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NRA
The National Rifle Association of America is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for gun rights. -
Abu Ghraib Prison
Abu Ghraib prison now know as The Baghdad Central Prison, was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad that operated from its construction in the 1950s until its closure in the 2010s. -
Osama Bin Laden
Usama ibn Mohammed ibn Awad ibn Ladin, often anglicized as Osama bin Laden, was a founder of al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the September 11 attacks in the United States and many other mass-casualty attacks worldwide. -
WMD
A weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological or other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans or cause great damage to human-made structures, natural structures, or the biosphere. -
PLO
Palestinian Liberation Organization; formed in 1964 with the purpose of creating a homeland for Palestinians in Israel. -
PACTO Strike
PATCO was a United States trade union that operated from 1968 until its decertification in 1981 following a strike that was declared illegal and broken by the Reagan Administration. -
Yasser Arafat
was a Palestinian political leader. -
William Rehnquist
American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States for 33 years, first as an Associate Justice -
Walter Mondale
American politician, diplomat and lawyer who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and as a United States Senator from Minnesota -
California vs Bakke
the Court ruled unconstitutional a university's use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process, but held that affirmative action programs could be constitutional in some circumstances. -
Moral Majority
political action group formed in the 1970s to further a conservative and religious agenda, including the allowance of prayer in schools and strict laws against abortion. -
Saddam Hussein
President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party -
Sandinistas
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a democratic socialist political party in Nicaragua. -
Supply Side Economics
macroeconomic theory that argues economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering taxes and decreasing regulation. -
Glasnost + Perestroika
political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s until 1991 and is widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. -
Religious Fundamentalism
refers to the belief of an individual or a group of individuals in the absolute authority of a sacred religious text or teachings of a particular religious leader, -
Start I and II
The United States and the Soviet Union signed this treaty in July 1991 which called for a reduction in the number of long-range nuclear warheads and bombs held by each country by about one-third over a period of seven years. -
Ethnic Cleansing
the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society. -
West Bank and the Gaza Strip
Palestinian territories and occupied Palestinian territories are terms often used to describe the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which are occupied or otherwise under the control of Israel. -
Debt Ceiling
an upper limit set on the amount of money that a government may borrow. -
Ronald Reagan
elected president in 1980 and elected again in 1984. He ran on a campaign based on the common man and "populist" ideas. -
Trickle Down Economics
economic theory that advocates reducing taxes on businesses and the wealthy in society -
SDI
Reagan's intent to pursue a high technology missile defense system which was referred to as SDI or Star Wars. -
Brady Bill
a provision of US federal law that requires a waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks on those who wish to purchase handguns. -
AIDS
a disease in which there is a severe loss of the body's cellular immunity, greatly lowering the resistance to infection and malignancy. -
Economic Recovery Tax Act
A law that lowered income tax rates and allowed for expensing of depreciable assets. -
Sandra Day O'Connor
retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan to 2006. -
Boland Amendment
three U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984, all aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua. -
Beirut Bombings
The 1983 Beirut barracks bombings were acts of terrorism that occurred on October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War. -
Geraldine Ferraro
American attorney and Democratic Party politician who served in the United States House of Representatives. -
Iran-Contra Affair
was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration -
Mikhail Gorbachev
Russian and former Soviet politician. He was the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. -
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph Dole is an American former politician and attorney who represented Kansas in Congress from 1961 to 1996 and served as the Republican Leader of the United States Senate from 1985 until 1996. -
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 1985 as a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. -
Immigration Act of 1986
The law criminalized the act of engaging in a "pattern or practice" of knowingly hiring an "unauthorized alien" and established financial and other penalties for those employing illegal immigrants under the theory that low prospects for employment would reduce undocumented immigration. -
Tear down this wall
line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier -
INF Agreement
Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union -
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Arizona since 1987. He was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election, which he lost to Barack Obama. -
Read My Lips, No New Taxes
phrase spoken by then-American presidential candidate George H. W. Bush at the 1988 Republican National Convention as he accepted the nomination on August 18. -
Al Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. -
George HW Bush
American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993. Prior to assuming the presidency, Bush served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. -
Tiananmen Square
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, commonly known in mainland China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations in Beijing -
Fall of The Berlin Wall
as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. -
Panama Invasion
The United States Invasion of Panama, code named Operation Just Cause occurred between mid-December 1989 and late January 1990. -
Lech Walesa
Lech Wałęsa is a retired Polish politician and labour activist. He co-founded and headed Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 -
Persian Gulf War
The Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Shield for operations leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm in its combat phase -
Americans With Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. -
Nuclear Proliferation
spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. -
Internet
the world wide web was created in 1990 and used this to send graphics and multi-media across the globe -
Breakup of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred on December 26, 1991, officially granting self-governing independence to the Republics of the Soviet Union. -
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999 -
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas is an American judge, lawyer, and government official who currently serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. -
Kyoto Accord
The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the presidency, he was the Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. -
Failure of Health Reform
