Yes We Can Impeach Jay Bybee
[Promoted by Meteor Blades]As we read with growing horror the most recent torture memos, knowing that there are more revelations to come, I think a lot of us are asking the question that mcjoan asked...
View ArticleUpdate On The Campaign To Impeach Jay Bybee
Since my action on Saturday to spark a grassroots movement to impeach Bush Torture Judge Jay Bybee, there have been multiple developments. With respect to the resolution at the California Democratic...
View ArticleVICTORY: CA Dem Party Will Pass Resolution of Impeachment Inquiry Into Bybee...
Several weeks of hard work have paid off, and the California Democratic Party, the largest Democratic Party in the country, is poised to provide a major tool in the fight for justice and accountability...
View ArticleNEXT STEP: Tell Congress To Open Impeachment Inquiry Into Bybee
Thanks again to all of you who signed petitions and made phone calls and helped push the resolution to open a Congressional inquiry into Torture Judge Jay Bybee, which the California Democratic Party...
View ArticleDurbin's Searing Indictment Of The Banksters On The Senate Floor
Dick Durbin is speaking about the destructive greed of the banksters right now, the ones who torpedoed his amendment to allow bankruptcy judges to modify loan terms on primary residences the way they...
View ArticleBush's Torture Lobbyists Succeed In Stopping Prosecutions?
Here's a little nugget buried in an article about developments in the torture investigations:Sources told The Washington Post earlier this year that an earlier draft of the investigators' (Justice...
View ArticleThe Village Character Assassination of Sonia Sotomayor
The Swift-Boating of Sonia Sotomayor has really been an object lesson for how the Village treats people it decides not to like for whatever reason. Jeffrey Rosen at The New Republic decided to write a...
View ArticlePro-Torture Harold Ford Hardball transcript
Adding to liberal intellectual's diary, here's the full transcript of Harold Ford, the keynote speaker at the 2000 Democratic National Convention, saying that if terrorists scare us enough, we can...
View ArticleTorture Lawyers Failing Upwards
I just have to add to attytood's news that torture lawyer John Yoo has been given a monthly column at the Philadelphia Inquirer.I almost have to get out of my seat and clap at the absurdity of...
View ArticleWe Tortured To Justify The War In Iraq - Let That Settle In
Joe Conason has strung together the mounting evidence that the Bush Administration employed torture techniques to help justify their invasion and occupation of Iraq better than anyone else I've seen....
View ArticleMedia Finally Recognizes GOP Full Of Crap On Pelosi/CIA - Just In Time To...
I don't know who fed the media this point, or maybe they just couldn't ignore the wealth of hypocrisy surrounding the right-wing hissy fit over Nancy Pelosi, but they have started to inexplicably push...
View ArticleCalifornia's Crisis and Howard Jarvis-ism: A Tale Told By An Idiot
(This is the first in a series of diaries about the California budget crisis, its origins, and how to fix it. This is cross-posted at Calitics, where we continue to cover the ongoing twists and turns...
View ArticleBrooksley Born And The Financial-Political Complex
I almost missed this one yesterday, but the WaPo had a profile of Brooksley Born, the lawyer who, while the Clinton Administration's Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, foresaw the...
View ArticlePA-Sen: Rendell Basically Warns Sestak To Stay Out Of The Primary
I just came across an astonishing interview on The Ed Show with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell about the potential Specter-Sestak primary. It's a combination of a threat, Newspeak, muddled and often...
View ArticleDrawing Lines In The Sand On The California Budget Crisis
(cross-posted at Calitics. Second in an occasional series on the California crisis.)Arnold Schwarzenegger's address to the legislature was notable only for its fatuousness. He demands the destruction...
View ArticleShould We Waterboard Scott Roeder?
(To remove confusion, I don't believe Roeder or anyone should be waterboarded. But the logical extreme of those who support torture would give you the answer "yes.")I'm getting to this late, but Jack...
