… and How Hard the White House Pushes for Them
by Robert Reich
In an interesting piece in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai suggests that the White House has learned the main lesson of Bill Clinton’s failed attempt at universal health care, which is not to deliver a finished product to Congress but instead give [...]

 
by Carl Matthes
In the Oxford English Dictionary “equality” means, “Identical in amount; neither less nor greater…having the same measure, number, value, intensity.” How did three Democratic presidents, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson, speak to equality?
President Barack Obama on Monday, June 1, 2009 named June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month” issuing [...]

by Charley James
At the end of the state funeral for Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau on October 3, 2000, official mourners were milling about in front of Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. Cuban president Fidel Castro stepped over to Jimmy Carter to ask a serious political question:
What did Carter think of using the love of baseball shared [...]

 
By Denis Campbell
When W. Bush was selected President in 2000, I shrugged and assumed this a natural part of the pendulum’s swing to the right. Now, the release of a two-page talking points memo to rehabilitate his presidential image has me sputtering mad at the whitewash this White House continues to apply to try and [...]

by Denis Campbell
Somewhere between 41 and 43 was a Presidency that left behind a budget surplus, grew jobs and left the economy busting and thriving. 70-days ago Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President before 85,000 fans in Denver. On Day 69, (an interestingly appropriate number), former President Bill Clinton climbed off his high horse [...]

 
by Denis Campbell
While the Presidential contest gets the most press, the race for control of both houses of the US Congress and state governorships is equally critical to whoever becomes the new President. 60 in the Senate is such an important number because that is the number of votes required to halt/prevent crippling filibusters which [...]

 
by Denis Campbell
This has been a depressing week. The ugly, angry mobs surrounding McCain – Palin, the potential, as my colleague Charley James writes, for last second raw racist 527 group adverts, a deeply divided country dragged into and immersed in yet another banal and trivial ‘business as usual’ political campaign instead of seriously debating [...]

by Charley James
I don’t understand.
Republicans came to Washington in 2000 with a solid majority in both houses of Congress and on the Supreme Court, allowing them to steal the presidency. If you ever wanted to know what a pure Republican Party government unhindered by Democrats or anyone else might look like, this was the moment.
After [...]

by Charley James
When I was a kid in Milwaukee, there was a guy who walked up and down Wisconsin Ave., the main drag, wearing a sandwich board proclaiming, “Repent! The End Is Near.”
Of course, he meant his warning in a “come to Jesus now” sort of way. But if the fellow is still alive, I [...]

In what had to be a difficult speech for anyone to make, Hillary Clinton gave the gracious, fire in the belly, support Obama and the party speech she needed to give last night. Solid, filled with great quotes, it was mostly on target. There were a few moment when it looked as if it would [...]