|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tom Brokaw
 . '/' . substr('9780375708756',-6,3) . '/' . '9780375708756' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Gore Vidal
$16.95
$20
|
|
|
|
Flickr / Center for American Progress Action Fund
|
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and Senate and House Republican leaders have announced their selections for the deficit-reduction “super committee.” The 12-person council will attempt to cut about $1.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade. (more)
|
AP / J Pat Carter
|
“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away,” as one wise troubadour put it, and luckily for struggling homeowners, President Obama took a good look at a bill that had cleared Congress and flexed his executive powers to send it back Thursday.
|
speaker.gov
|
After weeks of failed politicking, the Democrats have punted on tax cuts for the middle class until after the November midterm elections, succumbing to the fact that they do not have enough GOP support to push through a bill that has no accompanying tax cuts for the wealthy.
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — There is something weird going on in the Republican Party when Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn is the voice of reason. There is something dangerous going on in the Republican Party when he is vilified for it.
|
White House / Pete Souza
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The passage of health care reform provided the first piece of incontestable evidence that Washington has changed.
|
|
The House minority leader got a bit hot and bothered just before the House vote approving the Senate’s version of health care reform, repeatedly dropping H-E-double hockey sticks. Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke instead to history.
|
U.S. Air Force
|
After decades of second-class treatment, America’s female aviators of the Second World War have been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Although 38 of their number died in the line of duty, the women fliers received none of the benefits of male pilots and weren’t even recognized as veterans until 1977.
|
speaker.gov
|
The president is so desperate for ways to fight unemployment he issued a call Thursday for “fresh perspectives and new ideas.” Well, Nancy Pelosi has some. The House speaker wants to spend some of that hot, hot TARP money on job creation. (continued)
|
speaker.gov
|
Nancy Pelosi wasted no time slapping down a National Republican Congressional Committee press release that said “taxpayers can only hope [Gen. Stanley] McChrystal is able to put her in her place.” That’s “her,” as in the House speaker, whose place is running one of the coequal branches of government.
|
AP / Susan Walsh
|
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has thrown a high-level wrench into President Obama’s plans to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Pelosi said Thursday that she sees little support in Congress for new deployments, an observation that comes at a time of rising casualties and strife in Afghanistan.
|
|
Rep. Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, is a real class act. To prove it, he heckled the president Wednesday, shouting “You lie!” after Obama promised that his plan would not cover illegal immigrants. Update
|
|
We’re sympathetic to members of the House who find themselves getting yelled at by hecklers with less-than-pure motives, but calling that behavior “un-American” is probably ill-advised when you represent a body of government that famously had a committee by the same name.
|
speaker.gov
|
Nancy Pelosi and her fellow progressive Democrats in the House have opened a can of health care whoop-ass that’s sure to drive Republicans and conservative Democrats nuts. The House bill, unveiled Tuesday, would tax the rich and businesses that skimp on health care coverage, provide a public option and require everybody to be covered.
|
Wikimedia Commons/YooTube
|
Former President Bush’s infamous warrant-free domestic surveillance plan, instituted after 9/11 to monitor potentially suspicious communication between parties within and outside of the U.S., has deservedly gotten a bad rap—and it’s about to get worse, thanks to a congressionally mandated report released Friday.
|
Harald Dettenborn
|
Rep. Jane Harman agreed to go to bat for two AIPAC officials accused of espionage, in exchange for which an Israeli spy would try to get her appointed to chair the House Intelligence Committee, according to Congressional Quarterly. The NSA reportedly captured an exchange between Harman and the spy, during which the congresswoman allegedly said, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
|
|
Yes, Keith Olbermann and other pundits (paging Anderson Cooper) had a field day with the right wing’s adoption of “tea bagging” as the driving metaphor behind their Tax Day protests. But no, the double entendres didn’t start “on the blogs,” as Bill O’Reilly’s “nice lady” guest Amanda Carpenter suggested on his show.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — By comparison with her recent predecessors, she’s a strong speaker of the House. She has far more control than the previous Democratic speaker had, despite having to contend with a more conservative GOP and an ideologically diverse pack of Democrats.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — It’s “a completely different world,” says the House speaker, delighted by “the fact that we have a Democratic president who ... put forth an agenda for America that contained many of the issues that we have been fighting for over the years.”
