Last week, a man threw a 20-pound rock through a window of an Iraqi restaurant in Lowell, Massachussetts — with the motivation behind the act of vandalism still remaining unclear. The Lowell Sun reports that the owner of the restaurant, Leyla Al-Zubaydi, was driven “to tears, and [it] prompted her to question whether the family…
Category: News & Opinion
10 Technologies That Congress Tried to Kill
10 Technologies That Congress Tried to KillNext week, the Senate could be meeting to vote on the Protect IP Act PIPA, the bill that many people are warning could damage the Internet. Its a horrible prospect — but this isnt the first time that Congress has tried to sacrifice a technology at the behest of…
In Texas’ worst drought on record, trees dying by the millions
The National Weather Service has officially declared last year as the driest on record in Texas and the second hottest. Meteorologists predict the situation wont improve much this year. That means water restrictions will continue, and well lose millions of trees.Record-setting heat and little rain in 2011 has left North Texas in a severe drought….
Justice Department, Lawmakers File SCOTUS Health Suit Briefs
The Obama administration brief is the first of four that will be filed before the end of February. The Supreme Court will hear arguments starting March 26. Read the DOJ brief. Read the plaintiffs’ brief. via Justice Department, Lawmakers File SCOTUS Health Suit Briefs – Kaiser Health News.
“You don’t have to convince me, senator, I don’t think you’re a bigot.”
Earlier this week, the former Pennsylvania senator was caught on video telling a crowd in Iowa that he didn’t “want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.” In an interview on Fox News Wednesday, Santorum told Bill O’Reilly that everyone just misheard what he said. via Santorum: I never said…
GOP Candidates Double Down on Race Card
Speaking to a crowd at New Hampshire on Thursday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested that African Americans would rather collect food stamps than find employment. “I will go to the NAACP convention, and tell the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps,” he said, according to Slate journalist Dave Weigel….
Army National Guard units heading to Afghanistan
Even across the river at the Pentagon, the very morning deployment to Afghanistan was becoming a reality for nearly 100 local families, President Obama was announcing plans for a reduced American military. Heading off to war seems so 2002, not 2012. And yet, here we are. “It’s like all of America forgot that we’re still…
Verizon’s Deal With Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act
Just last month Verizon announced it had signed a $3.6 billion deal with its erstwhile competitors Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. In many ways, this announcement placed a capstone on the grave of the 1996 Telecom Act’s biggest promise to America: genuine competition in communications service offerings. The telco-cable deal comes in…
ADP: U.S. Companies Added 325,000 Private-Sector Jobs In December
Private-sector hiring surged in December as employers added 325,000 new workers while claims for jobless benefits fell, raising hope that recent labor market improvement would continue in 2012. The ADP National Employment Report’s December job tally surprised economists who had expected a 178,000 gain. It was also well above the 204,000 private jobs added in…
Three More Recess Appointments
Doubling down on President Barack Obama’s bold recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the White House announced Wednesday that Obama would also use his recess powers to fill three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency charged with enforcing labor law. The move is sure…
Another American Citizen Wrongfully Deported
An African-American teen from Dallas who has been missing since 2010 was found to have been wrongfully deported to Colombia, area outlet News 8 reports. Jakadrien Turner was mistakenly deported by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in April of 2011 after being arrested as a teen runaway. The troubled youth had fled…
Obama to Recess Appoint Richard Cordray
The White House confirmed Wednesday morning that President Obama will announce a recess appointment for Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at a speech in Ohio later today. Cordray was a well-liked Ohio Attorney General until last year, after he was toppled by the GOP midterm wave in 2010. Cordray’s an accidental…
The biggest driver of income inequality: capital gains
A new report from the Congressional Research Service — the nonpartisan public policy branch of Congress — takes a closer look at the drivers of income inequality between 1996 and 2006, the last period of moderate economic growth before the latest boom-bust cycle. The report explains that the Bush tax cuts contributed significantly to growing…
ObamaCare Is Winning the Fight on Fraud and Abuse
Thanks to provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA/ObamaCare) and to an unprecedented effort by the Obama Administration, more progress has been made in the past three years to combat health care fraud and abuse than ever before. There was a 68.9 percent increase in criminal health care fraud prosecutions from 2010 to 2011, and…
Montana High Court Says Citizens United Does Not Apply In Big Sky State
The Montana Court vigorously upheld the state’s right to regulate how corporations can raise and spend money after a secretive Colorado corporation, Western Tradition Partnership, and a Montana sportsman’s group and local businessman sued to overturn a 1912 state law banning direct corporate spending on electoral campaigns. “Organizations like WTP that act as a conduit…
POLL: ‘Progressive’ Is The Most Positively Viewed Political Label in America
A new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press out yesterday shows that “progressive” is the most positively viewed political label in America, with 67 percent holding a positive view compared to just 22 percent who view the term negatively: via POLL: ‘Progressive’ Is The Most Positively Viewed Political Label…
The GOP’s health-care problem
On Saturday, David Fahrenthold wrote that “more than a year after Republicans first pledged to ‘repeal and replace’ President Obama’s new health-care law, the GOP is still struggling to answer a basic question. Replace it . . . with what?”This shouldn’t be such a problem. Health care is a big issue. It’s been around a long time….
93-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Who Cleaned State Capitol For 30 Years Denied Voter ID
A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations. Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented…
ID errors put hundreds in L.A. County jails
Hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department jails in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized those arrested were mistaken for wanted criminals, a Times investigation has found. The wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years. They were the…
Michigan Tea Party Mayor Says No To Fed Funds, Sends Business Packing
In what could be a new high water mark of anti-Washington sentiment, the city of Troy, Mich., is rejecting a long-planned transportation center whose construction would have been fully financed with federal stimulus money. The terminal, which would help Troy become a transportation node on an upgraded Detroit-to-Chicago Amtrak line, was hailed by supporters as…