Recently in Politics Category

Kate Shepherd reports on emails released under FOIA that confirms what we feared during the BP Macondo well blowout:  in an effort to get the blowout off the television, the government downplayed the environmental damage.  in her report in Mother Jones yesterday, Kate reports on the emails.Report: White House Pressured Scientists to Underestimate BP Spill Size | Mother Jones....

Senate Republicans are really pissed at President Obama for making recess appointments when the Senate wasn't in recess. And just as soon as they get back from their...uh, recess... they're going to do something about it: "Top Senate Republicans are weighing whether to file a lawsuit to challenge President Barack Obama's controversial use of recess appointments, but such a suit looks legally shaky and could ultimately backfire with voters. Senators will likely make a decision...

Hallelujah! At long last, some backbone. Following his recess appointment of Richard Cordray as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday, President Obama announced 3 appointments to the National Labor Relations Board: "The move, which is arguably as important as the Cordray appointment, will ratchet up opposition from Republicans and make this an even bigger fight, since they have been attacking the NLRB regularly for its moves to streamline union elections and inform...

Perhaps you've heard. Our CongressNerds are doing the "gavel in/gavel out" thing and holding pro forma sessions trying to prevent the POTUS from making recess appointments for positions which have been vacant for months.From Wiki: "The term pro forma is a term applied to practices or documents that are done as a pure formality, perfunctory, or seek to satisfy the minimum requirements or to conform to a convention or doctrine."The use of the pro forma...

http://this-small-planet.com/2011/keystone-xl-pipeline-extension-not-the-real-issue/...

Willful ignorance:"The practice or act of intentional and blatant avoidance, disregard or disagreement with facts, empirical evidence and well-founded arguments because they oppose or contradict your own existing personal beliefs." If there's a better description of the American right I haven't found it. This poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University showing that Fox News viewers are uninformed actually misses the point. The word is misinformed, not uninformed. Misinformed and reveling in it. In short, my mind's...

I saw a program this morning that portrayed a doomsday scenario of a nuclear weapon being detonated in the DC area and the series of events that would take place to begin rescue,  recovery and continuity of government.Seriously, we know that within a certain radius, there will be no such thing as recovery, but they did go on to talk about the super secret series of events that would take place to ensure COGCON 1...

Something to keep in mind while watching those who are exercising their constitutional right to peaceably assemble being handcuffed and taken to jail:"The federal government is on track to file just 1,365 prosecutions for financial institution fraud in fiscal year 2011, according to a new report from a watchdog group. That would be the lowest number of such prosecutions in at least two decades....The falling number of fraud prosecutions is striking given what many claim...

The embodiment of class meets the embodiment of a useful idiot:"Moments into a speech before volunteers here Wednesday evening, Elizabeth Warren was interrupted by a Tea Party supporter who hurled a gender-based epithet at the Senate candidate. The man, who said he'd been unemployed since February 2010, objected to Warren's expressed affiliation with the frustrations of Occupy Wall Street."Unemployed since 2010? Maybe he should be at a  Scott Brown speech asking him why he voted...