UK politicians expect voters to expect them to break their promises. Therefore they now try out special terminology for "promises meant to be kept".

In a minority or coalition government, parties won't be able to do everything they wanted to do. Recognizing this, we should choose politicians with the right priorities, who will do their best to fund the important programs and collect enough taxes for them.

If you feel the need to ask a politician to make a concrete promise about a specific program, that is because you suspect that politician doesn't give it as much priority as it deserves. If you're right, that suggests you should vote for someone else with better priorities.

Some mentally ill fanatics fantasize about terrorism. The FBI, rather than help them steer away from this, pushes them into making concrete plans — so it can imprison them permanently.

Meanwhile, fear of prosecution causes communities to eject such people, which can encourage them to move towards real terrorism.

Big Banks Claim Reform Will Hurt the Economy. If We Don't Fix This House of Cards, It Will Fall on Us Again.

The USA Freedom Act: a step in the right direction, but doesn't eliminate all the wrongs in the PAT RIOT Act.

Even if the PAT RIOT Act were eliminated and FISA were made just, other systems collect data about people in general and make digital dossiers that threaten democracy and human rights.

Tunisia is considering a law that would imprison whistleblowers for 10 years for revealing state secrets including crimes such as torture, criminalize making a video recording in a jail or police station, and criminalize insulting the army (on vague conditions that don't protect human rights).

Reference in French.