As the messy debate on health care nears its conclusion, I want to take just a moment to look at the next major issue likely to be taken up by Congress: financial reform.

The folks at Bankster have put together this holiday video that frames the choice...

The veneer of civilization is paper-thin, we are its guardians and we can never rest.
- Tom Lantos

The only holocaust survivor to be elected to the U.S. Congress, the late Tom Lantos was a reliable champion for Human Rights. In addition to his tireless work...

If you were unlucky enough to read the AP story on the Sacred Heart University lacrosse player sexual assault case, you were the recipient of a huge dose of rape myths.  The AP, quotes Bridgeport criminal defense attorney Wayne Keeney extensively on the case.  Whether the AP did their journalistic due...

This week, Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka succeeded in pushing through a major veterans' health services bill.  According to the committee's press release:

It was Condoleezza Rice who ordered the CIA to use torture techniques including genital mutilation, fingernail extraction and electrocution in countries across the world.  This is the chilling accusation made by documentarian Sebastian Doggart in his new film, American Faust: From Condi to Neo-Condi.

The Denver Film Festival has secured what...

Friday the 13th has a reputation for being the scariest of day-of-the-week/date combinations. The Obama administration selected last Friday (the 13th of November) to announce its intention to bring 5 alleged terrorists who planned 9/11 to trial in federal court 'at the...

Crossposted at BreakUptheBigBanks

10 years ago today, amid a flurry of de-regulation of the financial system, a bill repealing Glass-Steagall, the depression-era bill that kept banks from growing too-big-to-fail, was signed into law by President Clinton. Earlier this week, a decade and a depression-scale disaster later, Senator Dodd released...

If you were here yesterday, you may have seen the case that James Boyce and Paul Abrams laid out for breaking up the big banks. I want to reiterate the importance of having balance among the competing interests in Washington, and the security that comes from an economy in...

If you've been on the net in the past few days, you have probably seen republicansforrape.org. This tongue-in-cheek site satirizes the positions of the 30 senators who voted against an amendment to alter the law regarding mandatory binding arbitration.

A few friends and I posted the site to our...

Members of congress are threatening to vote against the War Supplemental because of the cash for clunkers provision or the IMF line of credit. However, it is the issue at the core of the bill, funding the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, that really justifies its defeat.

The City of Los Angeles set a goal to get 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2010. The program the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) put in place gives people the choice of whether the money they pay in electrical bills will go to fund...

A 2008 study by the Rand Corporation on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Depression and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) contains the following stats: 1.64 million men and women have deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan since the beginning of the wars in those countries. An estimated 300,000 service members struggle...

The House just voted to pass H.R. 1106, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009. Over the past four days, the Fighting For Our Homes Campaign produced almost 17,500 petition signatures and countless phone calls urging members to support this legislation.

A greedy father has thieves for children - Serbian Proverb

Can we trust the banks? I guess we are leaning the answer to that question - or we will soon enough. As part of the Fighting for Our Homes Campaign, we documented the story of Gaila, who is being...

The vote on the stimulus yesterday was unbelievable. After all of the meetings and concessions, not one Republican voted for the bill. That means that Republican leadership organized an all-hands, mandatory 'no' vote. My understanding of Congress is limited, but I'm pretty sure that sort of thing doesn't happen without...

I remember the sheer joy that Christmas morning was when I was a kid. My sister and I would go wake up my parents at some ungodly hour and the gift unwrapping would begin. This year, there will still be excitement, but as we've all grown older, Christmas morning has...

As we all make plans for Thanksgiving, I want to put some food for thought on your table. As you probably know, what we consider to be the first Thanksgiving occurred round about 1621 as the newly arrived pilgrims sat down with some Wampanoag Indians for a feast to celebrate...