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This post originally appeared on Think Progress. At the end of the year, President Bush’s tax cuts are set to expire. President Obama and many Democrats in Congress favor extending those tax cuts for the middle class. But Republicans — seemingly not worried about the $700 billion cost — want tax cuts for the [...]

On Wednesday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart took audiences through the day’s political corruption highlights: While John Kerry has been accused of parking his yacht in Rhode Island to avoid taxes, Congressman Charlie Rangel seems to have no idea what repercussions his laundry list of crimes might yield. And, lest we forget, Blago. At trial, his attorneys [...]

FROM feckless fathers and teenaged mothers to so-called feral kids, the media seems to take a voyeuristic pleasure in documenting the lives of the “underclass”. Whether they are inclined to condemn or sympathise, commentators regularly ask how society got to be this way. There is seldom agreement, but one explanation you are unlikely to hear [...]

Why does the mainstream media ignore that when covering it? The immigration mess in this country is not a fake problem. But the debate surrounding how you solve it is completely artificial. Immigration reform has been the most politically divisive issue in this country for going on six years. That is insanely idiotic [...]

Coming on the eve of another war funding vote, many wondered if the the memos leaked by Wikileaks on the details of the Afghanistan deployment might make a difference. At the first test, the answer appears to have been no. The House approved $33 billion for a 30,000-troop escalation in Afghanistan this week and in doing [...]

This post first appeared on Mother Jones. “WASHINGTON (AFP) – With BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone’s lips is: where is all the oil?” NEW ORLEANS (Mother Jones) – I don’t know who the fuck these everyones [...]

This post first appeared on Daily Kos. Michael Hirsh: There has been, in recent days, a groundswell of support for Elizabeth Warren, one of the top candidates to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One less-noted reason for all this outspoken fervor is that, for many liberal critics, Barack Obama’s economic [...]

While a federal judge struck down important parts of Arizona’s draconian immigration law today, namely the obligatory police check of immigration status, the battle over Arizona’s immigration crisis has hardly come to a screeching halt. Over the past three years, publicity hound Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Massachusetts-raised former DEA bureaucrat, has been leading “crime suppression [...]

This post first appeared on Think Progress. This afternoon, in a long-awaited decision, federal district court judge Susan Bolton enjoined several major provisions of Arizona’s immigration law, SB-1070. While it was speculated that Bolton would block parts of SB-1070 relating to warrantless arrests and document requirements, the judge also ended up striking [...]

The world’s largest online community of artists, deviantART, is running an amazing contest that brings together creative spark and real vision. The CoolClimate Art Contest ends on Aug. 23, and we thought it would be right up some of our more artistic AlterNet readers’ alley. From the guidelines: We are searching for the brightest and most creative [...]

Rosie the Riveter defiantly rolls up her blue work shirt to show off a brawny bicep. She’s a symbol of American strength. She worked in a manufacturing job, one of millions that constructed the defense machine that won World War II for the Allies. She said, “We can do it.” And America did.Now, however, shuttered U.S. [...]

This post first appeared on No More Mister Nice Blog. Democrats want to allow the Bush tax cuts for the rich to lapse, while renewing the cuts for other taxpayers. Republicans, of course, want to keep the whole tax cut package — including the cuts for the rich, which the general [...]

In one sense, I agree with Steve Clemons, who wrote last month of the many terrible and entirely foreseeable consequences that would follow an attack on Iran and concluded that those worried by the prospect should “stop hyperventilating.” Clemons, who’s very well connected to the intelligence and defense communities, wrote: While there are individuals in the [...]

The Associated Press reports that Judge Susan Bolton has stopped several controversial parts of the Arizona law from going into effect tomorrow:U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled that the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues. The ruling came just as police were making last-minute preparations to begin enforcement of [...]

This post first appeared on Hullabaloo. I’m afraid that Garry Wills is right: Most presidents start wondering—or, more often, worrying—about their “legacy” well into their first term. Or, if they have a second term, they worry even more feverishly about what posterity will think of them. Obama need not wonder about his [...]

