They did not seem to be in a position to help the other body. Yet, on October 10, 2002, members of the House Judiciary Committee listened to witnesses discuss how the Senate could be more efficient. In 2003, Senate committees heard similar testimony. During the hearings, eminent law professors suggested that the practice of allowing filibusters on judicial nominees could not be imposed by previous Senates on the current one. It, therefore, would be within the power of the 51 Republican Senators to uphold a point of order against the filibuster and proceed to govern by majority rule (Kmiec 2003). In Washington, this course of action is called the “nuclear option.” Although the informal use of the nuclear option has several variations, each variation has a common underlying feature that can be formally defined. The nuclear option is a dramatic refusal to recognize delaying tactics permitted under the rules that facilitates the institutionalization of majoritarian procedures in a legislative body. Occurring in legislatures such as the 1881 British House of Commons, the use of the nuclear option can be a watershed event wherever the majority lacks an unassailable way to end debate.

American higher education has been molded by forces outside the educational community. From the Civil War through the mid-1970's our political leadership considered investment in education good for the economy and, therefore, good public policy. This link between schooling and the economic system developed as the United States moved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Industrialization demanded skills that neither the family nor the church could provide, and tax-supported public higher education was to assist the transformation to an industrial society. The catalyst for this transformation came in 1862 with the passage of the Morrill Act establishing the land grant colleges. These new institutions emphasized the development of technical skills and the application of scientific principles to agriculture, industry and commerce.

During the past decade the United States has seen an increase in alternative forms to Election Day voting, including voting by mail. Voting by mail has spurred a number of studies concerning the effects it has on voter turnout and other aspects of voting. However, one important facet of voting by mail has not been examined—when people decide to send in their vote. Because ballots are mailed out weeks before the election, voting by mail creates, in effect, a rolling Election Day. This could have profound effects for campaigns as candidates must determine when to use campaign resources and campaign to an electorate who might have already voted. Using data from the 2008 general election in Washington State, this study examines when voters turned in their ballots and determines if age, partisanship, or other factors play a role in the timing of turning in a ballot.

From its very beginnings political science has been a complex discipline torn in conflicting directions. Consider Aristotle's Politics, the first book that looks like a contemporary political science monograph. In the book, Aristotle presented two opposing strands of argument that he managed with tolerable success to hold together. On the one hand, Aristotle treated the study of politics as a branch of practical knowledge, its aim being action (praxis), not theory. Political action is always contextual or circumstantial, the action of particular agents faced with a particular set of circumstances. Therefore, the student of politics needs to be concerned above all with learning the art of political judgment, with how to think and deliberate well under specific circumstances. Aristotle wrote the Politics for men situated in popular assemblies, courts of law, and councils of war. He presented politics as inseparable from rhetoric, the art of public persuasion. Aristotle believed that the perspective of the political theorist should not depart too far from that of the citizen or statesman.

Yet, at the same time, Aristotle acknowledged that politics is a form of knowledge with its own distinctive subject matter and set of truth claims. Good student of Plato's that he was, Aristotle saw himself as turning the study of politics into a science (episteme) inasmuch as it constituted the search for a comprehensive or general explanation of some particular branch of knowledge.

The Scene is unforgettable. Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator plays Adenoid Hynkel, a Fuhrer-figure, modeled comically after Adolf Hitler. Hynkel, alone in a large room, wanders over to a world-globe, picks it up, and begins to playfully bounce the world into the air, buoyantly kicking and tapping the world into the air like his little toy balloon. Suddenly, the balloon explodes.

The comical image is powerful. Here is Chaplin, the Little Tramp, holding Hitler up to ridicule, mocking his desires to do with the real world, what Hynkel does with the globe. Chaplin makes a forceful political statement through his comic talents. In this brief scene, Hitler's powerhungry drives are conveyed to the audience while Hitler is being ridiculed at the same time.

Ethnic differences based on national origin are often undistinguished within the Black community in the United States. The assumption of a singular Black ethnicity (or the notion that all Blacks in the U.S. identify their origins within the U.S.) defines the majority of scholarly work on Black political identity and political behavior. However, the growing visibility of Black immigrant communities in major metropolitan areas of the U.S. raises the following question for scholars of immigration and race politics: What are the political implications of ethnic diversity within the Black community?