Pressure groups and abortion in the USA

A quick posting to highlight the impact that abortion is having on the Republican party. According to this article at Salon.com, the issue can be seen as partly to blame for some of the losses the party suffered in the 2012 election cycle.

Probably the most useful item from the point of view of a student of A2 politics, and Unit 3C is the impact that a pressure group calling itself the "Susan B. Anthony List" had on the selection of Republican candidates in the 2012 election.

As I am on the subject of Pressure Groups, the Economist magazine's Democracy in America blog discusses Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's new pressure group, "FWD.us", which is campaigning to change the rules about immigration.

As AJB and I repeatedly emphasise, it's important to have up-to-date examples for the exam.

[Picture Credit - Wikimedia Commons & The Economist]

Recent events in British Politics - Revision

With the AS Unit 1 exam on the horizon, the time has come for a brief round-up of political issues that are or have been in the news and which may be useful / important to mention. Don't forget that high marks can be gained from using up-to-date examples whenever possible.

The recent 2013 local elections have given UKIP some local council seats and have made David Cameron's life harder. Full results are here, and analysis from the BBC's Nick Robinson is here.

Arguably UKIP's success has underlined the fact that the UK is now a 4-party system, rather than the two or three-party system of recently.

Good arguments to make when contemplating whether the UK should reform its democratic system or not.

Also - a good time to reflect that UKIP started life as a pressure group.

A recent example of a pressure group is Migration Watch which campaigns for greater control of immigration. At the end of April it reacted to news that up to 35000 Bulgarians may enter the UK when border restrictions are lifted at the end of this year. Migration Watch says the actual number may be double that. Their web-site has a press release, published yesterday, which says that 100,000 dependants of EU nationals entered the UK getting full access to UK benefits. The press release can be found here.

Immigration is a complex issue, but certainly contributed to the rise of UKIP's vote in the 2013 local council elections.

Another news story that caught my eye this morning was this news that a privately-run prison in London (Thameside Jail) has terrible conditions.  The campaign group the Howard League for Penal Reform (i.e. prison reform) responded to this news here on their web-site, and took the opportunity to criticise government policy, especially the recent call for prisoners to do more productive activities while in jail in return for privileges like television.

Press releases like this add to a story, help journalists to put the news into context and help to put pressure on a government to react. The question is how much impact these individual actions have. Probably not much by themselves, but they help the democratic process by increasing pluralism.

[Picture Credits - Nigel Farage (top), HMP Thamesside (bottom)]

States Rights & the power of the Vice President

I will do a post covering major recent events in American Politics soon, but in the meantime take a look at this Joe Biden interview in Rolling Stone Magazine which discusses his influence and why he is the "last guy in the room" after every meeting with Obama:


A blog post from the Economist magazine discusses the importance of States rights and also a recent law in Texas which seems to underline the rights of state officials to ignore federal law. So, the federal government may pass a law to limit access to guns, but Texas certainly doesn't have to enforce that law:

A quick reminder that the debate about gay marriage has reached the Supreme Court and that some kind of decision over California's Proposition 8 (a popular vote which banned it) is due some point in late May or June. Bloomberg has an article about it here, indicating the decision may not be entirely straightforward. The decision over Obamacare was not straightforward either, although some simplification is sensible for the A2 exam.

The short version of the Obamacare decision is that the law is constitutional, but only if classed as a tax (which the Federal government has the right to levy). The problem for the Obama administration is that Obamacare was not called a tax and in fact they denied that it was.

To finish, there is a great article in the Economist this week which discusses the various methods Obama has used to get round the obstructionist Congress. You can find it here. He has used the control of the executive to ignore certain parts of legislation, announced this using signing statements, and used "recess appointments" to get members of the executive confirmed without Senate approval. Great stuff.

[Picture Credits: Top - Rolling Stone. Middle - The Economist. Bottom - Hoai Phuong, Flickr]