(Guest-hosted by Alan Minsky while I was on jury duty–thank you Alan!) Our president gives his first State of the Union speech tonight at 600pm, and apparently Obama will call for an across-the-board three-year spending freeze to placate Republicans who say the deficit is a big problem. Question: Do ordinary people really care about the [...]
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It’s the first anniversary of Obama’s taking the oath of office, and the day after Obama lost the contest to replace Ted Kennedy with a Democrat. Losing that 40th vote in the Senate is a disaster for the healthcare bill, the Democrats, the White House, and [...]
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The constitutional challenge to Prop. 8, Calfiornia’s initiative banning gay marriage, went to trial on Monday in San Francisco. STEPHEN ROHDE will comment, he’s a constitutional lawyer, lecturer, writer and political activist. and Chair the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
Also: FDR provides the [...]
In 1969, as the anti-war movement was reaching a peak, Richard Nixon’s White House staff debated what they could do to “show the little bastards” what kind of man they were up against. They were concerned about what would be the biggest antiwar demonstration in US history on Nov. 15, 1969, when half a million [...]
Los Angeles County has more uninsured people than anyplace else in the country – three million, many of them immigrants, and many of those undocumented. If the Senate version of health bill passes, with its ban on federal coverage of non-citizens, a million people in California will be denied health insurance–the great majority of them [...]
Student protests against tuition increases at the 10-campus University of California system pushed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce on Tuesday an initiative to guarantee that the state spends more on universities than it does on prisons.
The central role of student protests is not just my theory; it’s the explanation offered by the governor’s own chief [...]
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In Afghanistan, a “chain of catastrophes”over the last two weeks is “raising significant questions about the viability of the Obama-McChrystal plan for the country,” JUAN COLE says – he teaches history at the U. of Michigan and writes the indispensable blog “Informed Comment.” WATCH Afghan [...]
“For a long time now there’s been too much secrecy in this city.” That’s what President Obama said on his first day in office. He was talking about the way George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had used 9/11 as a pretext for pulling a veil over many of their key policies and actions. Last [...]
“They’ll send me to jail if I don’t sign up for Obama’s health care,” an 89-year-old woman said at my family holiday gathering last week. She was agitated and angry. “Imagine sending someone to jail – at my age!”
Even the Republicans in the room rushed to reassure her: “You’re covered by Medicare. You’re already signed [...]