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NRA
NRA is defined as an acronym for the National Rifle Association, an organization founded in 1871 that stands for the protection of the Second Amendment which guarantees a citizen's right to keep and bear arms. -
Religious Fundamentalism
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, prophet,and/ or God. -
West Bank and the Gaza Strip
"Palestinian territories" and "occupied Palestinian territories" (OPT or oPt) are descriptions often used to describe the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, which are occupied or otherwise under the control of Israel. -
PATCO Strike
The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization or 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
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa, popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. -
Moral Majority
A 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. -
Nuclear Proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is the 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. -
Walter Mondale
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States under Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator from Minnesota. -
California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. -
Sandinistas
Sandinista, member of Sandinista National Liberation Front, Spanish Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), one of a Nicaraguan group that overthrew President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending 46 years of dictatorship by the Somoza family. The Sandinistas governed Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990. -
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. -
Iran-Contra Affair
A scandal in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, which came to light when it was revealed that in the mid-1980s the United States secretly arranged arms sales to Iran in return for promises of Iranian assistance in securing the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon -
Glasnost & Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s until 1991 widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. -
Supply-Side Economics
Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory that argues economic growth can be most effectively created by investing in capital and by lowering barriers on the production of goods and services. -
Economic Recovery Tax Act
The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (Pub.L. 97–34), also known as the ERTA or "Kemp-Roth Tax Cut", was a federal law enacted in the United States. -
Sandra Day O’Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor is a retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan until her retirement in 2006. -
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of the United States. -
Trickle-Down Economics
Trickle-down economics, or “trickle-down theory,” argues for income and capital gains tax breaks or other financial benefits to large businesses, investors and entrepreneurs in order to stimulate economic growth. -
Boland Amendment
The Boland Amendment is a term describing three U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984, all aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua. -
SDI
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons -
Beirut Bombings
The 1983 Beirut barracks bombings were attacks that occurred on October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) peacekeepers, specifically against United States and French service members. -
Lech Walesa
Born 1943, Polish labor leader: a leader of Solidarity 1980; president 1990–96; Nobel Peace Prize 1983. -
Internet
ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. -
Geraldine Ferraro
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was an American attorney, a Democratic Party politician, and a member of the United States House of Representatives. In 1984, she was the first female vice presidential candidate representing a major American political party. -
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 served Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013. -
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman. He was the eighth 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 "Bob" Dole is an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1969 until 1996, and also served as the Senate Majority Leader from 1985 until 1996. -
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States for 33 years, first as an Associate Justice from 1972 to 1986, and then as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2005. -
PLO
A political and military organization formed in 1964 to unite various Palestinian Arab groups and ultimately to bring about an independent state of Palestine. It was led by Yasser Arafat from 1968 until 2004. -
Immigration Act of 1986
The Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed and signed into law on November 6, 1986. The purpose of this legislation was to amend, revise, and reform/re-assess the status of unauthorized immigrants set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act. -
“Tear Down This Wall”
"Tear down this wall!" is a 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 which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961. -
INF Agreement
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) is the abbreviated name of the 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. -
“Read my lips, no new taxes”
"Read my lips: no new taxes" is a 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. Written by speechwriter Peggy Noonan, the line was the most prominent sound bite from the speech. -
Ross Perot
Henry Ross Perot is an American business magnate and former politician. In 1962, Perot founded Electronic Data Systems, a company he sold twenty years later for $2.4 billion. He went on to set up Perot Systems in 1988. -
George H.W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who was the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993 and the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. -
Tiananmen Square
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, commonly known in China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations in Beijing in 1989. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Fortified concrete and wire barrier that separated East and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. It was built by the government of what was then East Germany to keep East Berliners from defecting to the West. -
Panama Invasion
The United States Invasion of Panama, code named Operation Just Cause, was an invasion of Panama by the United States between mid-December 1989 and late January 1990. It occurred during the administration of President George H. W. -
Bosnia and Kosovo
The Serb attacks, initially sponsored by the Yugoslav National Army, began as a war between nation states. Kosovo, on the other hand, is a province of Serbia, which together with Montenegro makes up the new Yugoslavia (Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989). -
Al-Qaeda
The definition of al-Qaeda is a radical Islamic group organized by Osama bin Laden in the 1990s to engage in terrorist activities. A group of militant Muslim fundamentalists founded by bin Laden is an example of Al-Qaeda. -
Persian Gulf War
A war between the forces of the United Nations, led by the United States, and those of Iraq that followed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein 's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The United Nations forces, called the Coalition, expelled Iraqi troops from Kuwait in March 1991. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990. The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. -
Deficit Reduction Budget
Deficit reduction in the United States refers to taxation, spending, and economic policy debates and proposals designed to reduce the Federal budget deficit. -
“Ethnic Cleansing”
The mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society. -
Breakup of the Soviet Union
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state. -
