Art Levine

The growing movement to undo the nefarious impact of the Citizens United decision allowing unlimited corporate campaign spending finds its counterpart in a citizens' revolt against corporate control of local Washington, D.C. elections.

As a result, Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen,...

Update: Police and Occupy DC protesters are offering sharply divergent accounts over the protesters hit by a car during Friday's protest at a Koch brothers event, prompting a march on police headquarters Monday demanding a thorough investigation.

The conservative Washington Times reports:

Protesters say police refused to...

With the economy teetering on collapse with the new debt deal, music fans can prepare for the mournful times ahead by listening to the sad, evocative songs of Gillian Welch, whose sound is steeped in Depression-era bluegrass but updated for today's hard times. Yet, in performance, her partner...

Lucinda Williams, perhaps America's greatest songwriter for just over two decades, is coming to Wolf Trap in suburban Washington this week singing a different kind of blues. The bruised and aching heart that lies embedded in her greatest songs is still very much there, but a new,...

Gov. Rick Perry, a likely GOP presidential candidate, faces a new burden: a searing documentary film, Incendiary, that looks at the railroading of a suspect for an arson incident that killed his children. The executed convict was Cameron Todd Willingham, but the new film and...

It's been less than two weeks since a guerilla campaign by local activists managed to restore about 20 percent from $131 million in budget cuts targeting Washington, D.C.'s neediest residents -- with little help from the mainstream media, which essentially ignored a looming shutdown of the...

Who is ringing the alarm on Medicaid in a way that will make Congress pay attention?

Outside of some blogging at ourfuture.org,  the fate of Medicaid in the current budget fight has been a  low profile priority among most broader liberal groups; health care advocacy groups haven't mobilized...

The scandal-plagued chairman of the DC Council, Kwame Brown, best known for asking city taxpayers to pay for a "fully loaded" Lincoln Navigator worth $2,000 a month, is joining with other GOP-style Democrats to slash city services for the poor. At the same time, they're...

Except for white Republicans in Congress opposed to home rule, few people outside of Washington, D.C. -- and even some white liberals who live in the District -- bother to pay much attention to Washington's local political battles.

But that changed briefly last month, when Mayor Vincent Gray and...

Republicans returning to Congress this week after a tumultuous two-week recess have learned the hard way an old political lesson: Medicare is indeed the "third-rail" of American politics. As a result, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI.) and other GOP leaders initially signaled Thursday they're retreating...

Liberal activists and labor groups are taking heart from a spate of independent and commissioned polling showing that the public overwhelmingly rejects Rep. Paul Ryan's House-passed GOP plan. Small wonder: it essentially ends Medicare as we know it, slashes other safety-net programs -- and drastically cuts taxes...

The new explosion at the third Japanese reactor indicates likely damage to the nuclear fuel container, Japanese nuclear experts say, but that's still not clear. One of the best sources of recent news is the NHK World live stream.

NHK reports that the utility...

The AP reports:

TOKYO, Japan -- The walls of a...

In the wake of the Wisconsin Senate's end-run to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights, thousands of angry protesters descended again on the state capital.

And the top labor unions are organizing state-wide protests Thursday morning, providing information on websites and social media sites such as

Led by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who has apparently abandoned promises to put bank officials in jail, dozens of state officials from around the country are meeting in Washington next week to finalize a multibillion-dollar settlement with bank executives for allegedly widespread mortgage and foreclosure abuses. But...

A little over two weeks ago, Carl Gibson, a 23-year-old former Mississippi Public Radio reporter fired for leaking Mississippi Public Broadcasting emails, was inspired by the grassroots protests of poor and middle-class British citizens facing deep budget cuts.

The UK Uncut movement targets corporate tax dodgers and was...

For an SEIU-sponsored labor rally scheduled for today in Atlanta to support public employees, Tea Party supporters sent out an alert via the right-wing website Freerepublic.com asking for armed protesters to show up in response. Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution broke the story:

With President Obama winning high marks from the public while making the case for increased government "investment" in the face of GOP opposition,  the political landscape was scrambled further by yesterday's joint announcement by leaders of the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO backing government spending to promote...

As Americans head home for the holidays or look forward to a Christmas meal with friends and family nearby, it's worth remembering that more than two million people have had their homes repossessed in the last few years -- and another 6.5 million are in foreclosure or will face it...

With Congress sending to the White House a tax deal larded with tax breaks for the rich, progressives and labor supporters now find themselves facing a challenge starting in January of beating back Republican-led efforts to cut back Social Security, Medicare and other safety-net programs in a...