Building Blocks
An institution through which leaders exercise power to make and enforce laws affecting the people under its control.
What is a government?
This document, signed in 1215, created Parliament and was the first example of limited government.
What is the Magna Carta?
The Constitution gives the president the power to grant a _______, which erases a conviction and releases someone from prison.
What is a pardon?
Incumbents have a 90% re-election rate partly due to _______, a.k.a., solving voter problems (like a pothole.)
What is casework?
This amendment limited the President to two terms.
What is the 22nd Amendment?
A/an _______ government controls all political, economic & social lives of its citizens.
There are two possible answers.
What is an authoritarian/totalitarian government?
(A dictatorship and an oligarchy are two examples of these types of government.)
This state refused to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention, because it believed a new national government would be too powerful.
What is Rhode Island?
According to the Constitution, Congress can make all laws that "necessary and proper" to carry out its enumerated (specified) powers.
What is the elastic clause?
The only way to stop a filibuster in the Senate is to call for ______; 60 senators (three-fifths) vote to end all debate and go immediately to a final vote on a bill.
What is cloture?
When running for President, a candidate must register with this independent government agency, who oversees the election, organizes debates, and logs all campaign spending.
What is the Federal Election Commission? (FEC)
The theory that states: gods or God chose the ruler of a nation. Examples include Ancient Egypt, the Aztecs, and Ancient China.
What is the divine right theory?
This tax on all legal documents, was the first direct tax imposed on the American colonies by England.
What is the Stamp Act?
The Amendment that abolished slavery.
What is the 13th Amendment?
The _______ is the minimum number of House members who must be present to act on bills (debating, amending, voting, etc.) In the House, this number is 218.
What is a quorum?
Organizations formed to raise money for a presidential candidate.
What are political action committees? (PACs)
The theory that states: there is an unwritten bond that connects the government to the citizens.
What is social contract theory?
Written by John Dickinson, this document was the first government of the United States, from 1781-1787.
What are the Articles of Confederation?
The Amendment that guaranteed women's voting rights.
What is the 19th Amendment?
Illegally drawing House district lines to favor one party over another; both Democrats & Republicans have been caught doing this.
What is gerrymandering?
Those powers claimed by presidents, which are not listed in the Constitution (buying land, resolving labor disputes, etc.) are none as______ powers.
A state or country has to have this: supreme power within its own land.
What is sovereignty?
This 1689 series of laws with a familiar name, guaranteed the right to a speedy trial, prevented cruel & unusual punishment, and stated that monarchs rule only with the people's consent.
What is the English Bill of Rights?
The most common method of adding an amendment to the Constitution starts with a _____ vote in Congress and a _____ vote of the state governments.
What is a Two Thirds vote in Congress and a Three Fourths vote of the state governments?
Need to kill a bill in Congress? Add a ______ to it: a provision on a subject other than the one covered in the bill.
Example: a provision that would end all school lunch programs is added to a controversial tax bill.
What is a rider?
Presidents can cite ______ ______ and refuse to testify before Congress/courts or refuse to release information to the public (troop locations, etc.)
What is executive privilege?