|
|
It seems Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s stimulus compromise announcement was a tad premature, a fact that reportedly irked the most powerful woman in politics, Nancy Pelosi. “The speaker went through the roof,” a House Democrat told Politico, when she saw Reid’s alleged power play.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama’s outreach to Republicans is popular, but the coming week will test his resolve. Eventually, he’ll have to say “no” to the GOP, or lose what he’s fighting for.
|
|
By David Sirota — Intragovernmental squabbling probably makes the conflict-averse Obama uncomfortable. But the “make him do it” dynamic could finally bring the center of Washington’s political debate closer to the progressive center of American public opinion.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Millions have served time in U.S. prisons for crimes that fall far short of those attributed to the Bush administration. Some criminals, it seems, are like banks judged too big to fail: too big to jail, too powerful to prosecute.
|
Flickr / hthg1983
|
The vice president let it slip Sunday that the $700 billion TARP bailout bill could have a sequel. Also, Nancy Pelosi indicated that Congress might dole out more funds to financial institutions. Let’s see, that’s $700 billion on TARP, $850 billion for the still-pending stimulus package, plus the mysterious billions they’re tossing around at the Federal Reserve. ... Here’s hoping China doesn’t cut up our national credit card.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The substantive issues surrounding an economic stimulus are clearer than the politics of getting it passed fast. Here’s how Obama is trying to weave the politics and the substance together.
|
AP photo / Alex Brandon
|
It’s hard to remember a time when so much was at stake during a presidential transition in America. Barack Obama is still two weeks shy of taking office, but even so, his silence about the current crisis in Gaza in particular has not gone unnoticed.
|
AP photo / Susan Walsh
|
When he selected Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, Barack Obama acknowledged that he was looking for a bad cop, but Nancy Pelosi refuses to be bullied. A former mentor of sorts to Emanuel, the House speaker is “laying down the law,” according to the Politico.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — In naming retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki as veterans affairs secretary, President-elect Barack Obama made what may be the most politically and morally significant choice of his transition.
|
Flickr / SteelCityHobbies
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The auto industry bailout would have no chance of passing without the muscle of the Big Three’s unionized work force. Yet you can’t turn around without hearing someone trash autoworkers for the terrible crime of trying to earn a decent living.
|
speaker.gov
|
Nancy Pelosi isn’t as showy as some of her predecessors, but according to a profile in the Politico, the most powerful woman in American political history is firmly in control of her domain. Tom “the Hammer” DeLay says she is “the most powerful speaker in a generation—she will be able to do anything she wants.” As one anonymous lawmaker put it, “Whatever Nancy wants, Nancy gets.”
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If Reagan had the voters’ permission to move away from strategies associated with liberalism, Obama has sanction to move away from conservative policies. And Reagan offers another lesson: His first moves were bold, and Obama should not fear following his example.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Republicans will try to tie memories of Jimmy Carter to the new Democratic president by conjuring up disturbing visions of policy failure and “malaise.”
|
|
Shades of McCarthyism? In her televised rundown of practically all of the anti-Obama talking points conjured up this election season, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., calls the Illinois senator (and other “liberals” in Washington) “anti-American” on Friday’s “Hardball.”
|
|
If there was any lingering doubt as to the tone that will characterize these last weeks on the campaign trail, take a look at this disapproving, if vague, McCain ad, in which a disdainful-sounding narrator claims Barack Obama did something dishonorable at some point in the campaign, and also, liberals are bad ... or something like that.
|
The New York Times / Doug Mills
|
On Friday the House approved, after initially rejecting, the $700-billion bailout package for the financial industry in what is likely to be the most expensive government intervention in the nation’s history. This, of course, only slightly surpasses another notable “government intervention”—the nearly $600 billion spent in the war in Iraq.