This post first appeared on Balloon Juice. Of course the egomaniacs in the Senate are now against reforming the filibuster: Senate Democrats do not have the votes to lower the 60-vote threshold to cut off filibusters.The lack of support among a handful of Senate Democratic incumbents is a major blow to the effort to [...]

We all woke up this morning in an America, as divisive and as riddled with inequality, as the day before he took office.It was shortly after the Skip Gates incident that President Obama’s approval ratings with white voters first started to plummet. As of last week, only 37 percent of white respondents approve of his [...]

Take a look at this sign (via Think Progress) which was produced and displayed publicly by NOM (National Organization For Marriage) supporter Larry Adams at a recent rally in Indianapolis as part NOM’s Summer for Marriage Tour 2010, and tell me this isn’t one of the worst examples of hate speech [...]

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice. There are many goofy aspects to this Life Site News story arguing that because a slim majority of teenagers don’t have sex, we don’t need to teach them about contraceptive methods. Perhaps the most puzzling is why they came out [...]

This post originally appeared on the Washington Monthly. The chances of the Senate taking up a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year are about zero. But there is time, and at least some political will, to tackle smaller measures related to the larger policy.Some immigrant rights groups are shifting the strategy in their [...]

Pan Left members Jason Michael Aragón and Mary Charlotte Thurtle have been producing the documentary Under Arpaio that deals with the effect Sheriff Joe Arpaio has on Maricopa County, Arizona and the nation. In light of the enormous spotlight being put on Arizona at this time from SB1070, this statement from Jason and Mary [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. Over the weekend, news broke that three months after his oil company’s rig set off the largest oil spill in American history, BP CEO Tony Hayward would be stepping down. In his resignation statement, Hayward stressed that, “BP will be a changed company as a result of” [...]

Why aren’t more people seriously alarmed by WikiLeaks’ recently released documents? On Tuesday’s Daily Show, Stewart re-hashed the story of one brave “Bradass” who accumulated mountains of classified evidence and emailed it to WikiLeaks — all while lip-synching Lady Gaga. Now if only the pundits would stop talking about the “newness” of the documents and see them [...]

Inspired by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb’s musings, it was penned by Adam Serwer over at The American Prospect (via LGM): There are a number of things about Senator Jim Webb’s op-ed “The Myth of White Privilege” to dislike, starting with the fact that one of the awesome things about the existence of white privilege is that you can [...]

This post first appeared on Daily Kos. Remember the Council of Conservative Citizens? They were Trent Lott’s buddies back in the day, and are a modern-era, suit-and-tie version of the KKK (”CCC” … get it?). The Anti-Defamation League has more info on those racists here. In any case, those guys aren’t happy [...]

Events were held across the country Monday to mark the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. At a ceremony at the White House, disability rights activists made the point that passing the law was only the start. “Civil rights laws do not self-enforce, ” said Marca Bristo, “They only [...]

In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States, with the basic facts of the case agreed to by all nine Justices in Screws vs. the U.S. Government, says not one word about Bobby Hall being lynched. Why? Because it never happened. [...]

At least this guy is honest, and doesn’t try to hide his profoundly un-American views (via TPM): Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, currentlyrunning third in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary race, says he’s not sure if Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion apply to the followers of the world’s second-largest faith, Islam. At a recent event in Hamilton [...]

This post first appeared on No More Mister Nice Blog. Ah, remember the innocent days of, say, early 2010, when Jane Hamsher could write this (emphasis added)? … Granted, the tea party messaging can be pretty schizophrenic and has often served as a grab bag of anti-Obama sentiment. But their primary message has [...]

This post first appeared on Booman Tribune. When you hear the Republicans talk about fiscal responsibility, you should really just laugh in their faces. Consider this: A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq. The Special Inspector [...]

This post first appeared on Think Progress. While working on his article published yesterday in the New York Times highlighting the right-wing media’s “misleading coverage,” reporter Brian Stelter did some background research into cable news viewership demographics. While he didn’t include the findings in his story, he found them notable enough [...]

Daniel Schultz writes in the The Revealer: A church down in Gainesville is planning to hold an “International Burn A Quran Day” on 9/11, part of its larger “Islam is of the Devil” campaign. The pastor talks about the point of the event in an interview with the Friendly Atheist: Do you think Muslims will turn [...]

