-
A Midwest Breakthrough for Same-Sex Unions
By John Nichols
In a unanimous ruling Friday, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a 2007 lower court ruling that a state law banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.
The court determined that the 1998 law violated the equal protection clause in the Iowa Constitution.
The ruling was a big victory for One Iowa, the state's largest LGBT advocacy organization which is organizing rallies across Iowa tonight to declare: "This is your moment Iowa! Let's stand as ONE!"
(36) CommentsApril 3, 2009
-
Budget Passes House, Senate With No GOP Votes
By John Nichols
The House and Senate have given President Obama the budget he asked for Thursday, voting along partisan lines for different versions of the roughly $3.6 trillion plan that includes a deficit of $1.2 trillion.
No Republicans backed the budget plan, which ramps up domestic spending, increases taxes on the wealthy and funds Obama's ambitious health care, energy and education proposals. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was not apologizing for the breakdown of bipartisanship.
"The American people want us to find our common ground where we can, but they did not send us here to split the difference," Pelosi said of the budget, which won House approval in a 233-196 vote. "They want real change, and we have come here to make a difference."
(62) CommentsApril 2, 2009
-
Beware Media Bearing Gift-gates
By Leslie Savan
The real question about how Barack and Michelle Obama are being received on their Rolling-G-20-Summit/Euro-Tour '09 has nothing to do with how the Europeans treat them, but all about the American mainstream media itself: What infinitesimal nit will they find to pick about the new president's conduct abroad that can be blown up into a two- to three-day pseudo-international incident?
You know the sort of story I mean. We're not talking about serious systemic issues, such as the different perspective a country like Germany (with universal health care, generous unemployment benefits, and a highly unionized work force) might have on the need for a global stimulus when compared to the U.S., where the party Obama just turned out of office has proposed effectively privatizing Medicare. That would be too much like journalism, and way too MEGO.
We're looking here for a truly small-bore, utterly irrelevant, content-free distraction, like the ones the MSM entertained us with during March Meme Madness. Stories like Obama
(28) CommentsApril 2, 2009
-
Sherrod Brown Sets the New Deal Record Straight
By John Nichols
The reason political scientists suggest that the realignment of 1932 -- which saw Franklin Roosevelt and his Democratic allies sweep Republicans from power nationally and in states across the country -- remained largely in place until 1980 is that voters remembered the New Deal.
A broad public consciousness that federal intervention could renew the economy transformed how tens of millions of Americans perceived the Democratic Party and the role of government.
The American people were not delusional.
(135) CommentsMarch 31, 2009
-
Sanders Puts Single-Payer On the Agenda
By John Nichols
While the one reform that could cure what ails America's health care system has attracted plenty of adherents in the House -- 72 members have signed on as backers of House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers' single-payer proposal and others back a plan introduced by Washington Democrat Jim McDermott's legislation -- there has not been a Senate proposal to rally around.
Until now.
That's what makes Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' proposed "American Health Security Act of 2009" such an important piece of legislation. In addition to being the first single-payer bill introduced in the Senate since the mid-1990s -- when the late Paul Wellstone, D-Minnesota, sponsored a bill similar to the plan now being advanced by Sanders -- it raises the profile of the doctors, nurses, patients and other campaigners who are trying to tell the Obama administration and its congressional allies that the legislative compromises they entertain are doomed to fail.
(55) CommentsMarch 30, 2009
-
Shouldn't Congress Hold the Pentagon to Account?
By John Nichols
Members of Congress who actually care about crafting a budget that keeps America secure at home and abroad are beginning to express frustration with the Obama administration's plan to hike the Pentagon's already bloated budget by four percent.
"I have a question as to whether we need defense spending to go up by as much as it is," Iowa Senator Tom Harkin told reporters after a budget briefing that left the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education subcommittee of the powerful Appropriations Committee worried about where he would find the money to meet mounting demands for education and health care spending on the domestic front.
