Filibusters Are Busted—In our June 1 FYI we said they weren’t. But then, under a bipartisan agreement, Senate Democrats voluntarily backed down on the decision to filibuster the confirmation of several appellate court judges. The Senate confirmed the judgeships of two conservative women, Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American Justice on the California Supreme Court, and Priscilla R. Owen of […]

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Filibusters Aren’t Busted—At least not yet. When Senate Democrats proposed a cloture motion to stop debate on, and block the confirmation of, the controversial John Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, it passed 56 to 42. That was 4 votes short of the 60 needed under Senate rules to end the […]

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On July 27, 2004, when he made one of the most memorable speeches in the history of our political parties, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Barack Obama began to click with American voters as they watched him on TV. In Illinois, helped by his reputation as a state senator and a African-American statesman, […]

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For several decades, Neal Peirce has been a national journalist in Washington, but with a sharp eye focused also on the state and local scenes. He is the author of the newspaper column “Citistates Reports” (formerly called the “Peirce Reports”), which concentrates on strategic issues for many regional newspapers. The country’s first national newspaper column […]

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Corruption at Public Broadcasting—The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is the administrative funnel through which congressional appropriations are doled out to PBS, the Public Broadcasting System’s television outlet, and NPR, National Public Radio. The CPB received about $378 million from Congress for the 2004 fiscal year, representing about 15 percent of public broadcasting’s revenues. Some […]

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