In case you missed it, it’s here. A must-watch speech for members of either party. President Obama is appealing to patriotism and love of country, and making a move to scoop up voters across the spectrum.

Standing in front of her high school English class on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota for the first time, Denise Juneau was struck by the responsibility. Looking at the sea of faces in front of her, she knew many of them faced challenges that posed barriers to their education, but she also knew that, as a teacher, she was in a position to help.

That was 20 years ago, when Juneau, an enrolled member of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribes, was about to embark on a lifelong career in education.

“I have a deep respect for teachers,” she says—a respect that she believes has informed her two terms as Montana’s superintendent of public instruction.

That job—to which she was first elected in 2008—made Juneau the first Native American woman in the country to win statewide executive office, and now she’s attempting to make history once again. One hundred years after Montana voters elected the first woman to Congress, the state’s voters may make Juneau, 49, the first Native American woman to serve there.

Standing in front of her high school English class on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota for the first time, Denise Juneau was struck by the responsibility. Looking at the sea of faces in front of her, she knew many of them faced challenges that posed barriers to their education, but she also knew that, as a teacher, she was in a position to help.

That was 20 years ago, when Juneau, an enrolled member of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribes, was about to embark on a lifelong career in education.

“I have a deep respect for teachers,” she says—a respect that she believes has informed her two terms as Montana’s superintendent of public instruction.

That job—to which she was first elected in 2008—made Juneau the first Native American woman in the country to win statewide executive office, and now she’s attempting to make history once again. One hundred years after Montana voters elected the first woman to Congress, the state’s voters may make Juneau, 49, the first Native American woman to serve there.

Shortly after Cummings took the stage early Monday evening, Sanders delegates began yelling "No TPP," referencing the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations. The chants were heard not only in the Wells Fargo Center but also on television.

"It was downright disrespectful," said Mfume, a delegate for Hillary Clinton. "I think it does not necessarily help the relations that Bernie's people may have with the larger African American community...that, for me, was a low point."

If you think you’re hearing the word “empathy” everywhere, you’re right. It’s now on the lips of scientists and business leaders, education experts and political activists. But there is a vital question that few people ask: How can I expand my own empathic potential? Empathy is not just a way to extend the boundaries of your moral universe. According to new research, it’s a habit we can cultivate to improve the quality of our own lives.

But what is empathy? It’s the ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our actions. That makes it different from kindness or pity. And don’t confuse it with the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, “Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you—they might have different tastes.” Empathy is about discovering those tastes.

The big buzz about empathy stems from a revolutionary shift in the science of how we understand human nature. The old view that we are essentially self-interested creatures is being nudged firmly to one side by evidence that we are also homo empathicus, wired for empathy, social cooperation, and mutual aid.

Over the last decade, neuroscientists have identified a 10-section “empathy circuit” in our brains which, if damaged, can curtail our ability to understand what other people are feeling. Evolutionary biologists like Frans de Waal have shown that we are social animals who have naturally evolved to care for each other, just like our primate cousins. And psychologists have revealed that we are primed for empathy by strong attachment relationships in the first two years of life.

Moments of historical change in the course of a party’s life can be difficult to spot. In “Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996,” political scientist John Gerring marks the beginning of the modern Republican Party as Herbert Hoover’s shifting campaign rhetoric in 1928 and 1932, when he talked more about the virtues of the American home and family than hard-tack economics. Hoover’s oratory about the progress of the individual being threatened by an overzealous government bureaucracy stuck around for the next eight decades, and the wisdom of generations has helped us discern that this was indeed the start of a new Republican era.

The shock of 2016, though, is just how self-evident the inflection point at which the Republican Party finds itself is; Trump is a one-man crisis for the GOP. The party has been growing more conservative and less tolerant of deviations from doctrine over the past decades, so what does it mean that a man who has freely eschewed conservative orthodoxy on policy is now the Republicans’ standard-bearer?

Many have assumed that adherence to a certain conservative purity was the engine of the GOP, and given the party’s demographic homogeneity, this made sense. But re-evaluating recent history in light of Trump, and looking a bit closer at this year’s numbers, something else seems to be the primary motivator of GOP voters, something closer to the neighborhood of cultural conservatism and racial and economic grievance rather than a passion for small government.

