Political Parties and Third Parties try to influence congress by expressing their ideas of what should be done for the welfare of whatever they believe in and by choosing a member of the group to run for president to even further expand their success in the belief they hold on to.<span />
A collapse of their newly independent nations. Although the diverse ethnicities were unhappy under the Austro-Hungary empire, they were secure under the government.
During the Taiping Rebellion, the peasants rebelled. It was mostly a civil war which killed scores of people (twenty million people approximately). The movement was a millenarian movement (meaning it occurred because of religious ideology). The movement was led by Hong Xiuquan who claimed he was Jesus' younger brother. Hong Xiuquan wanted to instill social reforms such as collective property, equality for women and replacing Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist and Chinese folk religion with Christianity.
The clause is really a state's rights clause. A state may not pass a law that makes something illegal that was legal before the law was passed. In other words if a state suddenly passed a law that said it is no longer legal to park your car in front of any government building, but it was legal to do so yesterday, the police cannot come to your door and issue a ticket for parking in front of a government building because you did it yesterday.
The constitution actually uses the phrase ex post facto law in Article 1 Section 10 Clause 1.