You've got to give the private insurance companies credit for chutzpa. The argument that they have been making to Congress -- with straight faces -- that they "can't compete" against a public health insurance plan is preposterous. That's because it is internally inconsistent.

If it were true, then private health...

The Innocence Project, a non-profit that represents inmates who they believe to be wrongly convicted, estimates that modern DNA testing has exonerated 240 people nationwide -- at least 17 of these were sentenced to death.

Law enforcement officials of all stripes agree that DNA testing is extraordinarily powerful at...

The private health insurance industry and its voices in Congress have begun to spin the narrative that offering consumers a choice of a public health insurance plan is:

a) Never going to pass Congress;
b) A fringe proposal by the Democratic Party's "left wing;"
c) Is generally bad...

The private insurance industry and its spokespeople in Congress are frantically making the argument that for health care reform to last and have the support of the American people, Congress must pass a "bi-partisan" health care reform plan.

Of course you never heard a word about "bi-partisanship" from...

By launching the bruhaha over transferring some Guantanamo detainees to the U.S., the Republican Right has hit another low on the demagoguery meter. Some Democrats in Congress themselves wilted in the face of the onslaught. Luckily, President Obama did not.

The fact is, of course, that transferring some of the...

At 100 days, the political vital signs of President Obama and his administration are robust. The averages of public polls published by Pollster.com show the president's job approval at 62.2 percent. Sixty-four percent of the voters view him favorably, and only 26.8 percent unfavorably.

More remarkably -- even...

Former CIA Director Hayden and Bush's Attorney General Mukasey published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week that argued, in essence, that using torture works.

The fact that they, and former Vice President Cheney, are still making the argument is more than enough reason why President...

President Obama's recent trips to the G-20 in Europe and the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad have underscored his fundamental realignment of American foreign policy - a shift that will make America both militarily and economically more secure.

Five critical changes are especially important:

1)....

Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere.

• It is a country of 8.2 million people.
• 6.2 million of them live in poverty.
• One out of eight children die before the age of five.
• Seventy percent are unemployed.

The Obama administration's new proposals to expand the Federal oversight of the nation's financial institutions represent a fundamental departure from the "hands off" policies of the Bush years that allowed last fall's financial collapse. They are critically important to the long-term financial security of our economy and working families.

They...

When reports spread that insurance giant AIG would give top executives huge bonuses after a $170 billion taxpayer bailout, you could feel the anger rumbling in Middle America like boiling magma before the eruption of a volcano.

Many top officials of the Obama administration were beside themselves with outrage.

The health reform plan proposed by President Obama during his campaign assures that consumers can keep the private health insurance plans that they already have. That is important, because it addresses one of the biggest concerns voters have about health care reform.

But voters also want a plan...

In his speech last night, Barack Obama symbolically turned the page on eight years of irresponsibility and recklessness and called on Americans to take responsibility for themselves, for others, and for the future of the planet.

The radical-conservative Republicans of the Bush era paraded around dressed in a...

I just returned from Jordan where I attended a seminar on Islam and American Foreign Policy. What struck me most is that the more you talk to leaders from the Muslim world - the more you study the polling of Muslim attitudes - the clearer it is that George...

You'd think that the results of November's election -- coupled with the collapse of the economy -- would begin to make Republican lawmakers question the consequences of their blind commitment to right wing economic orthodoxy.

Apparently most Republicans in Congress haven't gotten the memo -- although many formerly Republican-leaning independent...

Senator Claire McCaskill took to the Senate floor last week and put into words what most Americans know, but much of the economic and media elite systematically ignore: there is no economic or social justification for the massive incomes earned by the barons of Wall Street - especially when...

The next week will answer the question whether self proclaimed Republican "Moderates" like Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins will allow the right wing of their party to use them to gut key elements of the Obama Jobs and Economic Recovery Program.

It is no accident that...

It just doesn't square with the right wing narrative. They painted Barack Obama as an unpatriotic, "terrorist sympathizing" candidate whose values are foreign to the American way of life. How could it be that his ascendance to the presidency should be the occasion for the new patriotic spirit sweeping America?

History will record that George W. Bush made one critically important contribution to our country -- and to the entire world. He and his administration provided unquestionable proof of the bankruptcy of radical-conservative ideology, and set the stage for a qualitatively different progressive era in American politics.

History is not...

The extent of the 2008 economic collapse surprised and shocked the conventional wisdom in Washington and on Wall Street. But in hindsight, a good case can be made that the massive globalization of labor and financial markets, coupled with "free markets uber alles" policies, formed a toxic mixture that...