The 62-year-old Van Susteren—who gave up her Washington law practice 22 years ago to become a fulltime television legal expert on CNN , and next January celebrates her 15th anniversary at Fox News—said she decided to speak up for her boss on her own, and was not asked to do so either by Ailes or the Fox News media relations department.

She said she hasn’t even spoken to Ailes in the past two days.

“I have a very long-term deal,” she said about her arrangement with the conservative-leaning cable news network, adding that if she ever loses her show on Fox she’ll be happy to return to teaching at Georgetown or re-enter law practice.

“I have no reason to curry favor with Roger Ailes. I can assure you that there’s nothing Roger can do for me or against me. My contract is with the corporation. I’m not trying to get a new one.”

Westerners writing about their gap year in Africa should be aware of the risks by now. After Gap Yah guy’s satire of his time in “Tanzaniaaa”, “Africaaa”, where he actually saw someone contract “Malariaaa”, travellers have had to think carefully about how they talk about their year abroad.

At best they risk ridicule. At worst they will be accused of colonialism, cultural blindness and perpetuating an outdated narrative of the developing world for their own means.

But no one seemed to have warned Louise Linton, whose article “How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare” appeared in the Telegraph this week to promote a book about her experience.

Despite being in Zambia, she writes about becoming a “central character” in the Congolese war of the late 1990s – terrified of what the rebels from across the border “would do to the ‘skinny white muzungu with long angel hair’”.

First, I want to say to everyone who actually believed there was something to the e-mail scandal: I’m sorry that you were lied to. I don’t want this post to be a victory lap or an “I told you so” post, because the issue we’re dealing with is serious, and deserves serious thought.

What this whole story reveals is that we have a problem with churnalism. The reporters, writers, and journalists who bring us news are so understaffed that they don’t actually have time to fact check their own reporting. What most reporters do right now is just re-word whatever press release they’ve been handed. If you were someone who believed the oft-repeated lies told about the facts in this case, I’m sorry. But recognize that we don’t have effective news companies anymore, even in the new media space. In new media, people are often just re-wording what someone else previously re-worded. There’s no actual reporting.

And as citizen journalists, the lot of you are actually capable of picking up a phone and calling someone who’s the subject of a story, or an expert. Just tell them you’re a blogger, and e-mail them the resulting post. I’ve done that. I think the rest of you should consider doing it, too.

I wrote months ago that the only possible charges to bring against Clinton would be civil, and internal to the state department, requiring a sit down meeting with the president whose job it would have been to decide whether any sanction was necessary.

The end to Bernie’s campaign is likely the best example of turning a win into a loss I have ever seen. Some are calling it an extreme case of ‘white privilege‘ and sexism.

Lauren Rankin writes “If Bernie Sanders is such a progressive revolutionary, why does he insist on undermining an eminently qualified female presidential candidate who can beat a fascistic demagogue?” She goes on to write “Moving the Democratic platform to the left is a laudable goal, but it isn’t one that he alone has led. There have been many movements, including the movement to end the Hyde Amendment, the “Fight for 15,” and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, that have pushed the Democratic Party to the left. But Bernie Sanders is presenting it as if he himself is the leader of this progressive revolution, as if he and his candidacy have been doing all of the work. This is privileged ignorance at best, and sinister appropriation at worst. Sanders has constructed himself as the progressive revolutionary savior that we have all been waiting for, a privileged and entitled point of view if there ever was one. He is unwilling to stop mansplaining to the country that he’s right because either he believes so deeply that he is right and we are wrong or does he sense that this is the one time that he will ever be this relevant to American politics and his male ego is unwilling to let this go?” I go with the last explanation.

Hillary Clinton is probably the most prepared person to ever run for President. She is brilliant and hardworking. She has worked for The Children’s Defense Fund and a Congressional Committee. Been recognized as one of the top 100 lawyers in the country; was First Lady of Arkansas; First Lady of the United States; two-term Senator from New York; and Secretary of State.

For twenty-five years Republicans have attacked her and spent over a billion dollars of their and the governments money trying to prove Hillary is evil and dishonest without ever proving anything. Yet the attacks have left their mark and a majority today wrongly see her as dishonest and untrustworthy. Still Clinton leads Trump by more than two-to-one when people are asked who is more prepared to be President.