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• The Supreme Court's decision on Arizona won't put an end to voting wars (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:18:12 GMT)
  

  How far can states go if they want to put in place tougher requirements for voter registration?

  That was one of the key questions at stake in a big Supreme Court decision released Monday, Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. By a 7-2 vote, the justices ruled that Arizona could not require additional proof of citizenship on federal forms designed to make voter registration easier.

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• The Circuit: Apple offers information on data requests (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:42:10 GMT)
  

  Apple requests: Apple has released information on how many data requests it receives from U.S. law enforcement, as it joins Facebook, Microsoft and others in pushing for looser restrictions on what tech companies can share with their customers.

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• Congress is wildly unpopular. Should anyone actually care? (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:42:09 GMT)
  

  Sorry, guys (and yeah, Congress is mostly made up of guys):

  
  
  

  Polling about the overwhelming unpopularity of Congress is sometimes batted away with a knowing remark about how the public has been losing faith in most all institutions over the past 30 or 40 years. And there's something to that. But it's also worth being clear that Congress is much, much more unpopular than any institution Gallup has seen fit to poll:

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• Why does the government encourage people to build homes in wildfire zones? (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:29:07 GMT)
  

  Over the past week, a giant wildfire has ravaged Colorado Springs, destroying some 473 homes and damaging 17. It's the most destructive blaze in Colorado's history. So is there any way to reduce the damage from catastrophic fires in the future?

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• You don't know what America will look like in 2043, and neither does the government (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:52:00 GMT)
  

  Now that the 10-year budget problem is (poorly, counterproductively) solved, Republicans are faced with a bit of a problem: How do they keep justifying an agenda based entirely around debt fears now that the debt doesn't look so scary?

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• The usefulness of pie charts, in two pie charts (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:02:10 GMT)
  

  Walter Hickey at Business Insider launched an excellent attack against pie charts. But in case all those words are bogging you down, we have a helpful, simpler version of his piece to offer.

  And things get even more dramatic when you're talking about 3-D pie charts. As Hickey writes, "an angled 3D pie chart is an excellent way to lie to you."

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• READ: The Supreme Court rules against proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:49:14 GMT)
  

  In Arizona et al. v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., et al., the court ruled that the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 — or the "motor voter" act — trumps an Arizona law that "requires voter-registration officials to 'reject' any application for registration, including a Federal Form, that is not accompanied by documentary evidence of citizenship."

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• READ -- The Supreme Court rules lawyers can't use DMV records to find clients (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:39:08 GMT)
  

  In Maracich et al. v. Spears, a group of lawyers tried to use a state Freedom of Information Act request to get DMV records in order to find potential plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit against a number of car dealerships. The DMV acquiesced, the lawyers mass-mailed their potential clients, and the potential clients sued them, arguing this invaded their privacy.

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• READ: The Supreme Court rules that judges can't impose mandatory minimums on their own (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:32:32 GMT)
  

  In Alleyne v. United States, the court reverses their decision in the 2002 case Harris v. United States , and holds that judges cannot recommend or impose mandatory minimum sentences based on facts that had not been established by the jury in the case at hand. To do so, they ruled, violates the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.

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• READ: The Supreme Court rules against big pharma (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:21:29 GMT)
  

  The court is allowing the Federal Trade Commission to keep pursuing pharmaceutical companies for "pay to play" arrangements, wherein the companies pay generic manufacturers to keep cheap versions of drugs off the market. The case is FTC v. Actavis.

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• READ: The Supreme Court rules prosecutors can use a suspect's silence as evidence of guilt (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:18:25 GMT)
  

  The ruling is 5-4, with Samuel Alito writing an opinion that John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy joined, and Clarence Thomas writing a separate concurrence, joined by Antonin Scalia. Stephen Breyer wrote the dissent, joined by Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
  

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• Can Bitcoin make peace with Washington? (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:46:37 GMT)
  

  Federal regulators are increasingly paying attention to Bitcoin, the decentralized virtual currency. Last week, two of the most senior figures of the Bitcoin community trekked to Washington to try convince D.C.'s power brokers that they are eager to work with federal officials. But that may prove easier said than done.

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• Wonkbook: Obamacare could ruin immigration reform for Republicans (Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:52:22 GMT)
  

  Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas's morning policy news primer.To subscribe by e-mail, click here. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Gmail dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog.

