I've heard this phrase many times. People mention this mountain of evidence for evolution. Well, here is your chance to provide this evidence. Show me just one piece of scientific evidence that proves the theory of evolution. I bet you can't. In fact, there is no physical evidence that proves a common ancestor for life. There is no evidence that living things can, through mutations, evolve into another kind of life. Lizards did not become birds. Fish did not grow legs and a set of lungs, and walk onto dry land. Life did not arise from lifeless chemicals. There is no evidence that any of that ever happened. At least I've never seen any. I keep hearing about it, but I've never seen it. So let's see this evidence. No deflections or insults allowed. Just show us the evidence.

Your knowledge of history is somewhat parochial. History is determined by events, which are in turn fueled by the prevailing beliefs of the times. These beliefs reflected the reality of the period.
At the time the Constitution was written, slavery was practiced over most of the world. It was legal in most places and was an accepted part of life; viewed as a normal state of affairs. Slavery began to be seen in a bad light after the industrial revolution made slavery less profitable in many places. Capitalism, rather than morality, began the demise of slavery.
Most of the slaves in the US were brought here by Spanish, Portuguese, and especially English ships. Out of some 12 million slaves transported to the Western Hemisphere from Africa, about 600,000 ended up in what became the US. The rest went to the Caribbean, Mexico, and South and Central America.
You cannot judge people of another era by the standards of this one. Their reality was much harsher than ours, their beliefs correspondingly different. They have to be judged against the backdrop of the physical reality of the time and place in which they existed. The moral code they adhered to was one born of the times. Flogging, public executions and the stocks were also commonplace and accepted as perfectly normal. Witchcraft was the explanation for imperfectly understood scientific phenomena. A person from today who was transported back to the Spain and Portugal of Columbus, Ferdinand and Isabella would quickly find him or herself the guest of honor at an impromptu party thrown by Tomas de Torquemada and his boys.

The Founders were, by the standards of their time, quite enlightened. At a time of monarchies and dictatorships, they advocated a Republic. Liberals say that women and slaves couldn't vote. Slaves couldn't vote anywhere, and to the best of my knowledge, neither could women. The Framers were an aristocracy for the most part, but one who gave a say in government to the middle class of the time, which was property and business owners. This idea of letting the masses govern themselves was, in it's own right, revolutionary for the time and place.
The US has made mistakes. All great nations do. The treatment of the American Indian was despicable by today's standards, but commonly accepted the world over at the time it happened. I would suggest that there probably aren't 20 acres of real estate in the world, (excluding Antarctica,) with any sort of strategic or tactical value that have not been conquered and re-conquered repeatedly. I mentioned the American Indian tribes a moment ago. The fact is that many of them acquired "their" land in the same way that we "acquired" it from them. They stole it, same as us. The pre-Columbian Indian society was not a model of peaceful cooperation. The Iroquois, the Shawnee, some of the Algonquin tribes in Canada, the Lakota, along with cousins Cheyenne and Arapaho, the Navajo, Apache, Yaqui, all were conquering, warlike tribes who either killed, enslaved or drove off the original occupants of the land they claimed. Let us not forget the Aztecs and Incas, either. Both Cortez and Pizzaro were able to conquer the Aztecs and Incas respectively due to lots of help from smaller, weaker tribes that had been victimized by these "civilized" tribes.

In short, every nation had made mistakes, and some of what you think of as mistakes were not regarded as such by the standards of the times in which they happened.

So for the fifth time in U.S. history a president has been elected by the unpopular vote, which is to say the electoral college voted against the will of the popular vote (majority of American voters). The first time this happened was in 1824 resulting in the election of a Democratic-Republican, the rest of the unpopular votes all went to Republicans, most recently in 2000 when Bush won the election despite the fact that half a million more Americans actually voted for Gore. In 2016 it happened again, this time by an even wider margin... close to a million more Americans actually voted for Clinton than Trump.

At first glance it seems Trump was right in saying the elections are rigged and there's a pretty strong feeling among the people that it's time to ditch the electoral college. But there was an argument during the Constitutional Convention of 1789 against the popular vote, mostly based on the idea that smaller states would be disadvantaged if that were allowed. Details of the argument can be found in the Federalist Papers No. 39 (James Madison) and No. 68 (Alexander Hamilton).

