Crash Course Government and Politics

Craig tries to get inside the heads of voters by discussing how voters make decisions. Now obviously, like all decision making, voter decisions are influenced by a multitude of factors, but the three we are going to focus on today (and the three political scientists seem to think play the biggest role) are party loyalty, the issues involved in an election, and candidate characteristics.

Let's talk about Gerrymandering - that is the process in which voting districts are redrawn in a way to favor one party during elections. As you'll see, this is why election outcomes on Census years (which tend to be when districts are redrawn) are a really big deal.

This week Craig is going to give you a broad overview of elections in the United States. As you may have noticed, there are kind of a lot of people in the U.S, and holding individual issues up to a public vote doesn't seem particularly plausible. So to deal with this complexity, we vote for people, not policies, that represent our best interests.

So today Craig is going to look at political ideology in America. We're going to focus on liberals and conservatives and talk about the influencers of both of these viewpoints.

Craig explores where our political opinions come from. Of course, most people's politics are grounded in their ideologies, but there are also other external influences such as the government itself, interest groups, and the media.

Up until this point we've specifically been looking at government - that is answering the questions of who, what, and how in relation to policies. But politics is different in that it looks at why certain policies are made.

So we've been talking about civil rights for the last few episodes now, and we're finally going to wrap this discussion up with the rather controversial topic of affirmative action. We'll explain what exactly affirmative action is, who it is for, and why it still exists.

Today, Craig is going to wrap up our discussion of discrimination by looking more closely at those “discrete and insular minorities” referenced in the 14th Amendment. We’ll talk about instances of discrimination of Asian, European, and Latino immigrants, Native Americans, non-English speakers, people with disabilities, and LGBT people.

Discrimination against women tends to be handled somewhat differently in the courts as they are not a minority. Even so, the courts need a method for challenging issues to help further important government interests - this is called intermediate scrutiny.

We've spent the last few episodes talking about civil liberties, or our protections from the government, but civil rights are different as they involve how some groups of citizens are able to treat other groups (usually minorities) under existing laws.

This week Craig is going to continue our discussion of due process. Technically, we started last week with the 4th amendment and search and seizure, but this week we’re going to look at the 5th and 6th amendments and how they ensure a fair trial.

This week Craig talks about police searches and seizures. Now, the fourth amendment says that you have the right to be protected against "unreasonable searches and seizures" but what exactly does this mean? Well, it's complicated.