No reformers question whether Elizabeth Warren is the best candidate to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She’s a lauded scholar, an inspiring advocate who will draw talented and dedicated reformers to the new agency and she came up with the whole idea for creating the CFPB in the first place. Nominating a dedicated [...]

New Hampshire “Mama Grizzly” Kelly Ayotte loses moderates’ support following Sarah Palin’s smarmy Facebook endorsement (from Public Policy Polling): Kelly Ayotte’s seen her appeal to moderate voters crumble in the wake of her endorsement by Sarah Palin and her lead over Paul Hodes has shrunk to its lowest level of any public polling in [...]

There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know. That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this: ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 [...]

This post first appeared on Hullabaloo. Matthews asked Paul Ryan (R-AynRandFanboy) today if we should let the Bush tax cuts expire: I don’t think it’s a good idea, especially when we’re trying to come out of a jobless recovery and slow growth recovery. We’ve got unemployment at almost 10%, the last thing [...]

On Fox News Sunday, Howard Dean called the network racist for hounding Shirley Sherrod and trying to scare white people by parading around the three black panthers left in the country. In an interview on the Young Turks today, Dean stood by his comments, saying that stoking the racial fears and resentments of the right-wing [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. Not exactly a shock: Seventeen percent of potential regional tourists have indicated they have canceled or delayed a trip to Louisiana because of the ongoing oil spill and pollution problems resulting from the Deepwater Horizon-BP rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a study commissioned [...]

Written by Sarah Seltzer for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice. Teen mom and abstinence spokeswoman Bristol Palin has risked the disapproval of two feuding families to romantically reunite with Levi Johnston, the repentant, formerly spurned (and spurning) father-of-her-child. Ironically, the glee that this clandestine second betrothal causes among Palin [...]

By Duchess Harris, Race-Talk contributor,Exactly one year ago, I published a book entitled, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton. My publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, has decided to re-print in paperback and they’d like me to change the title to “…from Kennedy to Obama” and add a chapter about the President. I’ve been blogging since April [...]

On Monday’s Daily Show, Stewart introduced his own edited version of Sherrod’s now infamous speech. After that, he took the two responsible parties to task — first, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, for his his mealy-mouthed regrets; then White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, for his passive agressive apology. According to Stewart, the brouhaha never should have [...]

I made the Hunter S. Thompson joke as we circled the Strip in the airport shuttle. If not for the connection to the Good Doctor, Las Vegas would seem an incongruous place for a left-leaning convention. The place pumps enough energy into glittering, flashing neon lights to warm half the globe, and feminist bloggers enjoying cocktails [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. This Thursday, SB-1070, Arizona’s radical new immigration law, will go into effect. Despite an incoming lawsuit from the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has maintained that her state “will prevail,” claiming that she is simply defending the border integrity and safety of her [...]

In a despicable piece of purported journalism, American Spectator contributor Jeffrey Lord, a former political director for Ronald Reagan, accuses Shirley Sherrod of being untruthful about the lynching of her relative, Bobby Hall, in the 1940s. Turns out that Hall was merely delivered by a local sheriff to a white mob outside a courthouse — [...]

I was in Las Vegas for Netroots over the weekend, and although I’d seen these express security lines that the Department of Homeland Security offers well-heeled business- and first-class travelers in the past, it had never occurred to me just how outrageous that is, on principle, in a supposedly equal society. DHS is a government agency, financed [...]

This post is by Suman Raghunathan of the Progressive States Network: In the wake of AZ SB 1070’s passage in late April, a far right network of groups and legislators announced plans to move bills in state around the country.  But the list of states rejecting those bills continues to grow and efforts to get anti-immigrant proposals on [...]

This post originally appeared on Hullabaloo. Did you know that you can attend Glenn Beck University for the amazing deal of only $9.95 per month? The thing is that most of would probably agree that $9.95 a month is $9.90 more than we would be willing to spend. The good news is that you don’t even have [...]

This post originally appeared at Media Matters for America. Right-wing media figures have tried to absolve themselves for attacking Shirley Sherrod by pointing out that the White House fired her. However, regardless of the White House’s actions, these media figures are far from blameless; as Salon’s Joan Walsh noted, media figures “pounc[ed] on” Sherrod without seeking [...]