I personally feel these arguments are outdated. First of all, much of these arguments spring from a context where states had more power and so the equalization between states made more sense. Secondly, representation of the people at the federal level was also stronger and so it made sense to use congressional representation as a basis. But both conditions have changed dramatically. Commerce is increasingly expanding beyond the control of the state, making the state vs state argument less relevant. And as the population continues to grow, federal representation stays at 435 seats... this results in ever decreasing citizen to representative ratios and since population growth is typically higher in regions with already higher populations it's the citizens in those regions that are loosing democratic power the fastest.

For the 2016 election the citizens with the most federal voting power were in Wyoming where it only takes 187,875 voters to equal one electoral vote. The citizens in California, where it takes 677,345 voters to equal on electoral vote, the citizens suffer the least federal voting power. Pair this with the fact that in terms of funding Wyoming takes more from the federal government than it takes while California gives more to the federal government than it takes... Well, the situation becomes even more preposterous.

The American people are already getting tired of political games. Eventually, enough of them are going to figure some of them out, such as the electoral college and it's going to be harder to continue marginalizing the demand for better representation.

I know that a number on the right have a deep concern about the authenticity of voting..

Maybe this short article will stir some sympathy for all voters...
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Experts Urge Clinton Campaign to Challenge Election Results in 3 Swing States
By Gabriel Sherman
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Robbed?Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.

Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.

According to current tallies, Trump has won 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan’s 16 votes not apportioned because the race there is still too close to call. It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College. There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states.

The Clinton camp is running out of time to challenge the election. According to one of the activists, the deadline in Wisconsin to file for a recount is Friday; in Pennsylvania, it’s Monday; and Michigan is next Wednesday. Whether Clinton will call for a recount remains unclear. The academics so far have only a circumstantial case that would require not just a recount but a forensic audit of voting machines. Also complicating matters, a senior Clinton adviser said, is that the White House, focused on a smooth transfer of power, does not want Clinton to challenge the election result. Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri did not respond to a request for comment. But some Clinton allies are intent on pushing the issue. This afternoon, Huma Abedin’s sister Heba encouraged her Facebook followers to lobby the Justice Department to audit the 2016 vote. “Call the DOJ…and tell them you want the votes audited,” she wrote. “Even if it’s busy, keep calling.”

Update: Halderman has elaborated on his claims in a Medium post published Wednesday morning.

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Obama Commutes Sentences of 79 Inmates
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By Lydia Wheeler ~ Nov 22, 2016 ~ The Hill

President Obama on Tuesday commuted the prison sentences of 79 inmates as part of a clemency effort that appears to be moving at rapid speed.
Obama has shortened the prison stays of 351 federal inmates since the beginning of October. The pace indicates that Obama is intent on using his remaining time in office to aggressively pursue the clemency initiative he started in 2014.

In total, Obama has commuted the sentences of 1,023 inmates, more than any of the last 11 presidents combined. Most of the inmates were convicted of non-violent, low-level drug offenses.

Of the inmates who have been granted clemency under Obama, White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said 342 were serving life sentences.

“We have two months left before the inauguration,” he said. “I anticipate we will keep going until the end.”

Eggleston did not say how many more commutations will be granted, but Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said the Department of Justice had about 6,300 petitions from non-violent drug offenders alone as of Aug. 31.

She said the agency is on track to act make a recommendation on each of those petitions before Obama leaves office.

In a Facebook post, Obama said it doesn’t serve taxpayers or public safety to put nonviolent drug offenders behind bars for decades.

“At the heart of America is the idea that we're all imperfect. We all make mistakes,” he said. “We have to take responsibility and learn from those mistakes. And we as a society have to make sure that people who do take responsibility for their mistakes are able to earn a second chance to contribute to our communities and our country.”

Last week, family members of incarcerated individuals delivered a petition with more than 2 million signatures to the Department of Justice urging Obama to speed up his rate of clemencies to ensure no one is left behind come Jan. 20.

Advocates fear the clemency initiative will end with Obama's administration, as there is no guarantee that President-elect Donald Trump will continue it.

White the clemency initiative has been a priority of the current administration, Eggleston said he could not say what will happen under Trump.

“I can’t speak to whether the next administration will have a similar enthusiasm,” he said.

http://thehill.com/regulation/administration/307218-obama-commutes-sentences-of-79-inmates

What percentage are for violent crimes, since many are life sentences? how many are black, white, latino, breakdown would be interesting.