The Obama administration's willingness to let Department of Defense spending, which expanded at an exponential rate during George Bush's presidency, continue growing with few checks or balances does not sit well with grassroots groups that are worried about the devastating impact of the nation's economic downturn on urban and rural communities where so many needs went unmet during the Bush-Cheney interregnum.
(114) CommentsMarch 26, 2009
-
Live from Obama's Citizen Town Hall at The White House
By Ari Melber
The White House, Washington, D.C. -- President Barack Obama convened his first online town hall here on Thursday, fielding a few popular questions from the web about the economy.
Over about an hour and twenty minutes, Obama took six questions from the Internet and five queries from a small audience gathered in the East Room, the majestic, gold-curtained gathering spot for presidential press conferences and White House "message events." While the town hall event may feel like a minor and measured step, Presidents do not usually answer questions from citizens in the White House who have not been carefully vetted, pre-screened and gathered to present a top-down message from the government.
Obama faced few "hardballs," as several reporters complained after the event in the White House press area, but he did field topics that went beyond the traditional fare at press conferences -- including a passing reference to pot legalization -- and policy priorities that Obama's aides do not share, such as single-payer health care reform.
(37) CommentsMarch 26, 2009
-
Zombie Media Still Fighting the Last Gotcha War
By Leslie Savan
Of all the bad questions at Tuesday's primetime press conference (and you can vote for your favorite here), the one that best illuminates why the White House press corps asks such bad questions came from a Washington Times reporter, who wondered how much President Obama has "personally wrestled with the morality" of funding stem-cell research.
It's a legit question. But given the range of overwhelming crises our country faces right now, it really seemed to be fighting the last gotcha war: What the Wash Times actually wanted to know was whether Obama agonizes over this issue as much as George W. Bush (with a notable lack of believability) claimed to do.
Like, who cares? Clearly, the stem cells from which this press corps was hatched have been genetically engineered to thrive only at Dubya's level, and therefore the media isn't advanced enough yet to ask questions that don't elicit pompous moralizing or misdirect the public interest--much less to challenge the intellect and resolve of a sitting president.
(49) CommentsMarch 25, 2009
-
Why Rove Keeps Calling Obama "Arrogant"
By John Nichols
Former White House political czar Karl Rove has a history of referring to Barack Obama as "arrogant."
As the race between the Democratic senator from Illinois and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain geared up last year, Rove went out of his way not just to attach the scarlet "A" for arrogance to Obama.
The man who managed George Bush into the White House -- with an assist from partisan Republicans on the Supreme Court -- said on Fox News last July: "I will say yes, I do think Barack Obama is arrogant."
(67) CommentsMarch 25, 2009
-
Obama Rips Republican Critics But Eschews Populism
By John Nichols
America may be in a pitchforks-and-torches mood.
But Barack Obama is not going there.
"I'm as angry as anybody about those bonuses," he said of the diversion of federal bailout dollars into the accounts of AIG's high rollers. But the president cautioned against populism.
(72) CommentsMarch 24, 2009
- Atrios
- Arts and Letters Daily
- The Caucus
- Campus Progress
- Crooks and Liars
- The Daily Gotham
- Daily Kos
- Echidne of the Snakes
- Ezra Klein
- FAIR
- Feministe
- Feministing
- Firedoglake
- Glenn Greenwald
- Gothamist
- In these Times
- Hendrik Hertzberg
- Huffington Post
- Hullabaloo
- Matthew Yglesias
- Media Matters
- Mother Jones
- My DD
- New York Review of Books
- Openleft
- Pam's House Blend
- Pandagon
- Political Wire
- The Progressive
- RaceWire
- Real Clear Politics
- Roberto Lovato
- Romenesko
- Swing State Project
- Talking Points Memo
- Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Tapped
- Tech President
- Tompaine
- The Washington Note
- Utne Reader
- Wonkette
- ZNet
RSS