Blackpanthergate?—Now that he is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith (R-TX) is positioned to act on his claim that the Obama Justice Department dismissed a voting rights suit filed by the Bush DOJ because someone in the Obama administration was sympathetic to the defendants. What’s to investigate? On election day in 2008, two […]

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Cables from Caracas—Lost in the Department of Justice’s misguided attempt to prosecute Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, and the rhetoric of extremists such as Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin describing Assange as a terrorist, is the humor in the some of the cables released by Wikileaks. Hugo Chavez’s narcissistic, military socialism […]

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Limitless Greed “This estate tax proposal is emblematic of the limitless greed of the wealthy, but also that Republicans are so beholden to the wealthiest Americans that they would demand it.” —Rep. Jan Schakowsky “IT’S POPULAR TO SAY THAT SPENDING IS THE PROBLEM. But one can’t help noticing the irony of extending the ’01-’03 tax […]

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EXIT DELAY—On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Tom DeLay’s political career came full circle in an Austin courthouse five blocks south of the Capitol building where his career began in 1979. The former majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives was found guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to engage in money laundering. Executives from […]

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Following the Money “Should the American people put their faith in a white billionaires boys’ club to lead the revolution on behalf of poor people of color?” —Barbara Miner, at NOTwaitingforsuperman.org The documentary film Waiting for Superman advances a seductive argument: that the solution to the “problem” of public education lies exclusively in innovation that […]

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