Governments that were digitally blind when the internet first took off in the mid-1990s now have both a telescope and a microscope.
Multiplying parties can allow politicians to hide the fact that what matters is patronage. Voters may be bewildered when confronted with the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front — or with National Liberals, Democratic Liberals and Liberal Reformists, as they were in Romania in 2014.
The US prison system that, after decades of relentless growth, holds over 20% of the world's prisoners, though America is home to less than 5% of the global population. Every year, 600,000 people are released from American prisons. More than half of all prisoners have mental health problems, while about two-thirds did not complete high school. Once out, ex-cons join about 70m Americans with criminal records, a status which in several states will deny them public housing and the right to vote, and legally bar them from occupations which require a licence, such as hair-cutting or plumbing.
During the 20th century, a ghastly illness was almost a presidential prerequisite. Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in his second term that his doctors concealed; Franklin Roosevelt's heart problems killed him while in office; John F. Kennedy's ailments could have filled an entire medical textbook, had they been disclosed. Richard Nixon's anguish during Watergate placed a large nuclear arsenal in the hands of a president who may temporarily have been of unsound mind. For the combination of sheer agony and high secrecy, though, it is hard to beat the unfortunate Grover Cleveland. For four days at the beginning of his second term, notes Robert Dallek of Stanford University's outpost in Washington, DC, he disappeared to a yacht, where six surgeons cut out a portion of his cancerous upper jaw. The offending bits were removed through his mouth so as not to damage his moustache, which might alert the public.
Frederick the Great of Prussia declared: "No woman should ever be allowed to govern anything."
As Queen Elizabeth nears 90 after 64 years as its titular head, some wonder if the Commonwealth club will survive when she goes. Few knew much about it; a quarter of Jamaicans thought its head was Barack Obama.
Roughly one adult Chinese in every 13 is a member of the Communist Party, yet identifying such people can be difficult.
Mobutu Sese Seko, the late dictator of Zaire, used to reshuffle his cabinet every six months or so to show ministers who was boss. To reinforce the point, he sometimes also slept with their wives.
Excuse me, Mr. President, but you are an asshole.
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, has a name that is about as Scottish as a Dorset cream tea.
No Congress has ever moved to dislodge a president of the same party as its majority tribe.
The Israeli government recently raised an interesting question for advertisers: whom can you safely insult?
Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant, advised Republicans to use words like "liberal", "sick", "corrupf and "traitors" together, to tarnish the Democrats.
In London you've always had the Africans at the bottom of the pile along with the West Indians. Then you get some Afghans. Then the eastern Europeans coming up. Then you get the Asians. Then you get the Irish. Then you get the whites. And at the very top you get the rich. Where there is no race.
Bill de Blasio, New York's mayor, was asked whether transgender women were allowed to swim during female-only hours. He had no quick answer. That, he said, is under review.
Parliamentary committees are normally sleepy affairs.
Queens, the researchers found, were more likely to gain new territory. After overthrowing her husband, Catherine the Great expanded her empire by some 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km), which is a lot of territory, even for Russia. (She was the first, though not the last, Russian ruler to annex Crimea.) And married queens were more aggressive than single queens or kings, whether single or married.
The upper chamber is the nation's biggest and most successful Laundromat.
This country is not working for working people. It's working only for those at the top. That's not the American dream. That's the American nightmare.
In Britain the elected House of Commons is less effective than the unelected House of Lords.
The world knows what it wants, but cannot agree on how to get what it wants.
Even the government cannot do much if it does not rain.
Fifty years later, black America still fares badly on many of the predictors of success and signals of distress that concerned Moynihan. If it were a separate country, it would have a worse life expectancy than Mexico, a worse homicide rate than Ivory Coast and a higher proportion of its citizens behind bars than anywhere on earth. This is despite the fact that, overall, America is home to the richest, most successful population of black African descent that the world has ever seen.
The distance between the front benches in Britain's House of Commons, it is said, is that of two drawn swords.
"The weather is like the government," wrote Jerome K. Jerome, "always in the wrong."
Asked how political coalitions are formed, Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, once shot back with a question of his own: "How do porcupines mate?" After a short pause, he then answered it with a grin: "Very slowly."
If town meeting teaches anything, it is how to suffer damn fools and to appreciate the fact that from time to time you too may look like a damn fool in the eyes of people as good as yourself.
If Democrats had any brains, they'd be Republicans.
"Political language," wrote George Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
Recep Erdogan is, as an old Turkish saying goes, holding a stick with shit at both ends.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created the internet's forebear, ARPANET, was President Eisenhower's response to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union. The decentralised, packet-based system of communication that forms the basis of the internet originated in America's need to withstand a massive attack on its soil.
Israel's founder reckoned that a nation "has to have its own burglars and prostitutes".
This great crappiness was essentially American.
Britain's queen has over the years received "pineapples, eggs, a box of snail shells, a grove of maple trees, a dozen tins of tuna and 7kg of prawns". Presumably they went the same way as the pair of cowboy boots she was given on a visit to America two decades ago.
Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk capacity.
Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and is not a conservative has no brains (Winston Churchill).
Nationalist protesters recently donned panda outfits to remind David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister, that there are more pandas in Edinburgh zoo (two) than there are Tory MPs in Scotland (one).
Is it a bad thing to have MPs voting for what they think is right?
The United States has taken Abraham Lincoln's admonition to heart: its constitution has been amended several times since coming into effect in 1789, but never replaced.
The world's countries no longer resemble "a flotilla of more than 100 separate boats"; rather, "they all live in 193 separate cabins on the same boat".
Sir Malcolm Jack, a former clerk of the Commons, was asked why the catering services of the House of Lords, the upper house, and the House of Commons could not have been merged to save money. He replied: "The lords feared that the quality of champagne would not be as good if they chose a joint service." According to The Guardian newspaper, the upper house has spent £ 265,770 on 17,000 bottles of the stuff since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government took office in 2010 — enough for five bottles of bubbly per peer per year.
Using "farmer" to mean "stupid" is unwise in Iowa, where the word is synonymous with "voter".