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• Is a little bit of inflation just what the doctor ordered to keep unemployment down? (Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:43:51 GMT)
  

  My colleague Dylan Matthews wrote today on one of the mysteries of global economics in the last few years: The combination of weak economic growth out of Britain yet decent performance on employment. Economists think of this as a "productivity puzzle," in that what has happened mathematically is a downshift in the productivity of British workers-- less economic output per hour of labor (or at least a failure of productivity to rise at its historical rates).

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• Britain is doing well on employment despite a crummy economy. Why? (Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:47:14 GMT)
  

  The British economy hasn't been doing so hot in recent years. Things haven't been quite as terrible there as they've been in the rest of Europe, but compared to the United States and Japan — whose recoveries haven't exactly been enviable — growth has been pretty sluggish, as this chart from the Guardian shows:

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• Britain is doing well on employment despite a crummy economy. Why? (Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:47:14 GMT)
  

  The British economy hasn't been doing so hot in recent years. Things haven't been quite as terrible there as they've been in the rest of Europe, but compared to the United States and Japan — whose recoveries haven't exactly been enviable — growth has been pretty sluggish, as this chart from the Guardian shows:

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• Is it really the GOP's anti-immigration stances that turn off Latinos? (Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:32:13 GMT)
  

  Poli-Sci Perspective is a weekly Wonkblog feature in which Georgetown University's Dan Hopkins and George Washington University's Danny Hayes and John Sides offer an empirical perspective on the issues dominating Washington. In this edition, Hopkins looks at the relationship between Republican opposition to immigration and the party's troubles with Latino voters. For past posts in the series, head here .

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• Throwing children in prison turns out to be a really bad idea (Sun, 16 Jun 2013 02:40:08 GMT)
  

  The United States still puts more children and teenagers in juvenile detention than any other developed nations in the world, with about 130,000 detained in 2010. And as it turns out, this is very likely a bad idea.

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• Throwing children in prison turns out to be a really bad idea (Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:55:00 GMT)
  

  The United States still puts more children and teenagers in juvenile detention than any other developed nations in the world, with about 130,000 detained in 2010. And as it turns out, this is very likely a bad idea.

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• NSA-proof encryption exists. Why doesn't anyone use it? (Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:51:00 GMT)
  

  
  
  Computer programmers believe they know how to build cryptographic systems that are impossible for anyone, even the U.S. government, to crack. So why can the NSA read your e-mail?

  Last week, leaks revealed that the Web sites most people use every day are sharing users' private information with the government. Companies participating in the National Security Agency's program, code-named PRISM, include Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.

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• The best sentences we read today (Sat, 15 Jun 2013 01:20:09 GMT)
  

  Double-length to make up for yesterday's missing edition:

  -- "Don't read this if you aren't him."

  -- "He has violated a couple of the most basic tenets of Concealing Your War Crimes. Rule No. 1: Do not write a memoir about your war crimes."

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• The Circuit: White House will look at spectrum sharing (Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:30:24 GMT)
  

  White House spectrum: The White House said Friday that it will explore ways that it can free wireless spectrum currently used for government purposes to meet consumer demands for mobile airwaves.

  President Obama released a plan that calls on government agencies to explore how spectrum being used by federal agencies can be reallocated for use by private-sector companies in the future. The White House also announced that it is investing $100 million to fund research into technology that deals with spectrum sharing.

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• You're already paying for some undocumented immigrants' health care (Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:05:24 GMT)
  

  Welcome to Health Reform Watch, Sarah Kliff's regular look at how the Affordable Care Act is changing the American health-care system — and being changed by it. Sandhya Somashekhar is filling in while Sarah's away, and you can reach her with questions, comments and suggestions here. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for the latest edition, and read previous columns here.

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• IMF to Congress: No, seriously, guys, stop it (Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:48:06 GMT)
  

  The International Monetary Fund released its annual review of the United States economy on Friday. The fund expects the world's largest economy to keep on growing at a steady 1.9 percent clip this year before accelerating sharply in 2014 and 2015.

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• How Jean-Jacques Rousseau explains Donkey Kong (Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:23:30 GMT)
  

  You may remember Eric Charles Nielsen as the guy who played Garrett "Like God Spilled a Person" Lambert on "Community," but he's also a deeply unnerving stand-up comedian, with a lot of thoughts about Donkey Kong, folders, plots to destroy the world, plots to take over the world, teen angst poetry, drag queens, drag peasants, drag duchesses, drag anarchy, and related topics:

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