There are times when the best policy isn’t politically attractive, but this is a perfect example of bad policy that would certainly come back to haunt its advocates at the polls, as it absolutely should: A growing number of Democrats believe reducing spending needs to be the party’s No. 1 priority – even above fostering job [...]

This post is by Scott Keyes and originally appeared on Think Progress. Since President Obama first took office, Republicans have stood lock-step in opposition to his legislative agenda. In March 2010, Republican senators waged arecord number of filibusters for a two-year term – after just 14 months. Given the GOP’s dearth of ideas, it’s understandable that [...]

Talking-Points Memo reports: [Ken] Buck is the Tea Party candidate running against establishment pick Jane Norton in Colorado’s Republican Senate primary. His latest gaffe is being caught on tape by a Democratic operative saying, ‘Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?’ according [...]

This post originally appeared on No More Mister Nice Blog. And now, well, we have the sort of story that’s going to monopolize the left blogosphere for days, and I can’t stand it, because the story isn’t going to make any significant difference in how the U.S. government conducts business. Spencer Ackerman: …WikiLeaks just published a trove [...]

This post originally appeared on the Daily Kos. With Republican candidate Scott McInnis beleaguered by the massive plagiarism scandal and refusing to leave the race, Tom Tancredo is stepping in. “I will officially announce at noon that I will seek the nomination of the constitution party,” Tancredo told The Denver Post…. Tancredo gave Republican candidates Scott McInnis and Dan Maes [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) fired up progressive activists as the closing speaker at the fifth annual Netroots Nation conference on Saturday evening. He jokingly called the gathering “the most exciting political gathering of the year without guns” and told the gathering to keep fighting and [...]

Men: do you want to be bigger and thicker where it counts? Would you like a longer, more powerful sexual experience? And speaking of you know what, are you standing over the toilet waiting for your flow? Waking up in the middle of the night to urinate? Once upon a time, it was advertising about women’s flow that [...]

Here’s the White House’s full response to the latest WikiLeaks saga: The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – [...]

Dear Gov. Jan Brewer: Like you, I arrived in Arizona in 1970 as a carpetbagging immigrant. An O’odham elder on the Gila River Indian Community took pity on me, though, and taught me a bit of Arizona history. One of our first outings was to the concrete remains of the Butte Japanese internment camp on his reservation, [...]

Written by Robin Marty for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice. There’s not a lot of talk of women’s rights this year at the 5th Annual Netroots Nation, a gathering of progressive politicians, pundits, reporters, bloggers and policy wonks.   Panels seem much more focused on immigration, net neutrality, environmental issues and [...]

This post originally appeared on the Washington Monthly. We knew the blockbuster story would come eventually; we just didn’t know when or what revelations it might include. But this morning, the New York Times and the UK’s Guardian report on tens of thousands of classified documents on the war in Afghanistan, revealed through [...]

This post first appeared on Hullabaloo. If he’s saying what he seems to be saying, I’m fairly sure it’s a good thing: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says the Obama administration will push for letting tax cuts for wealthy Americans expire while extending them for the rest of the nation. In interviews broadcast Sunday [...]

This post first appeared on Booman Tribune.This will do little to help U.S.-Israeli relations.There is one video Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, must be praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles. To date, the 10-minute segment has been broadcast only in Hebrew on Israel’s Channel 10. [Editor’s [...]

This post first appeared on Think Progress. In a deal negotiated last month, President Obama and BP officials agreed the company would pay $5 billion annually over the next four years into an escrow account for damage its oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico caused. Ken Feinberg, who was appointed to [...]

Carly Fiorina doesn’t want all Californians to know how much she has courted and aligned herself with the Tea Party.Even before this video was released, the Fiorina Campaign was already on the defensive attack, trying to take the public’s attention away from her Tea Party/Palin support. They are distorting the truth, hiding from [...]

LAS VEGAS, NEV. — In two major speeches and in the scuttlebutt of break-out sessions, Tea Party movement activists yesterday witnessed a subtle melding of their ideology with the sensibilities of the religious right and the cold capitalism of libertarian she-ro Ayn Rand. Along the way, more nakedly than before, presenters spoke of their clear-eyed [...]

