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$ 25.00
By Colm Toibin
$19.99
$20
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Photo by Gage Skidmore
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It’s not quite ending the U.S. central bank, as Ron Paul is fond of saying he would like to do, but the Texas GOP congressman did get a bill passed through the House on Wednesday to audit the Federal Reserve.
Posted on Jul 25, 2012
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By Richard Reeves — The Capitol has become a cold, angry place where members not only don’t know each other, but will not make eye contact when they pass through those hallowed marble corridors.
Posted on Jul 22, 2012
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AP/Jae C. Hong
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By Bill Boyarsky — The effort to reduce unemployment is a grueling plant-by-plant, job-by-job process conducted by those seeking work, business people and local officials operating far from the media spotlight and simplistic rhetoric of the political campaign.
Posted on Jul 11, 2012
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By David Sirota — As Wired’s Spencer Ackerman reports, “Surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won’t tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency [because] it would violate your privacy to say so.”
Posted on Jun 28, 2012
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By Amy Goodman — “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale,” William A. Clark reportedly said. He was one of Montana’s “Copper Kings,” a man who used his vast wealth to manipulate the state government and literally buy votes to make himself a U.S. senator.
Posted on Jun 28, 2012
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DonkeyHotey (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt —
JPMorgan Chase is the biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Senate Banking Committee who were charged with investigating the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, in mid June.
Posted on Jun 21, 2012
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By Richard Reeves — As it has many times over more than a century, the Golden State again tried to reform its politics.
Posted on Jun 15, 2012
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Screenshot
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A look at the day’s political events, including the Arizona special election winner, JPMogran Chase CEO Jamie Dimon heckled and Sheldon Adelson’s latest multimillion-dollar donation.
Posted on Jun 13, 2012
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Photo by Gage Skidmore
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including the release of May presidential campaign fundraising figures, how Citizens United affected the Wisconsin recall and the controversy surrounding recent comments made by Bill Clinton.
Posted on Jun 7, 2012
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Lena/OnTask (Creative Commons)
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A look at the day’s political happenings, including the Wisconsin recall election, the next step in the battle to legalize same-sex marriage in California and Bill O’Reilly’s election prediction.
Posted on Jun 5, 2012
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Photo by Mike Renlund
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Despite agreeing that low federal student loan interest rates should be extended, Democrats and Republicans have not been able to come together to do so. On Thursday, the Senate rejected two competing plans that would have kept student loan rates from doubling to 6.8 percent on July 1.
Posted on May 24, 2012
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The Senate is moving to renew the soon-to-expire 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorized the U.S. government to monitor American citizens’ emails and telephone calls without a warrant. Former National Security Agency Director William Binney has warned that its vast data mining program, which operates under the amendments, could “create an Orwellian state.”
Posted on May 24, 2012
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TexasGOPVote.com
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The ongoing bickering between congressional Democrats and Republicans can be described as sophomoric, no surprise perhaps given a recent analysis that found the average elected representative in Washington, D.C., speaks at a 10th-grade level.
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Talk Radio News Service
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Democratic legislation that would prevent student loan interest rates from doubling was blocked in the Senate by Republicans on Tuesday.
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scott_bl8ke (CC-BY)
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Senate Republicans shot down a move to open debate on a rule supported by President Obama, congressional Democrats and the billionaire investor for whom it’s named that would force the wealthiest Americans to pay a minimum tax rate of 30 percent.
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By Joe Conason — While the public awaits the Supreme Court’s judgment on the constitutionality of health care reform, it is worth remembering how cheaply Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in particular have sullied the integrity of their lifetime appointments.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Three days of Supreme Court arguments over the health care law demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as if they were members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
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Wikimedia Commons / Scrumshus
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Just in time for election year, the U.S. Senate successfully ushered a bill—the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, cleverly abbreviated as the Stock Act—through to passage, and it now awaits final approval from President Obama.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Republicans cannot shut down their presidential nominating contest because the party is in the midst of an upheaval wrought by the terror the GOP rank and file has stirred among the more moderately conservative politicians who once ran things.
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Flickr / Felixe (CC-BY-SA)
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Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner is flipping the script on the contraception debate that’s become the top issue for culture war enthusiasts by proposing a bill that would oblige men to go through similar kinds of preliminary steps to get Viagra prescriptions or vasectomies as women will for their reproductive health needs if another bit of legislation becomes law.
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John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV (CC-BY)
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One of the few moderate Republicans left in Congress, if not the universe, Sen. Olympia Snowe said she has decided not to run for re-election because of “an atmosphere of polarization and ‘my way or the highway’ ideologies” in politics and government.
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http://legis.virginia.gov/
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It’s been a big week for all things prenatal in the Virginia Legislature. Earlier we saw the resolution of the controversy over a bill that would have required women in the Old Dominion to undergo invasive ultrasound procedures before having abortions, and Thursday, the state Senate made another big decision about reproductive law, at least for the time being.
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By Amy Goodman — “The president is wrong.” So says one of the newly appointed co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
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sushiesque (CC-BY)
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On Monday, gay marriage supporters scored another legislative victory with the news that the New Jersey Senate had passed a bill that will allow same-sex couples to make it official—that is, if the measure can make it past the state’s conservative governor, Chris Christie.
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Flickr / UggBoy?UggGirl (CC-BY)
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That’s a big score for defenders of Internet freedom: On Friday, responding to strong public reactions and grass-roots campaigns, key members of the House and Senate put scheduled votes on the über-contentious SOPA and PIPA bills on ice.
