The Munroe Doctrine

Exactly one year before signing the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress made one final, desperate attempt to avoid war with Britain. On this day in 1775, they adopted the Olive Branch Petition. Written by John Dickinson, the document appealed directly to King George III, carefully blaming Parliament and British ministers for the colonial unrest while fiercely maintaining loyalty to the Crown. The colonists still trusted the King to protect them and even closed their plea by pra...

A viral post has been making the rounds laying out a sequence of events around Trump, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the proposed White House ballroom, and the shooting incident at the Washington Hilton. The problem is not that every fact in the post is fake. In fact, that is precisely why it spreads so well. The post uses several real events, places them in a suggestive order, and then leaves the reader standing in a dimly lit hallway with a corkboard, red string, and a migraine. So ...

Definitions Undocumented immigrants: People living in the United States without legal authorization. Legal immigrants: People living in the United States with lawful immigration status. (Research datasets can differ on whether this category includes people who later naturalize; readers should consult the study methods for how categories are defined.)  U.S.-born citizens: Citizens born in the United States.  Arrest rate (per 100,000 residents per year): The number of arrests for a given offen...