of which the world had never seen. A system built to prevent a tyrant from rising to power ever again.…

Now in the United State, the Constitution divides formal power in foreign policymaking between the President and Congress. The President has the right to maintain the initiative, it means the President has more power than the Congress. The President can implement the foreign policy , negotiates treaties, proclaim friendship, so this make the President become more powerful. However, the Congress can reject the President 's initiatives if they have enough ratified refusal . In this way, the…

basically threaten the people to vote for the act. Along with using Kennedy’s death to push for the votes as well, saying that the people would be remembering Kennedy by voting for the act that he had originally proposed. The act went through an 83-day filibuster that was the longest in history and it also survived the strong southern opposition before President Johnson was able to officially sign it into law in the summer of…

Divide and Conquer: Partisanship Government Partisanship polarization is not a new concept to American politics. The Founding Fathers were divided on the philosophies of federal government between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. American politics saw a decline of partisan politics during the 1950s and 1960s, however there was a resurgence in the late 1970s that has yet to cease (Brewer, 2005, p. 219). While the political elite have been divided along partisan lines, the results of their…

Many demonstrations by different racial groups have successfully reformed the American political and social landscape. The coverage of these events and movements play a large role in creating a public awareness and stance of these issues. Whether on a local or national level, manipulation of the media can hinder or facilitate the growth and acceptance of these movements. Resentment towards the growing ethnic movements of the sixties provided a backdrop for many biased articles presented in…

If an interest group supports an extreme policy, advocacy groups can result in polarization through their influences in PACs. On the other hand, because party insiders want to win the elections, they invest in candidates who will be more appealing in general elections--that is it, candidates who will appeal to the median voter (Drutman 1, 2013). This is because most of the voters are moderate. Such an ideology is due to feeling unrelated to conservative or liberal views and, in some instances,…

Going to Meet the Man: A History of Racial Terror Many Americans still choose to downplay the prominent role racism played in the formation of our country. However, the choice to ignore racial violence, both past, and present, perpetuates a dangerous history of violence against African-Americans. James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” centers around Jesse, a white deputy sheriff, his childhood experience of attending a lynching, and his violent inclinations as an adult. In “Going to Meet the…

There are many factors seen as threats to the United States’ welfare and democracy. More specifically, the expansion of presidential power has implications that are a threat to our democracy. The United States’ democracy is seen as a form of government in which all citizens participate equally—either directly or, through elected representatives. The founding fathers also incorporated John Locke’s idea that the duty of the government is to protect the natural rights—life, liberty, and property—of…

For decades, African Americans were looked down on from their white allies. But on Sunday, March 8th, 1964, when Senator Hubert Humphrey appeared on the NBC news program Meet the Press to discuss the civil rights bill, many African Americans had hope that something was about to change. Since 1937, several Southern senators had prevented eleven civil rights bills from coming up for a vote in the Senate. But now, the civil rights bill had been approved by the House of Representatives and was sent…

goal with his domestic programs. Another program was the Civil Rights Act, which permanently made it illegal in the U.S. to segregate or discriminate people based on their race or gender. Furthermore, “the legislation was enacted after the longest filibuster (six months) in Senate history,” demonstrating the tension this act assumedly released (Smith “Civil”). The act possibly would have originally been enacted under Kennedy, but he was assassinated before it happened. Therefore, it can be seen…