Politics

Voter suppression is a strategy to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing people from exercising the right to vote. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization. Voter suppression instead attempts to reduce the number of voters who might vote against the candidate or proposition advocated by the suppressors.

The filibuster, a Senate procedural tactic frequently used by Republicans to block legislation and nominees favored by President Obama, met its match in November, when Senate Democrats voted to deploy the so-called “nuclear option” to neuter its power.

Oct. 1, 2013 ACA insurance exchanges debut

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or "Obamacare", is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. Together with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, it represents the most significant regulatory overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

Unemployment extension occurs when regular unemployment benefits are exhausted and extended for additional weeks. Unemployment extensions are created by passing new legislation at the federal level, often referred to as an "unemployment extension bill." This new legislation is introduced and passed during times of high or above average unemployment rates. Unemployment extensions are set during a date range in order to estimate their federal cost. After expiration, the unemployment data is re-evaluated, and new legislation may be proposed and passed to further extend them.

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions.

Edward Joseph "Ed" Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American computer professional. A former systems administrator for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a counterintelligence trainer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he later went to work for the private intelligence contractor Dell, inside a National Security Agency (NSA) outpost in Japan. In early 2013, he joined the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton inside the NSA center in Hawaii.