View ArticleThe Latvia Option: Plan To Create a Flat Tax, Eliminate Corporate Taxes In...
(Latest in a series on the California budget crisis, cross-posted at Calitics)I've been hearing the California crisis, and the Governor's response, referred to as a kind of shock doctrine, used to...
View ArticleWe need 10 million views of this YouTube by next week
Health care reform is certainly in a fair bit of trouble. But the three committees working on this in the House have really stepped up. They released a discussion draft based on the work of all of...
View ArticlePaul Begala calls out the media: expose the insurance industry!
Yesterday I wrote about the shocking video of a Congressional hearing where health insurance CEOs, having admitted to canceling customers after they turn in claims for treatment, refuse to stop doing...
View ArticleHealth Care Reform Is About More Than The Public Option: A Debate
The battle over including a public insurance option in health care reform has become a proxy fight between progressives and moderates over how best to use the popular mandate of the 2008 election....
View ArticleWhittling Health Care Reform Down To Nothing Will Cause A Massive Backlash
Unlike in 1994, when The New Republic allowed an abominable article by Betsy McCaughey to codify the Villager mindset on health care, this year they have one of the brightest wonks in the business, Jon...
View ArticleGoing after Blanche Lincoln on the public option
The HELP Committee's release of a more affordable health care reform that covers more people and includes a public option highlights the essential truth of this issue, that more reform actually lowers...
View ArticleA Stimulus For The States
Yesterday on ABC, Joe Biden claimed that the Administration misread the severity of the economic crisis, and did not dismiss out of hand the need for a second stimulus package, though he preferred to...
View ArticlePressure works: Blanche Lincoln gives ground on the public option
Several weeks ago Blue America noticed that Blanche Lincoln, one of the few centrist Democrats facing re-election in 2010, was taking the side of the insurance companies over her constituents in the...
View ArticleThe Blue Dog Lament: We Don't Want To Fix Health Care
As you may know by now, 40 members of the Blue Dog Caucus sent out a letter vowing to withhold their support for health care reform without what they call "significant changes." What's interesting...
View ArticleMisinformation On Hardball About Abortion Coverage In The Public Option
For the second day in a row, Chris Matthews ranted about the prospect of a potential public health insurance option covering abortion services, and his lineup of talking heads agreed that this was "the...
View ArticleI Just Asked Obama A Question About Health Care UPDATED with audio
I had a chance to participate in a conference call with President Barack Obama and some bloggers today about the health care debate. Clearly the very fact of this conference call's existence shows...
View ArticleMinimum Wage, Health Care, And April Greer
As the final phase from a bill passed back in 2007, today the federal minimum wage rises to $7.25 an hour from $6.55 for workers across the country. This brings the federal minimum wage, adjusted for...
View ArticleWhy California Needs A Constitutional Convention
Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign a FY2010 budget revision quietly today, with up to $1 billion dollars of additional line-item cuts that could potentially cause more pain for California citizens. This...
View ArticleBetsy McCaughey, Destroyer of Health Care Reform - Twice?
Betsy McCaughey has popped up before this year, claiming that the stimulus package included funding for comparative effectiveness research, which would "have the government essentially dictate...
View ArticleThe Real Problem With Obama's Poll Numbers
My big takeaway today is supposed to be that Barack Obama is fading in selling his health care plan, as eroding poll numbers, both on health care and his job approval rating, threaten legislation in...
View ArticleAn ex-comic's thoughts on dealing with teabaggers
For all the conservatives trying to make some equivalence between Code Pink rallies and lobbyist-supported teabagger groups on their side, please let me know the instances of left-wing protesters...
View ArticleLiberal Revolt On Public Option Only Thing Saving Health Care Reform
Anonymous wankers in the White House expressed surprise in the WaPo this morning about the intensity of feeling about the public option in the health care debate.President Obama's advisers acknowledged...
