I appeared on CNN this weekend to debate right-wing gasbag Chris Plante about the ongoing debate over torture, Gitmo, detainees and President Obama's effort to curtail the Bush administration's most egregious legal transgressions. You can watch the debate here - it's about...

Between the Wall Street Journal telling us that business groups are confident that President Obama's Supreme Court nominees won't rock the boat and the New York Times telling us that Obama shunned so-called "favorites of the Left" in his Supreme Court search, I'm not (yet) fully confident that...

I've heard that Battlestar Galactica is a favorite of neoconservatives for its supposedly metaphorical allusions to Bush foreign policy. I've never seen that show, but I am planning to watch ABC's remake of "V" - and by the looks of the preview, it's possible that show may become conservatives'...

After high-profile arrests on Capitol Hill, there's a very simple question on health care that hasn't been answered: Why are top Democrats afraid to even discuss the concept of a single-payer health care system? This is the question I explore in my latest newspaper column.

President Obama's refusal to...

Let's say you have a diversified industry of small, medium and large sized firms. Let's say you then gut anti-trust enforcement, eviscerate regulation, and massively increase subsidization to create textbook oligopoly. And then, finally, let's say the few mega-conglomerates that dominate the oligopoly make big mistakes and dangerous decisions. What...

In the aftermath of the U.S. Senate defeat of "cramdown" legislation (ie. the bill that would have allowed bankruptcy judges renegotiate the terms of mortages so as to prevent foreclosures), I'm still wondering why almost nobody has bothered to ask cramdown opponents in the Senate why they support cramdown...

Just off the wires -- Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is switching to the Democratic Party and running for reelection in the Democratic primary in 2010.

Obviously, this is good news for Democrats nationally, and on two fronts: In the short term, it gives them one more Senate vote (more on...

Just a quick note to let you know that my book, The Uprising, is being released in paperback today. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Tattered Cover or your local independent bookstore.

When The Uprising was...

How, in a self-described democracy, is it possible for the concept of populism to be denigrated? Isn't democracy the most radically populist concept in political history, and shouldn't populism - ie. advocating what the people want - be the dominant paradigm in a democracy? This is the question I...

This past weekend, I appeared on CNN to discuss the tea party protests of April 15th. You can watch the full clip here.

As I've said before, I think these specific demonstrations were worthy of criticism, considering they are trying to...

I appeared on CNN yesterday to discuss President Obama's CIA speech, and his decision to release CIA torture memos. You can watch the clip here - and make sure to watch all the way to the end, because the debate gets into...

We're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine massacre, and once again, we've seen a spate of awful, inexplicably random shootings. Every time these Columbine-like massacres happen, we devolve into a discussion of gun control and video games -- and in my new newspaper column this week,...

There's been a lot of talk over the last few days about the pitfalls of teabaggery, but let me, if I may, ruminate on the pitfalls of douchebaggery, and specifically U.S. Senate douchebaggery.

The problem with appointed senators who have never run for office before is their (not surprising) lack...

I appeared on CNN this weekend to discuss a bunch of different topics, including - most interestingly - gay marriage. You can watch the clip here.

I say "most interestingly," because you'll see in the debate that the conservative du jour -...

This week, I did something I've really never done in my newspaper column - I went for the full-on, all-out sarcasm/satire to make a point about our economy and our corrupt campaign finance system. You can read the column here.

Without ruining the column,...

I took part in a panel on CNN this weekend that looked at the issues of gun control, drug policy reform and American foreign policy hubris through the lens of President Obama's recent visit to Europe. Watch it here.

What's so interesting...

The real-world effects of corruption can feel distant and hard to understand. But this week via White House aide Larry Summers, we got a very concrete, easy-to-understand example of how our pay-to-play political system really works.

Here was a snippet of news reported at the end of the week:

My new weekly newspaper column this week gives huge kudos to Hillary Clinton and Jim Webb -- the two of them are trying (in their own separate ways) to begin a national conversation about one of the most taboo topics in American politics: drug policy.

In the same...

I appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show last night to discuss the seeming double standard between the Obama administration's treatment of car companies and Wall Street firms. You can watch it here.

There...

The Associated Press reports that "General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will step down immediately at the request of the White House, U.S. administration officials said Sunday." I'm not sure that's a good or bad thing, but I am curious about why the White House would make...