|
|
By Joe Conason — The initial failure to pass bailout legislation reflected a political system as bereft of confidence as the financial markets.
|
montage: White House / Wikimedia Commons
|
The Dow dropped more than 777 points on the news that the House had voted down the $700-billion bailout proposal, so why does our editor think it’s “a great moment for American democracy”?
|
White House / Eric Draper
|
When it came to a showdown in the House, the $700-billion bailout scheme was considered to be as toxic as the securities it was supposed to save us from. Democrats and Republicans broke ranks Monday to vote down the measure, 228-205, against the wishes of both parties’ leaders.
|
AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
|
Early Sunday morning brought word that the end of the drawn-out bailout negotiations between warring factions of the federal government might finally be at hand, although the House and Senate had not yet officially approved terms of the proposed plan. Updated
|
house.gov
|
Just a day after negotiations seemed to break down, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck a confident tone. So did Rep. Barney Frank, who threw in some of his patented sass: “Now that Sen. McCain is safely in Mississippi, we can get to serious work.”
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s sudden intervention in Washington’s deliberations over the Wall Street bailout could not have been more out of sync with what was actually happening.
|
Flickr / jurvetson
|
Nancy Pelosi isn’t buying into the idea of a $700 billion gift basket for Wall Street without any strings attached. The House speaker is all for a bailout, so long as it’s clear that “the party is over for the Bush administration’s anything goes, failed economic policies.” Update 2
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Even though Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind supplied explosive evidence to support the case that the Bush administration willfully deceived America and the rest of the world about the Iraq invasion, some key players in Congress still insist there aren’t sufficient grounds for impeachment, but the chance still stands to follow Suskind’s lead before the Bush camp decamps from the White House.
|
Flickr / smellyknee
|
As the most powerful woman in government, Nancy Pelosi is used to confronting political rivals, but the House speaker has trouble on her flank. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan (above), displeased with the Democrats’ lack of progress against the war, has gathered enough signatures to challenge Pelosi as an independent.
|
White House / David Bohrer
|
Once again, the Republicans have managed to take a nonsense issue and make rain. Nancy Pelosi wants to save the planet, and she knows offshore drilling is a “hoax,” but the House speaker is under fire and she’s starting to budge.
|
Flickr / ccgd
|
According to the Politico, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given her blessing to vulnerable Democrats to rebel against the party’s position on offshore drilling. The strategy goes something like this: Pelosi plays the liberal from San Francisco while representatives of more conservative districts berate her. With a majority intact, the Democrats push through a comprehensive energy policy sometime in 2009.
|
twitter.com
|
House Republicans are camping out in the Capitol, trying to pressure an up-or-down vote on offshore drilling. The lights and the C-SPAN cameras are off, but a number of lawmakers have turned to new media sites such as YouTube and even Twitter to microblog their dissent.
|
White House / Eric Draper
|
The House Judiciary Committee cited former presidential adviser Karl Rove for contempt of Congress because of his refusal to testify on the politicization of the Justice Department. There’s still plenty of red tape keeping Bush’s Brain from a day of reckoning. A full vote on the citation won’t happen—if it happens at all—until September, and by the time the lawyers get involved, George W. Bush will be back in Crawford whacking brush.
|
|
With the caveat that the House of Representatives is not to blame, Nancy Pelosi tells Jon Stewart that “in terms of Congress’ performance on the war, I’m with the public on that. I’m disappointed.” But she doesn’t blame her Democratic colleagues in the Senate, either. It’s those pesky Republicans in all their untamed minority.
|
itpsites.com
|
If there was one word that summed up the political tenor of the Bush II presidency, it definitely wouldn’t be accountability. On Friday, this was once again made clear as the House of Representatives passed a bill granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that allowed their networks to be used by the government to eavesdrop on Americans following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — In 225 days, at least one high-ranking politician will become unemployed. How many will join President Bush in retirement?
|
View older articles:
1 2 3 >
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
