Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." King was jailed for campaigning against racial segregation in Birmingham, in violation of an injunction against anyone "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing." His letter was written on the margins of...

If you have received my emails for a while, you know that I sometimes refer to you all, affectionately, as "Alan's Army." You are passionate, smart and dedicated. But last week you were something else: Amazing.

I told you about a proposed partnership between multinational corporations and their...

How to protect Social Security, in two easy steps:

Step One: enlist an army. We've done that -- 3,000,000 people have signed petitions demanding "No Cuts" to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Step Two: bring the politicians face-to-face with our army. Here's how:

I've set up a website where...

Until Friday, you have the chance to make your voice heard about a pending massive corporate giveaway now being promoted by the U.S. Trade Representative. It's a chance that you should take.

The agreement the trade representative  is seeking comments on is the "Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership." Even...

One of the nice things about being a member of Congress is that I have security clearance, and you don't. (Sorry!) So I know about the threat that the looming sequester poses to a crucial top-secret military research project. Since we're friends, I'll tell you about it.

...

As we approach the self-immolation known as "The Sequester," I find myself thinking about a woman in West Africa, asking people, "Would you like to buy a pen?"

She was a middle-aged woman, wearing a bright-colored dress. Judging by wear and tear, it may have been the only dress she...

This week, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives did something that you wouldn't think is even possible: they introduced (and then the House passed) a five-page bill that, despite its brevity, may violate two separate provisions of the United States Constitution.

The bill increases the debt limit...

When I was elected to Congress in 2008, I asked to join the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). Why? Because I was a government employee. The AFGE negotiates benefits for government employees, including me. If I were going to benefit from that, I felt that I should pay my...

Here are what I modestly and humbly refer to as "Grayson's Laws of Legislating":

1) Vote for what you're in favor of.

2) Vote for what you can live with, if you must do that to get what you need.

What we've been seeing in the House of Representatives lately has...

Let me get right to the point. I'm against the proposed "chained CPI" cut in Social Security because it substantially undermines the protection against inflation that Social Security recipients enjoy under current law. The existing cost of living adjustment ("COLA") already understates actual increases in the "cost of living;" the...

I did not spend Thanksgiving evening with my wife and my five children. I spent it, instead, handing out turkey sandwiches to workers in Walmart. And showing my support for one brave soul who walked off the job in protest against exploitation.

Walmart "associates" make an...

As we lurch uncontrollably toward Election Day, choosing our next set of lawmakers, I've been looking for a way to cast some light on what is at stake. I think that I've found it in the oldest legal code -- the Code of Hammurabi, from 1772 B.C.

In general,...

Good news and bad news. The good news is that President Obama won last night's debate. The bad news is that the entire debate, questions and answers, seemed premised on the false assumption that virtually everyone else on this planet wants to kill us.

Here is a list of...

I watched the presidential debate last night. There was a general absence of NASCAR moments, although Romney's insistence that the president actually didn't say what the president actually did say about the Benghazi attack came close. Leaving that aside, the impression that I was left with is that Romney is...

Yesterday, I wrote that all the crocodile tears that the Right Wing sheds for the supposed insolvency of Social Security are just a cover story for what they really want to do, i.e., destroy Social Security. My Tea Party opponent is a perfect example of this: He calls Social Security...

Yesterday, Moody's Investor Service said that it might downgrade federal debt because the deficit is in danger of going . . . down.

Moody's is one of the "Big Three" credit rating agencies. They are in the business of judging the chance that bonds might go into default. The market...

In all of the speeches that I heard in Charlotte last week, I didn't hear anyone praise President Obama for what might be his greatest accomplishment -- getting us through almost four years without some terrible national tragedy.

Consider some of the things that happened during the previous Administration:

(1)...

This weekend marks the anniversary of the most brutal confrontation in the history of the American labor movement, the Battle of Blair Mountain. For one week during 1921, armed, striking coal miners battled scabs, a private militia, police officers and the U.S. Army. One hundred people died, 1,000 were arrested,...

If you have spent any time listening to Hate TV and Hate Radio lately (and given Hate TV/Radio's monopolization of the airwaves, who hasn't?), you have heard Messrs. Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck et al. rant and rave about President Obama's partial implementation of the Dream Act by executive action. Specifically, President...

Congressman Keith Ellison started life outside the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant English-Speaking Straight mainstream. He is African-American, and he was raised as a Catholic.

Many people who find themselves out of the mainstream swim desperately toward it. They seek the shelter and comfort of conformity.

Not Keith.

At the...