Obstructionism

The health care debate highlights the importance of appointing judges who place their duty to the Constitution over a partisan agenda. But it also crystallizes the agenda of opposition that has caused the Republican Party to go off the deep end.

Please -- cut the hyperbole, senators, and get back to work.

A survey released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute shows that majorities in every major religious category, as well as the religiously unaffiliated, all believe that the country would be better off if the distribution of wealth was more equal.

The idealism of JFK, the reformism of Ross Perot, the toughness of Harry Reid and the fighting spirit of Truman will make today's headlines look like ancient history long before ballots are cast in 2012.

Senate Republicans have preemptively filibustered the appointment of a founding director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Without a director, the CFPB will not have authority to regulate both bank and nonbank financial operations.

Accountability goes hand-in-hand with transparency--and Washington needs more of both. That's why I introduced two bills this week to boost accountability and shine more sunlight on government.

The Republicans' midterm triumph obviously is a demoralizing blow to President Obama, but it's also a second chance. Unlike the scores of Democratic l...

It is downright ludicrous to say that a Nobel Prize-winning economist is somehow not qualified to get a job running economic policy for the government. Until Sen. Richard Shelby realizes this, Obama and the White House should point it out.

Boehner's statements on cigarettes have a strong Libertarian slant. If that's true for lethal and addictive products like cigarettes and alcohol, why wouldn't it be true for recreational use of non-lethal, medicinal cannabis?

The country may be cynical. The country may be dissatisfied. The country may be angry. But the country does not want to stop Barack Obama. An ABC Ne...

America (as, likely, everywhere else) always has a seamy underside, crawling with metaphoric maggots, to anything that is mostly seen as good by the m...

[Former Senate Majority Leader Tom] Daschle sketched a portrait of the contemporary senator who is too busy to think: 'Sometimes, you're dialling for ...

Last week, this column took a week off, due to an extended trip into the desert for the Netroots Nation convention. But now, we turn our sights back ...

We have a jobs emergency and the Congress has not acted. The Congress is planning to go on recess in August and the President has the power to make them stay until robust jobs legislation is passed.

Across New Hampshire, people are telling me they've had enough of the Wall Street ponzi schemes and casino games. The American people know that we can...

To nobody's surprise, Senator Kyl made it clear that the filibuster will be on the table for Obama's eventual Supreme Court nominee -- who does not yet exist -- whomever he or she may be.

If Republicans continue their tantrum once the Senate passes the reconciliation bill, it's going to be a lot easier for Democrats to convince independents that they, the Democrats, are the adults in the room.

Jim Webb and Lindsey Graham had an unorthodox answer to a Republican parliamentary maneuver that blocked committees from meeting on Wednesday: Biparti...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" Thursday and weighed in on everything from Bart Stupak's threats to derail health care...

Senator, playing with people's lives is not a game. These childish antics only reinforce the cynicism and distrust that a frustrated and worried populace feels towards their government.

As the dust settles on the aftermath of the health reform summit, not much has changed. Not that anyone really expected anything to change, much, to be honest.

Congress, long ago, adopted the filibuster without anticipating, as the NFL did, that the practitioners of the Senate might stoop to disrupting the game indefinitely in order to intimidate and punish the referees, in the Senate's case, the public.

President Obama this week has successfully put the Republican Party on the defensive. This could be a fleeting thing, or it could be the start of a whole new way for Obama's administration to operate.

There are two yardsticks for success. The first is to actually get something done, and get something passed; the other, to position the Democrats politically for the midterms, whether a bill gets passed or not.

Democrats need to realize that they still have the biggest majority in both houses of Congress that they are likely to see in their lifetimes.