Politics & Government
Cnet | Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a bill on Thursday that would rewrite the ground rules for Internet and mail order sales by eliminating the option for many Americans to shop over the Internet without paying state sales taxes.
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law | A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1....
Bloomberg | Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.”
CBS | Here's Mr. Obama on September 18, 2008, not long after the economic collapse: "Senator McCain's first answer to this economic crisis was - get ready for it - a commission. That's Washington-speak for 'we'll get back to you later.'"
New York Times | The sales have cut the Treasury's stake in the bank from nearly 27 percent to about 17.6 percent. Citi shares rose briefly in morning trading, before falling about 2.39 percent to $3.67 by mid-morning. Most of the banking sector was trading down.
American Everyman | The only disguise she ever wore was the same one worn by Hilary Clinton and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama… i.e. the neoliberal Corporatist in Democrat Clothing disguise. It’s a shame because not only is Elena Kagan perhaps the most unqualifi...
Salon | Savage writes that it is "unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013"; quotes Sen. Carl Levin as saying that "the odds are that it will still be open" by the next presidential inauguration; and describes how Sen. Lindsey Graham -- who ...
NPR | The U.S Supreme Court has severely restricted the ability of federal prosecutors to bring corruption cases against public officials and corporate executives. The court unanimously imposed stark limits on the so-called honest services law that for decades has been a key tool in prosecuting ...
The Age | The US senators pushing a controversial new bill that some fear would give President Barack Obama the powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet have rejected claims it would give Obama a net "kill switch".
Huffington Post | Nearly a year after she quit her governorship of Alaska, Sarah Palin was found guilty today of another breach of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act involving her so-called Alaska Fund Trust (AFT), which she established as a private "legal defense fund" while governor.
My Way | State Rep. Tim Scott defeated Paul Thurmond, an attorney who is son of the one-time segregationist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. Scott, who won the runoff with 69 percent of the vote, is now poised to become the nation's first black GOP congressman since 2003.
Yahoo News | The federal judge who overturned Barack Obama's offshore drilling moratorium reported owning stock in numerous companies involved in the offshore oil industry — including Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to BP prior to its April 20 explosion in the Gulf ...
Telegraph | "I would bet he will go after the midterms," said a leading Democratic consultant in Washington. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."
Raw Story | That's one of the arguments Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is making about the bill he's co-authored that would give the president the power to disable parts of the Internet as he deems necessary. "Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of ...
Democracy Now | Pentagon investigators are reportedly still searching for Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who helped release a classified US military video showing a US helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians.
Daily Show | The last eight presidents have gone on television and promised to move America towards an energy-independent future.
Break the Matrix | In 1990 Congress adopted the Oil Pollution Act. This act set liability limitations to $75 million for oil spills like the one we are witnessing in the Gulf Coast today. Setting a liability limit on damages created by oil drilling can only encourage the lowering and...
Gawker | Tonight, Jon Stewart called out President Obama for not only not living up to his campaign-era promises to reverse many of the Bush Administration's war-related human rights policies, but also attempting to introduce new, even more harsh ones. Video inside.
Washington's Blog | The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.
Libertarian Minds | Out of all the schools of thought on the theory of government in American history, only libertarians can trace our intellectual heritage all the way back to the founding. Our Founding Fathers were, for the most part, strongly libertarian in their beliefs.
Wikileaks | After the embarrassing Transport Security Administration (TSA) leak where workers failed to properly redact documents related to screening procedures, three Republican lawmakers want to criminalize whistle blower sites that reposted the document.
Daily Beast | Anxious that Wikileaks may be on the verge of publishing a batch of secret State Department cables, investigators are desperately searching for founder Julian Assange. Philip Shenon reports. Plus, Daniel Ellsberg tells The Daily Beast: "Assange is in Some Dan...
The Foundry | According to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the House health care bill passed last Friday empowers the federal government to imprison people for up to five years if they willfully refuse to buy federally regulated and approved health insurance.
RAW Story | Anthony Romero, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, had some fighting words for President Barack Obama during a speech to liberal activists in Washington on Wednesday.
Consumerist | Though General Motors has made a big deal about allegedly paying back their bailout loan to the federal government, the fact is that most of the bailout money was turned into equity, which means the government -- and ultimately the taxpayers -- are the majority shareholder in the ca...