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Screen capture of Google.com
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By Amy Goodman — Wednesday, Jan. 18, marked the largest online protest in the history of the Internet. Websites from large to small “went dark” in protest of proposed legislation before the U.S. House and Senate that could profoundly change the Internet.
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AP photos by Chis Carlson and Charlie Riedel
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By Bill Boyarsky — Of the two top finishers in the Iowa Republican caucuses, it’s hard to tell who is worse: Mitt Romney, the eight-vote winner, or Rick Santorum.
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AP / Carolyn Kaster
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Because this is one of the things he can do from the Oval Office, President Obama pulled what his Republican opponents will no doubt characterize as a fast one by forcibly installing Richard Cordray on Wednesday as his chosen leader of the recently configured Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while Congress was on recess.
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By Eugene Robinson — Finally. After a year of artful camouflage and concealment, Republicans let us glimpse the rift between establishment pragmatists and tea party ideologues. There may be hope for the republic after all.
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So here we are, well into the thick of the holiday season, and no agreement has been reached on Capitol Hill about extending unemployment benefits and keeping payroll taxes from sudden escalation as the new year begins. Thus, President Obama dialed up a couple of key members of Congress, as spokesman Jay Carney described Wednesday.
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. House of Representatives
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Once again, folks, we have deadlock on Capitol Hill. Happy holidays! Although President Obama and the majority of the U.S. Senate hoped that the House of Representatives would cooperate and pass legislation that would extend unemployment benefits and a payroll tax break, that didn’t happen Tuesday.
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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By Bill Blum — If the Roberts court is consistent, 2012 could be remembered as a very bad year for working people, minorities and the poor.
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AP / Rich Pedroncelli
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By Bill Boyarsky — Senator Bernie Sanders has a much more sophisticated take on political corruption than the conventional view of campaign reformers.
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By David Sirota — In a speech last week to the Heritage Foundation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell used that war on terror-flavored jeremiad about an existential “threat” to describe a grassroots effort aimed at electing presidents via a national popular vote.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — What’s alarming is the ease with which an otherwise deadlocked Congress that can’t manage minimal funding for job creation passes a bill that threatens the foundations of our republican form of government.
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Flickr / Matti Mattila
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Those dastardly Republicans have done it again. First they blocked President Obama’s original choice, the esteemed Elizabeth Warren, to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and now Senate Republicans have shot down another stellar candidate, Richard Cordray.
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Wikimedia Commons / Scrumshus
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Pointing to the threat of terrorist groups like al-Qaida, Sen. Carl Levin and 60 of his colleagues voted Wednesday in favor of keeping provisions in the proposed National Defense Authorization Act that would grant the military the ability to detain terrorist suspects abroad and at home under controversial circumstances.
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Tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act, a Pentagon spending bill set to go before the Senate for a vote this week, is a truly scary provision that would give the military the ability to lock up terrorism suspects, or those so considered by the military, without trying or charging them. Americans included.
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writRHET (CC-BY)
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Pew researchers discovered that the number of religious groups lobbying politicians in Washington, D.C., has increased 500 percent in the past four decades, from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today. With more than 1,000 lobbyists vying for the ears of Congress members, the groups together spend more than $390 million a year ... (more)
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Flickr / Matti Mattila
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All right, members of the 112th United States Congress, if you keep saying you’re about to have a total political meltdown and then nothing happens, we’re going to stop believing you. Once again, the fearsome government shutdown was avoided Thursday when squabbling factions on Capitol Hill ... (more)
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Wikimedia Commons
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The shiny ideal of representative democracy starts dimming a bit when one considers factors and figures like those charted in a new study about U.S. Congress members’ personal finances. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 249 current members are millionaires—that’s about 47 percent. (more)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Senate Republicans sent a signal in voting as a bloc against President Obama’s jobs bill: Don’t just do something, stand there. But doing nothing is at least preferable to the ideas coming out of their party’s presidential candidates.
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Wikimedia Commmons / U.S. Senate
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Is Sen. Charles Schumer still a member of the reality-based community? The top Democrat confidently predicted on Wednesday that his party would retain control of the Senate in the 2012 election, despite having to defend way more seats than the Republicans. (more)
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Charlene McBride (CC-BY)
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The consumer advocate is off to a great start in her bid to defeat the other Democratic primary challengers and Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown to retake Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Warren raised $3 million in the last quarter—double Brown’s haul.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It’s not often that a sound bite from a Democratic candidate gets so under the skin of my distinguished colleague George F. Will that he feels moved to quote it in full and then devote an entire column to refuting it.
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The Occupy Wall Street protests are making more than just a splash; LGBT activists join the Occupy Wall Street protests to assert their rights; meanwhile, a secret panel places Americans on a “kill list.” These discoveries and more after the jump.
Posted on Oct 8, 2011
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Harry Reid
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Democratic leaders in the Senate proposed Wednesday that Americans who make more than $1 million a year should be charged a 5 percent surtax to pay for President Obama’s jobs bill.
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Flickr / U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region (CC-BY)
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Members of the House passed a disaster aid spending bill early Friday morning, then went home for a weeklong recess. Hours later, the Senate rejected the bill, making the possibility of a government shutdown Oct. 1 a real possibility.
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U.S. Navy / Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley
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Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen was unusually harsh in his criticism of Pakistan on Thursday, saying an insurgent network behind several Afghanistan bombings, including the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy, “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” (more)
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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