View ArticleFanfare For The Left Of The Left (Or, Stop Punching The Hippie In The Face)
I just listened to a good bit of Barack Obama's OFA session, and I think I can now pinpoint what has been irking me lately. He got up there and tried to rebut all the misinformation about what the...
View ArticleRedacted Portions Of CIA IG Report Leak Out - Multiple Deaths, KSM Almost...
ABC has some news on what was inside those blocks of redacted text in the CIA Inspector General report:The CIA and the Obama Administration continue to keep secret some of the most shocking allegations...
View ArticleOn "Politicizing" Death
I'm hearing a lot of whining on the right about the wall-to-wall coverage of Ted Kennedy's death and his politics, and how it's being "politicized". They're particularly concerned that Democrats might...
View ArticleWanted: Left-Wing Demagogues
That after months of tea parties and protests against Big Gubmint takeovers and socialism, the Republican Party would come out as the defenders of Medicare has got to be one of the most hilarious...
View ArticleThe Democratic Party Has A Jobs Problem
The jobs report for August showed another 216,000 losses. That's far less than previous months, in fact the smallest in a year, but still not very good. The unemployment rate jumped up to 9.7%, and...
View ArticleBaucus Plan Would Gut State-Level Insurance Industry Regulation
Max Baucus’ plan had the name of Liz Fowler, a former WellPoint VP who now works for the Finance Committee, in the metadata. When you have WellPoint personnel instrumental in writing the laws, you get...
View ArticleCIGNA Denies Cancer Patient Care, CEO Makes $120 Million - These Things Are...
(I am a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign. Visit us on Facebook.)Today Brave New Films released their second installment in the Sick For Profit series, taking a...
View ArticleThe One Statistic That Could Change The Entire Health Care Debate
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released a simple document that could transform the entire health care debate in the United States. Absolutely no other set of statistics so cleanly identify the...
View ArticleColbert Goes There - Only Media Figure In America To Openly Discuss Corporate...
The Colbert Report last night featured one of the most subversive and brutally honest half-hours of television in recent memory. It's a sad commentary that it takes a comedy program to provide more...
View ArticleConyers, Leahy Introduce Bill To End Anti-Trust Exemption For Health Insurers
(I am a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign. Visit us on Facebook and watch our latest video on CIGNA.)John Conyers and some allies on the House Judiciary Committee...
View ArticleWeep For America As You Read This Interview With Kent Conrad
Sherrod Brown sez that, contra Rahm Emanuel, no Democrat will vote with Republicans on a filibuster to kill the health care bill, even if it includes a public option.Brown should go have a talk with...
View ArticleEverything That's Wrong With The Baucus Bill In Two Minutes
(I am a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their Sick for Profit campaign. Follow us on Facebook)In the debate in the Senate Finance Committee today, Max Baucus said repeatedly that he couldn't...
View ArticleDid Alan Grayson Change The Health Care Debate?
(I am a blogger fellow for Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign. Follow us on Facebook.)Many of us already knew that Alan Grayson was a fearless champion against the rich and powerful....
View ArticleWellPoint Sues Maine To Raise Premiums 18.5%
(I am a blogger fellow for Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign. Follow us on Facebook.)A wild story out of Maine.Anthem Health Plans of Maine, a subsidiary of WellPoint, is suing the...
View ArticleRebutting The Eternal Lie About Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and Safe Havens
Today on Hardball, Ike Skelton advanced a familiar argument in Washington, not just now but over several decades, about the presumed consequences of failure that are always brought out as an argument...
View Article16 Deaths Per Day - The Crisis Of Unsafe Workplaces
(Disclosure: I am a blogger fellow with Brave New Films, the creator of this video and the 16 Deaths Per Day campaign)Every day in America, 16 people die at work from employer negligence.
View ArticleWhy did nobody go to jail for the financial crisis? I have a new book that...
Well hello, people of Daily Kos. It’s been a long, long time. I spent many of my formative years in the political world here, but I haven’t written in this space in a while.You see, I’ve been busy.I’ve...
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