Seth Masket

Creating a legal marijuana industry in Colorado from scratch.

But will the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov damage people's beliefs in the power of government to solve problems?

Politicians in five states have a tricky way of getting around certain kinds of pressure from voters. We saw this at work last week when Colorado Senator Evie Hudak resigned her seat.

Even if the filibuster is eliminated.

Unlimited political contributions are the new reality. Once we accept that maybe we can start to figure out the complicated relationship between money and politics.

Is it even possible for our country to support a moderate political party?

And how would its roughly 350,000 residents vote?

The American political system has developed an unusual way of meeting citizens' needs while attempting to hide the fact that it is doing so.

Constituents in Tea Party districts demanded conservative stances from their elected officials, but that didn't need to include destructive or potentially catastrophic tactics.

Or will the majority of voters have moved on to other issues by the time we reach the mid-term elections?

Well, how do you define strengths and weaknesses?

What happens this week won't end this week. The reverberations of a shutdown will be felt for years to come.

It's mostly the younger members of Congress who are pushing for a shutdown of the federal government this week. Do they need a history lesson about what happened in the winter of 1995-96?

Welcome to the age of the permanent campaign, where recalls are easy to trigger than ever before and politicians need to worry about not just tomorrow's war chest, but also today's.

Voter fraud has become a major cause for some politicians on the right, but one may have taken it too far.

What happens when activists and interest groups support political candidates who are not in their pocket, and give them leverage to behave more moderately.

Ideologically extreme members of Congress are more vulnerable to defeat when voters can learn about their in-office activities through traditional media.

Did the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 have any of its intended effects?

Obama's field offices were more effective than Romney's before the last presidential election, how the dispersion of donations is related to candidate success, and other things we're learning by incorporating maps into new political science research.

Why do those who support universal health care almost always also desire a ban on assault weapons? Ideology is more than just the sum total of our own individual political beliefs. An ideology is, in some ways, like a coalition of ideas.

On why the Democratic base was (eventually) able to forgive President Clinton for his infidelity, but probably won't give the New York City mayoral hopeful the same pass.

Does a grassroots political movement that is still relatively young have the power to keep someone out of the White House?

The professor of public policy, who passed away last week, knew his subject in a way few of us ever will, approaching it simultaneously as a scholar, a reformer, and an advocate.

They're just summer blockbusters, sure, but they present a rather dim view of the importance of the classroom.