The Republican Party, also commonly called the GOP (for "Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. There have been 18 Republican presidents, the first being Abraham Lincoln, serving from 1861 to 1865, and the most recent being Donald Trump who began serving in 2017.

Reserve Deputy Probation Officers are deputized volunteers who have received special training in order to assist Probation staff in a wide range of supervised responsibilities, that include direct involvement with juvenile an d adult probationers. Reserve Deputies are highly motivated, skilled, and caring people who want to serve their community as a part of the Los Angeles County Probation Department. Reserve Deputies are not a replacement for or an alternative to paid staff, but are intended to be an enhancement to existing resources.

On Monday, after a long quarter-century, West Virginians said goodbye to their state's 6 percent food tax. Now to see what, if any, business we've been missing. In 1989, retailers warned that sales in West Virginia would go down if legislators imposed a 6 percent tax on food. "Whatever they put on would be passed on to the consumer," Charles Forth, who owned supermarkets in both West Virginia and Ohio, told the newspaper in February 1989. "Six percent is $6 on $100. That will make a difference when people are already hurting and trying to make ends meet." It's a lot easier to drive customers away than to win them back, a fact legislators should bear in mind when it comes to taxation.

On this date in 1776, rebellious colonials launched the first modern democracy, an experiment in government controlled by the people themselves. America succeeded so well that virtually the entire world later adopted democracy with its guarantee of personal rights.

Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and gas). Heating a gas may ionize its molecules or atoms (reducing or increasing the number of electrons in them), thus turning it into a plasma, which contains charged particles: positive ions and negative electrons or ions.