Back in August, I wrote about Orrin Hatch's plans to demand mandatory drug tests for welfare and unemployment beneficiaries. At the time, it seemed like a crazy fringe suggestion from a well-known enemy of the poor. However, it seems like Hatch is no longer stranded on the lonely...

Today, Glenn Beck featured Citizen Radio's interview with Bertha Lewis on his radio show. As tends to happen, Beck used a very short soundbite. I'm posting the full interview here so listeners can hear all of Lewis's remarks in their original context.

Citizen Radio is an internet radio show, which...

The company that runs Australia's refugee prisons has set its sights on an NHS hospital. Serco Health, along with another company, Circle Health, have bid for a contract to run Hinchingbrooke, a hospital in Cambridgeshire. If the deal goes through, this would be the first ever NHS hospital to...

I recently wrote a column for Truthout about the refugee prisons in Australia detailing one of the facilities (Villawood) where a 36-year-old Fijian national named Josefa Rauluni committed suicide by leaping from a roof. (I nearly got tossed from the place because one of Serco's employees saw I had...

It's really been cracking me up to witness the extent denialists are willing to go to blame the House Democrats' defeats on liberal bloggers -- as if bloggers possess enough political authority to sway millions of voters to exile Blue Dog Democrats. (See: Glenzilla's take down of what he calls...

A Walmart employee sent me a link to a website called "Walmart Community Votes," which allegedly exists to help inform employees about political candidates. This employee drew my attention to a specific page that really doesn't do much to inform. Really, it appears to exist to propagandize on behalf...

The WSJ published a ridiculous article yesterday that claims Capitalism saved the Chilean miners, and opens with a boldface lie when writer Daniel Henninger proclaims, "It needs to be said." Does it, Daniel? Does it really?

Henninger believes the rescue of the miners is a smashing success for free...

Bob Herbert wrote a very good column today about what he calls the "campaign disconnect" between Democrats, Republicans, and average Americans. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but essentially Herbert makes the argument that neither party has adequately addressed the economic desperation of citizens. Democrats have decided to humor the...

Bobo somehow managed to survive his latest access-induced fever to scribble down some notes involving a wonderful dream he had about a "fiscal Conservative" named Meg Whitman. You see, Meg is a total babe because she spent $120 million on her campaign to become California's governor, but she has...

Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old man, was recently the target of a massive police manhunt in England after he shot three people with a sawn-off shotgun. After spending six days on the run, Moat was finally cornered by police. Hours of negotiations proceeded at the end of which Moat shot himself and...

For some reason, the locals are getting angry.

The Pakistani military, angered by the inept handling of the country's devastating floods and alarmed by a collapse of the economy, is pushing for a shake-up of the elected government, and in the longer term, even the removal of President Asif...

The establishment media has, thus far, allowed the deficit hypocrites to screech about fiscal responsibility one moment, and then frantically work behind closed doors in the next to ensure the deficit continues to inflate. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and 31 House Democrats...

My new Maureen Dowd is on a roll this week. First, he declared an end to the era of opulence based on the rantings of a southern Baptist megachurch leader. Bobo made this bold proclamation during a time of enormous wealth disparity, and after poor taxpayers just dropped a...

Someone should write down clear guidelines for what it takes to get fired from high-ranking government positions because the rules seem a bit blurry.

The Obama administration on Monday reiterated its commitment to keeping former Sen. Alan Simpson as the co-chairman of the president's deficit commission even as...

I have no idea what Ross Douthat is doing. Now that he appears to have gotten all the baddies out constructing weird arguments against gay marriage, he's moved on to defending Glenn Beck and his totally "apolitical" geriatric love-in.

This, among other reasons, is why I have...

I've been saying for a while now that the real threat to Social Security isn't just the privatization hawks like Pete Peterson or retirement age experimenters like John Boehner, but also President Obama's bipartisan Catfood Commission. Here we have a Democratic president, who has appointed a panel designed for...

There are a few new, developing BP-related stories that should greatly disturb any American who values openness and transparency in their democracy.

First, a chemist named Bob Naman claims samples he received from Orange Beach Alabama waters tested positive for the dangerous neurotoxin pesticide 2-butoxyethanol, the main ingredient of Corexit...

I write a lot about how certain elite (pundits, politicians) have made it their quest to criminalize poverty. David Walker, a lackey of billionaire and Social Security pirate Pete Peterson, openly pined for the days of debtors' prison, which is actually already a reality in

A few days ago, I (along with Citizen Radio co-host Jamie Kilstein) debated a pair of Conservatives at a show run by comedian Scott Blakeman. The contentious topic of discussion was - surprise, surprise - the Cordoba House. The Conservatives' reoccurring claim was that Ground Zero is hallowed ground -...

Now that the Very Serious People have decided the dispersant fairy waved her wand and magically made all the oil disappear, it appears the media is ready to move on, and put the ugliness of the BP disaster behind them.

Things look a little different on the ground, though. BP...