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. -
Start I and II
(Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and Russia on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. -
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, based on the scientific consensus that (a) global warming is occurring and (b) it is extremely likely that human-made CO2. -
AIDS
A disease in which there is a severe loss of the body's cellular immunity, greatly lowering the resistance to infection and malignancy. -
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. -
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 under President Bill Clinton. -
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. -
Failure of Health Reform (1990’s)
The Clinton healthcare plan, officially as the Health Security Act and unofficially nicknamed "Hillarycare" (after First Lady Hillary Clinton) by its detractors, was a 1993 health care 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 Clinton. -
EU
European Union definition. A political union, often called the EU, to which the member states of the EEC are evolving. Based on the Maastrict Treaty, it envisions the eventual establishment of common economic, foreign, security, and justice policies. -
“Don’t ask, don’t tell”
The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. Since DADT ended in 2011, persons who are openly homosexual and bisexual have been able to serve. -
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico designed to remove tariff barriers between the three countries. -
Contract with America
The Contract with America was a document released by the United States Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign. -
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy Gingrich is an American author and politician from Georgia who served as the 50th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. -
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. -
WTO
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world's trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. -
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. -
G-8
The Group of Eight (G8) refers to the group of eight highly industrialized nations—France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Canada, and Russia—that hold an annual meeting to foster consensus on global issues like economic growth and crisis management, global security, energy, and terrorism. -
Clinton Impeachment
The impeachment of Bill Clinton was initiated by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998, against Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, on two charges, one of perjury and one of obstruction of justice. -
Bush v. Gore
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, is the United States Supreme Court decision that resolved the dispute surrounding the 2000 presidential election. The ruling was issued on December 12, 2000. -
Debt Ceiling
An upper limit set on the amount of money that a government may borrow. -
Taliban
The Taliban, alternatively spelled Taleban, which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), is a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement in Afghanistan currently waging war (an insurgency, or jihad) within that country. -
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 Bush tax cuts are a series of temporary income tax relief measures enacted by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. The tax cuts lowered federal income tax rates for everyone, decreased the marriage penalty, lowered capital gains taxes, lowered the tax rate on dividend income, increased the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000 per child, eliminated the phaseout of personal exemptions for higher-income taxpayers and eliminated the phaseout of itemized deductions and cut the estate tax -
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. -
Osama Bin Laden
Usama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, the organization that was responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks worldwide. -
No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the name for the most recent update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. -
Enron
An American corporation based in Houston, Texas, that traded in energy and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2001. Enron's collapse stunned most investors and analysts because Enron, the seventh largest corporation in the United States, had long reported huge earnings. -
Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government with responsibilities in public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. -
“Axis of Evil”
The definition of axis of evil is a term that former United States President George W. Bush used to describe countries which he thought were involved with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. An example of countries identified by Bush as the axis of evil were Iran, Iraq and North Korea. -
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 toppled the government of Saddam Hussein. -
Abu Ghraib Prison
During the war in Iraq that began in March 2003, personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. -
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. -
Housing Bubble
A housing bubble is a run-up in housing prices fueled by demand, speculation and exuberance. Speculators enter the market, further driving demand. At some point, demand decreases or stagnates at the same time supply increases, resulting in a sharp drop in prices — and the bubble bursts. -
WMD’s
The U.S. military refers to WMD as: Chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons capable of a high order of destruction or causing mass casualties and exclude the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part from the weapon. -
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator, and author who served as the 11th Governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. -
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was the placing into conservatorship of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) by the U.S. Treasury in September 2008. -
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is an American politician who currently serves as the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. -
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician who was the 67th United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, U.S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, First Lady of the United States. -
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president. -
Tea Party
A US political movement that emerged from a series of conservative protests against the federal government in 2009. -
Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Maria Sotomayor is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 2009. -
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 federal law by Former 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) and 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. -
Citizens United
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 310 is a landmark U.S. constitutional law and corporate law case dealing with regulation of campaign spending by organizations. -
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. -
Syrian Civil War
The Syrian Civil War is an ongoing multi-sided armed conflict in Syria fought primarily between the government of President Bashar al-Assad, along with its allies, and various forces opposing the government. -
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across the Middle East in early 2011. -
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician who served as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. -
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 (2013), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting. -
Same-Sex Marriage
Marriage between partners of the same sex (as recognized in some jurisdictions). -
D.C. v. Heller
It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. On June 26, 2008, the Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Heller v. District of Columbia.
