The health care reform debate has provoked any number of crazy opinions, including the far-right fantasies of death panels or that Medicare isn't a government-funded program. Two weeks ago, Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey added his own musings to the list with an editorial in the...

The words pierced through me like an arrow going straight through my heart. "You're a Freak! You're dirty! You're not a real woman! You hate your parents because you gave them no grandchildren! You are turning my children gay!"

I knew it was the ranting nonsense of a psychotic person,...

Chris Steller, writing for The Minnesota Independent on the Senate Judiciary Committee vote yesterday, said that "Al Franken spewed fire and Amy Klobuchar threw brimstone," adding, "Franken raked the current Court and Klobuchar decried bias against women on the bench."

Breaking out of the "mild-mannered mantle of...

Due to my background, an inquiry of me was made to join two organizations, the Illinois branch of Healthcare For American Now (HCAN) and Illinois Main Street Alliance, in their efforts to meet with Members of Congress from Illinois on June 24/25 regarding health care reform. HCAN is a nationwide...

Love or hate her, you "gotta" admit, she attracts attention. She's a lightning rod for controversy. Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, the first woman GOP Vice Presidential nominee is still eliciting a media frenzy six months after the election. Take for example this recent feud between Palin and David Letterman. The...

A recent article in Editor and Publisher reports the number of reporters in newsrooms is down at a level not seen since the early 1980s. That hardly seems surprising since the so-called local newspapers have been swallowed up in recent years by greedy conglomerates like Gatehouse Media and we...

Feeling a little overwhelmed earlier this week I asked my friend Chas for advice who responded with an unexpected question; "Do you know the difference between a great pitcher and a big game pitcher?" I didn't. "A great pitcher, when the pressure is on, lets the game affect him and...

Many thousands of Filipinos answered Roosevelt's call to join the U.S. forces fighting Japan in the Philippines, but had been denied the benefits they were promised until last month. When Obama's stimulus package passed, it contained a provision for a lump sum payment for these Filipino WWII veterans, which I...

Hey, Jennifer 8. Lee at the NY Times writes a really good article on crowdsourcing oversight for stimulus money.

Sunlight seems to be the trendy buzzword these days. First there was the Sunlight Foundation, which was established in Washington in 2006 to lobby for...

More good government on the way, ReadTheBill.org is about:

ReadTheBill.org is a commonsense solution - we want Congress to post all bills online for 72 hours before they are debated. That gives members of Congress - and you - three days to read legislation...

Maybe the headlines say it all:

Stimulus Plan Ensures Boom Sector: Oversight

Obama Bans Gimmicks, and Deficit Will Rise

The deal is that people will actually look at how we spend the money, which is the opposite approach from...

Looks like the White House is off to a good start showing where our money is going with recovery.gov.

This is very different that the bailout plan from the previous administration, where billions of dollars haven't been tracked, nor have they from the Iraq war.
...

The nature of this interview concerns how the election of Barack Obama
has and will affect the hip-hop community, and how the hip-hop
community will react to different decisions of the administration.

HP: Traditionally, hip-hop culture has been very skeptical of American
government. Much hip-hop music, including...

(Do Something reporter Ariston Anderson, Sarah Silverman, and yours truly giving my mirror-practiced hungry model face at the Declare Yourself "Rebirth of Citizenship" Inauguration Kick-Off Party in Washington, DC)

Sending a text message, look up and there's Stevie Wonder in touching distance, walking by with...

Inaugural weekend - DC bound

Friday, January 16th, 2008

12:52 pm - somewhere in New Jersey - The one journalist on the bus has just pulled out the booze. He works for some personal finance rag and seems like a smart guy. I say this not because he is drinking a twenty-four oz...

The new accountability and transparency involves everyone keeping an eye on the the people who might be abusive of their power.

Sunlight Foundation, perhaps the leader in transparency, is asking you to test out LittleSis, a wiki created by Public Accountability Initiative, funded by Sunlight. (Yes,...

In the op-ed section of tomorrow's New York Times, U2's Bono writes with urgency about a musical titan that sums up today's difficult times. A collosal talent that has much to tell us about this recessionary year we are about to live through. And it's not a piece about Bono....

Hey, I think Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej do a really big job at TechPresident.com pushing ahead the cause of networked grassroots democracy.

Here in Politico they push ahead regarding what an Obama Chief Technology Officer should be about, with a little extra detail:
...