Hold Fast

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois wades into DFH waters and hits his colleagues for letting the banks set the Senate agenda. Good for Durbin, bad for the people that are holding up needed legislation that will help American homeowners.

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Virginia Foxx’s batshit crazy, homophobic, denialism on the floor of the House yesterday regarding the torture and murder of Matt Shepherd for being gay really is one of the most obscene things I’ve seen from any Republican, let alone an elected official, I can ever recall taking place. This is what passes for acceptable in [...]

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I think Matt Yglesias is right that the small number of Republicans who were able to cast their vote in favor of confirming Kathleen Sebelius for Health & Human Services does not bode well for the chances of getting cooperation from Republicans on healthcare reform. In theory this would be a good time to take [...]

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The various reactions to Arlen Specter switching to the Democratic Party seem widely varied based on who is responding and on what they are responding to. It seems to me that the difference is how people are thinking about what Specter’s switch means and whether they are applying their thoughts through a matrix of theoretical [...]

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Apparently this is no longer operative: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday that Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) decision to reject “card-check” legislation has ended any chance of a party switch. Reid as well as Vice President Biden, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) have tried recently to persuade [...]

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Renowned Tibetan blogger Woeser has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The piece is about the framing and railroading of Buramna Rinpoche, a 52-year-old Living Buddha who is the head of Pangri and Yatseg nunneries in Kardze. Buramna was tortured for four days following his arrest on charges of possessing weapons. His lawyers were [...]

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The Obama administration has consistently made good on President Obama’s campaign promise to govern as a post-partisan and look to bring Republicans into the governing process. Multiple Republicans were nominated to cabinet posts. And despite fears to the contrary by Republicans and Beltway journalists, the administration has refused to pursue any policy course that could [...]

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I agree with Chris Bowers, it’s time to change the rules of the Senate to end the practice of silent filibusters that Republicans are using to stifle the President’s agenda with no public debate. Bowers’ suggestion isn’t to go nuclear in the Bill Frist sense of removing all rights from the minority in the Senate [...]

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I have an idea for Roger Cohen. If he’s so fundamentally opposed to upholding the rule of law in the United States of America that he would rail against the prosecution of Bush administration officials and intelligence operatives who broke the law by torturing or advised that the law be broken, then we should find [...]

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Thomas Frank has an indispensable piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Democratic Party’s propensity to rely on labor votes and labor grassroots electoral efforts to win, then stab the labor movement in the back when it comes to actually passing legislation that helps America’s workers (while siding with big business interests and their [...]

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