My Meeting with the  Sherrods in 1982 to Preserve New Communities Lost in the chatter about the firing of Shirley Sherrod and subsequent USDA apology is the unquestionable fact that she had devoted her entire life to economic justice. In my view, she is a moral giant compared to shameful media celebrities, like Sean Hannity or Bill [...]

LAS VEGAS, NEV. — Richard Viguerie is a happy man. At 76, Viguerie, a founder of the religious right and largely credited with winning the 1980 presidential election for Ronald Reagan, believes he’s about to see his dream come true: a U.S. government dominated by movement conservatives, thanks to the Tea Party movement. “Today we have [...]

The saga of Shirley Sherrod has all of the elements of a classic American story: a little person beaten down by the powers that be; a muckraking villain; the vexing elements of race, class, and gender; and a triumphant victory where the bad guys are exposed and our heroine stands supreme. What is the only thing [...]

Fascinating post from DailyKos by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse:When the BP oil gusher mess first began, BP hired prison labor in order to reap tax benefits instead of hiring coastal residents whose livelihoods crashed with the explosion of the wellhead. When the community expressed their outrage, BP did not stop the practice of using [...]

On Tuesday I penned a commentary for the Los Angeles Times rebutting Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s public condemnation of Prop. 19 — The Regulate, Control &Tax Cannabis Initiative of 2010. Now the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), which provides non-partisan fiscal and policy advice, has come out with their own repudiation of Sen. Feinstein’s claims. Specifically, [...]

This post originally appeared on the Washington Monthly. What’s become of the Senate energy bill is a profound disappointment to anyone who takes policy seriously. It’s a shell of its former self, and it’s painful to see this rare opportunity to make meaningful progress slip away. It’s not that the legislation’s remaining [...]

At the end of a long painful week, Shirley Sherrod’s been offered a new job with the USDA’s Office of Civil Rights and Community Outreach. She’s still considering, though, and who can blame her? In an interview on Good Morning America Sherrod said Thursday that she wasn’t ready to accept Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s job [...]

This post originally appeared on Daily Kos. The Los Angeles Times has this unsurprising news: Federal investigators painted a picture Thursday that suggested BP and oil-rig owner Transocean cut corners aboard the doomed Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.Investigators have suggested [...]

This post originally appeared on Think Progress. This morning, President Barack Obama apologized to former USDA official Shirley Sherrod for her forced resignation based on a highly misleading video produced by right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart. Obama “expressed his regret” in a phone call with Sherrod, which she described as “a very good [...]

Since the election of Barack Obama it has become increasingly clear that the dividing lines between Left and Right, liberal and conservative, are hardening. I have always hoped that we can come together on issues of policy in the interest of the national good. However, an increasing amount of evidence gathered over the years has [...]

Originally published on the Ms. Foundation for Women’s Igniting Change blog. Last week marked the sixth-month anniversary of the Haitian earthquake, where more than a million people struggle to scratch a life out of the ruins of the capital city. With that anniversary came a slight uptick in the number of stories aimed [...]

This post first appeared on Daily Kos. Proving once again that no power on earth can force the “newspaper of record” to recognize what it is determined to ignore, the New York Times has released the results of a major survey of the teabagger movement. The paper’s considered judgement: Their fierce animosity toward Washington, and the [...]

This is a breaking story, with few details so far … The eradication of a large pot farm in Santa Clara County turned deadly. Sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a suspected marijuana grower this morning in a remote area about ten miles south of Livermore’s Del Valle Regional Park. “We are talking about very rugged terrain up [...]

By Jo Nubian My family has been farming since slavery. I say this in a literal sense, not using the metaphor of how we all sew and reap the harvests of our lives.  We have gone from slaves to sharecroppers to owners of our own land and crops.  Our story is uniquely and beautifully American.  As [...]

This post was co-written by Lena Moffitt, Washington Representative for the Sierra Club Dirty Fuels Campaign. This week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) blasted the State Department’s draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline – asserting that the EIS is “woefully deficient” because “the Draft EIS does not provide the scope [...]