package proposed by the administration of President Bill Clinton and closely associated with the chair of the task force devising the plan, First Lady of the United States Hillary Clinton. -
Deficit Reduction Budget
The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (or OBRA-93) was a federal law that was enacted by the 103rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton -
EU
The 1993 Treaty of Maastricht established both the European Union and the Euro. This created a political and economic union between (originally) the western European countries. -
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is an American politician and environmentalist who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. -
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician, former diplomat, and First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. -
Don't ask, Don't tell
was the official United States policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, instituted by the Clinton Administration on February 28, 1994 -
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. -
Contract with America
The Contract with America was a document released by the United States Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign -
Taliban
Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement in Afghanistan currently waging war within that country. -
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy Gingrich is an American politician and author, born in Pennsylvania, later representing Georgia in Congress, and ultimately serving as 50th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives -
Oklahoma City Bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. -
Bosnia + Kosovo
A combination of diplomacy, bombing, and troops from NAT countries, including the United States, stopped the bloodshed first in Bosnia in 1995 and again in Kosovo in 1999. -
WTO
The World Trade Organization is an intergovernmental organization that regulates international trade -
Ross Perot
Henry Ross Perot is an American business magnate and former politician. As the founder of Electronic Data Systems, he became a billionaire -
Welfare Reform
a movement to change the federal government's social welfare policy by shifting some of the responsibility to the states and cutting benefits. -
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright is an American politician and diplomat. She is the first woman to have become the United States Secretary of State. She served from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. -
G8
The G8, reformatted as G7 from 2014 due to Russia's suspension, was an inter-governmental political forum from 1997 until 2014, with the participation of the major industrialized countries in the world, that viewed themselves as democracies. -
Clinton Impeachment
The impeachment of Bill Clinton was initiated in December 1998 by the House of Representatives and led to a trial in the Senate for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, on two charges, one of perjury and one of obstruction of justice. -
Bush vs Gore
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, was a decision of the United States Supreme Court that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election. The ruling was issued on December 12, 2000. -
George W Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was also the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000 -
Bush Tax Cuts
The phrase Bush tax cuts refers to changes to the United States tax code passed originally during the presidency of George W. Bush and extended during the presidency of Barack Obama -
9/11
The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. -
No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act authorizes several federal education programs that are administered by the states. The law is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. -
homeland security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government with responsibilities in public security -
Axis of Evil
The phrase axis of evil was first used by U.S. President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, and often repeated throughout his presidency, to describe governments that his administration accused of sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. -
operation Iraqi freedom
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. -
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician who served as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. -
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly Category 5 hurricane that caused catastrophic damage along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge and levee failure. -
Housing Bubble
The United States housing bubble was a real estate bubble affecting over half of the U.S. states. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and reached new lows in 2012. -
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality, who served as the ninth Governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. -
Great Recession
The Great Recession was a period of general economic decline observed in world markets during the late 2000s and early 2010s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country -
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and either hold these mortgages in their portfolios or package the loans into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that may be sold. -
DC v Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm -
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017. -
Tea Party
The Tea Party movement is an American conservative movement within the Republican Party. Members of the movement have called for a reduction of the national debt -
Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Maria Sotomayor is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 2009. She has the distinction of being its first justice of Hispanic descent and the first Latina. -
Dodd-Frank Act
The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Pub.L. 111–203, H.R. 4173, commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank) was signed into United States federal law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. -
Affordable Care Act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often shortened to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or nicknamed Obamacare, is a United States federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. -
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring, also referred to as Arab revolutions, was a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, foreign interventions, and civil wars -
Citizens United
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, is a landmark U.S. constitutional law, campaign finance, and corporate law case dealing with regulation of political campaign spending by organizations -
Syrian Civil War
The Syrian Civil War is an ongoing multi-sided armed conflict in Syria fought primarily between the Ba'athist Syrian Arab Republic led by President Bashar al-Assad -
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is an American politician who served as the 68th United States Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017. A Democrat, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013. -
Boston Marathon Bombing
On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs detonated 12 seconds and 210 yards apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others, including 16 who lost limbs -
Shelby County V Holder
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 2, is a landmark United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -
Same-Sex Marriage
Same-sex marriage is the marriage of a same-sex couple, entered into in a civil or religious ceremony.
