The United States presidential election of 1988 featured no incumbent president, as President Ronald Reagan could not seek re-election after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush, won the Republican nomination, while the Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts. Bush capitalized on a good economy, a stable international stage, and on Reagan's popularity, while Dukakis's campaign suffered from several miscues. The result was a third consecutive Republican landslide.

Democratic candidates

Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts

Reverend Jesse Jackson of South Carolina (campaign)

Senator Al Gore of Tennessee (campaign)

Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri

Senator Paul Simon of Illinois

Former Senator Gary Hart of Colorado

Former Governor Bruce Babbitt of Arizona

Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (campaign)

Lyndon LaRouche of Virginia

David Duke of Louisiana

Representative Jim Traficant of Ohio

Andy Martin of Connecticut

The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Republican Party candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, the then-junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Foreign policy was the dominant theme throughout the election campaign, particularly Bush's conduct of the War on Terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

As in the 2000 presidential election, voting controversies and concerns of irregularities emerged during and after the vote. The winner was not determined until the following day, when Kerry decided not to dispute Bush's win in the state of Ohio. The state held enough electoral votes to determine the winner of the presidency. Both Kerry and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have stated their opinion that voting in Ohio did not proceed fairly and that, had it done so, the Democratic ticket might have won that state and therefore the election. However, there was far less controversy about this election than in 2000.

John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.

He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.

William R. "Willie" Horton (born August 12, 1951) is an American convicted felon who, while serving a life sentence for murder, without the possibility of parole, was the beneficiary of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program. He did not return from his furlough, and ultimately he committed assault, armed robbery and rape.

Horton was born in Chesterfield, South Carolina. On October 26, 1974, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Horton and two accomplices robbed Joseph Fournier, a 17-year-old gas station attendant, and then fatally stabbed him 19 times after he had cooperated by handing over all of the money in the cash register. His body was dumped in a trash can. Fournier died from blood loss. Horton was convicted of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and incarcerated at the Northeastern Correctional Center in Massachusetts.

On June 6, 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program but did not return. On April 3, 1987 in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Horton twice raped a local woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding, and gagging her fiancé. He then stole the car belonging to the man he had assaulted. He was later shot and captured by Corporal Paul J. Lopez of the Prince George's County Police Department after a pursuit. On October 20, Horton was sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The sentencing judge, Vincent J. Femia, refused to return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again."

Garry Davis (born 27 July 1921, Bar Harbor, Maine) is a peace activist who created the first World Passport.

Davis was the son of Meyer and Hilda Davis. He was graduated from the Episcopal Academy in 1940 and attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). Later, he earned a Master of Arts degree in geo-dialectics from the East-West University of Brahma Vidya, Bangalore, India.

A former Broadway actor, after serving in the U.S. Army during WWII as a B-17 bomber pilot, he renounced his American citizenship in Paris in 1948 to become a "citizen of the world." Davis interrupted a session of the United Nations General Assembly on 22 November 1948 calling for "one government for one world". He founded the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris in January 1949 which registered over 750,000 individuals. On 4 September 1953 Davis declared the World Government of World Citizens from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine, based on fundamental human rights. He then formed the World Service Authority in 1954 as the government's executive and administrative agency, which now issues the passports - along with birth and other certificates - to applicants. Davis first used his "world passport" on a trip to India in 1956, and has been variously admitted into certain countries around the world using his world passport. Over 180 countries have accepted the world passport at one time or another.