Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about Mark Sanford's affair... any more than I gave a damn about Bill Clinton's blow jobs.

I do give a damn that Mark Sanford tried to turn down Federal stimulus money that would relieve the suffering of South Carolina's long-term unemployed enduring...

As a student of history and a political activist, there are few things I find as inspiring as thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people pouring into the streets to protest a repressive government and demand their basic human rights, whether it's Boston in 1773, Paris in 1789, Petrograd...

According to recent reports, President Obama plans to play a bigger role in shaping health care reform legislation being formulated in the Senate and House.

The questions is will Obama's personal involvement lead to more robust health care reform which will make significant progress towards affordable universal care? Or, in...

We already have one Joe Lieberman caucusing with the Senate Democrats. Frankly, adding another member to the Lieberman center/right corporate wing of the Senate Democratic caucus by changing the letter "R" to the letter "D" after the name Arlen Specter (Sen.-Penn.) leaves me less than thrilled.

Despite simplistic press...

(Washington, D.C.- April 17, 2009) President Barack Obama announced today that he has issued a full pardon to Bernard Madoff and ordered his release from prison.

Did Tim Geithner know in advance the amount of bonuses AIG paid to the executives of AIG's derivatives unit who designed and sold the financial insurance policies which helped bring down the global financial system? When did he learn about it and what did he do to try to do...

It's time for some righteous populist anger from the Obama administration--not just in words, but in deeds--to stop the looting of the Federal Treasury by Wall Street executives using taxpayer money to pay bonuses to the very people who manipulated markets and were instrumental in bringing the international financial system...

Dear Mr. President:

Early in his Presidency, George Bush was widely ridiculed for saying that he didn't read newspapers. Yesterday you told the New York Times that you and your staff don't pay much attention to blogs. With the greatest respect, this seems likely a strangely off-key remark from...

No, it's not a classified ad from a porno magazine. The Swedish Model I'm referring to is not a beautiful blond with long legs who entertains overpaid bankers at a plush resort retreat paid for by the taxpayers. And the Zombie Banks are not characters from a George Romero movie....

An Open Letter to Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, Elizabeth Warren, James Galbraith, Dean Baker, Robert Kuttner, George Soros and Friends:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Your country needs you. Whether he fully recognizes it or not, President Obama needs you. If, for whatever reason, Obama has decided to limit his...

When my daughter was about 7 years old, she went to a birthday party where each child got to pick one wrapped gift out of a grab bag. Another child (ironically, or not so ironically, the son of a wealthy businessman with a $40 million trust fund) liked my daughter's...

Congressional Republicans have picked out two small pieces of the economic stimulus package to attack--funding for the arts and for family planning and AIDS prevention to the poor--while calling for more corporate tax cuts. They're wrong on both accounts: Aside from being social goods in their own right, arts funding...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is speaking out for the repeal of George Bush's tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.

National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers gave a short economics seminar to David Gregory on Meet The Press explaining why, unlike tax cuts to working families who spend most of what...

On the day before the celebration of Martin Luther King's Birthday and two days before Barack Obama's Inauguration, I sat in the living room of the apartment where I grew up holding the hand of my Alzheimer-ravaged mother as we watched the "We are One" concert from the Lincoln Memorial....

It's healthy that Obama is opening a dialogue with media types from across the political spectrum.

But although he had dinner Tuesday night with members mostly of the hard right, and met Wednesday with members mostly of the moderate liberal establishment media, he has yet to sit down with members...

Rod Blagojevich may be a little bit crazy. If so, he's crazy like a fox. In appointing former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat, it looks like he's outsmarted US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the Illinois State Legislature, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In...

Here's an email I'm sending to my friends and contacts: I urge you to highlight it, copy it, and send it to your friends and contacts, too--or personalize it with your own message. If you have a blog, website, Facebook page or MySpace page, please promote it there, too. Let's...

The key reforms of the New Deal--Social Security, the Works Projects Administration, the Wagner Labor Relations Act, higher minimum wages--didn't come about simply because FDR was elected and surrounded himself with smart advisors. They also came about because there was an active and militant labor movement pushing FDR and Congress...

It's been a perplexing week for progressives watching President-elect Obama appoint his top economic advisors. There's no question that they are a brilliant, accomplished, competent group who have reassured financial markets and a worried nation that help is on the way.

There's some reason, however, to be concerned that...

First things first--I find Joe Lieberman to be despicable. He had a right to support John McCain, just as a number of prominent Republicans had a right to support Barack Obama. But his personal attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism--after promising that he would campaign positively for John McCain but not...