Salon.com | Physicians for Human Rights yesterday released a report documenting (while relying on heavily redacted material) that "medical professionals who were involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogations of terrorism suspects engaged in forms of human research and experi...
LA Times | Under the new measure, only the top two vote-getters in a primary election -- regardless of their political party -- will advance to a November runoff. Currently, the top vote-getter in each party advances to the fall campaign.
Examiner | Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own selfish needs. Although the concept of psychopathy has been known for centuries, the FBI leads ...
Appeal Democrat | The Securities and Exchange Commission is pursuing fraud charges against three former executives of ATM maker Diebold Inc. after reaching a $25 million settlement with the company on Wednesday.
New Yorker | The house on Grettisgata Street, in Reykjavik, is a century old, small and white, situated just a few streets from the North Atlantic. The shifting northerly winds can suddenly bring ice and snow to the city, even in springtime, and when they do a certain kind of silence sets in.
Washington Free Press | As more and more programs for the poor are eliminated in America due to budget cuts, the only one left standing is the most expensive one of them all: prisons. Increasingly a privatized industry, prisons are also a growth industry in America, with a new prison opening ev...
Bureau of Industry and Security U.S. Department of Commerce | The Bureau is charged with administering and enforcing the Antiboycott Laws under the Export Administration Act. Those laws discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from furthering or supporting the boycott of ...
Public Record | A new article at Truthout I co-wrote with author and investigative journalist H.P. Albarelli describes how the CIA’s Artichoke Project* was the contemporaneous and operational side of the MK-ULTRA mind control research program. It was not superceded by MK-ULTRA in the 1950s, ...
Jalopnik | Years ago, the U.S. government built a fleet of cars that were safer than anything on the road. Twenty-five years ago, the government shredded them in secret. Two escaped the crusher. This is their story.
Breit Bart | In a filing on Friday, the solicitor general's office argued that the Ninth Circuit court of appeals erred in allowing the lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was sexually abused in the 1960s by the Oregon priest.
MSNBC | In late 2008 a new version of the U.S. citizenship test was introduced by immigration authorities. Could you pass it? The questions are usually selected from a list of 100 samples that prospective citizens can look at ahead of the interview.
Alternet | Not much has changed since Will Rogers said “We have the best Congress money can buy.”
The Star | After charges against him were dropped on Tuesday, former attorney general Michael Bryant admitted he has been humbled by the experience of being a lowly defendant after his highly publicized altercation on Bloor St. with a bicycle courier who died last summer.
Consumerist | A woman is suing the TSA after she says she was forced to take off her $24,000 Rolex to pass through security, and when she went to retrieve it, it had mysteriously vanished.
Salon | Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any...
New York TImes | There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
Digital Journal | In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, film director Woody Allen suggested that President Obama should be granted total dictatorial powers for a few years "so he can get some good things done."
Boston.com | The red brick house sits unassumingly on a sleepy back road where the lush farmlands of northern Vermont roll quietly into Canada. This is the Morses Line border crossing, a point of entry into the United States where more than three cars an hour constitute heavy traffic.
Before It's News | Two private investigators working independently are asking why President Obama is using a Social Security number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.
Alternet | The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains—corrupt corporate capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were worshiped as geniuses, heroes or icons of ...
Statesman | City code enforcement officials are assessing what to do next with an East Austin home after a man built an extensive bunker below it that drew a team of emergency personnel to the site Saturday morning, a city official said Tuesday.
Raw Story | The proposal from independent Senator Bernie Sanders would order congressional investigators to conduct a single audit of the U.S. central bank's use of its emergency lending authority since December 2007. It would require the Fed by December 1 to disclose which banks received its h...
Yahoo News | A new bill that would permit the State Department to strip Americans of their citizenship if they support terror networks has drawn a cool reaction from the White House, even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to embrace the measure.
Jack Liberty | Politico’s Mike Allen reported earlier this morning that Obama will most likely pick Elena Kagan as his Supreme Court nominee, and now I’m receiving news that she has strong ties with the corporatist investment bank Goldman Sachs
Wall Street Journal | Pressure from the Obama administration led Senate lawmakers to alter a provision pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that was gaining momentum despite opposition from the Treasury and the Fed. It would have largely repealed a 32-year-old law that shields Fed monetary po...