The media are finally waking up to the fact that the temporary high-risk pools created by the new health-care law were completely unfunded. Only $5 billion was set aside for the program, which is probably less than a third of what would be required to keep the program funded until 2014. This should not be [...]

Alice Rivlin is the chief wonk appointed by President Obama to the debt commission, and has long supported cutting Social Security benefits as a way to address the country’s financial woes. Alex Lawson caught up with Rivlin and asked her about her plans right after his famous interview with Alan Simpson when the commission met [...]

This headline from “The New York Times,” Byrd’s Death Weakens Democrats’ Frail Majority, perfectly sums up what a broken, insane Bizzaro World the United States Senate has made of Washington, DC. (Note: Before this post was published, the “Times” changed the headline to Byrd’s Death Weakens Democrats’ Shifting Majority.) The headline appears ridiculous either way. [...]

Obama’s top Terrorism adviser John Brennan recently suggested that there could be “dozens” of Americans who have been targeted for assassination, and  Glenn Greenwald appeared on the Dylan Ratigan show today to discuss the implications. Ratigan asked Glenn Greenwald if Obama’s actions create “a massive cognitive dissonance that actually allows him to get away with [...]

Michael Whitney, who runs FDL’s online organizing and covers labor issues for our Work in Progress blog, appeared on GritTV with Laura Flanders and Max Fraser of The Nation to discuss the future of labor. Michael talks about Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez and the “anonymous senior administration official” who trashed labor after they opposed the [...]

Many reports on the late Robert Byrd’s long career as a US Senator are pointing out that Byrd literally wrote the book on Senate rules and history. And while it is true that Byrd did write the quintessential four-part history of the chamber, his real importance comes from the fact that it was Byrd himself [...]

Senate Democrats have again failed to pass a large tax-extender and jobs bill because of a unified Republican filibuster. The bill is meant to stop massive layoffs, make sure poor people don’t lose their health care and provide continued unemployment insurance to the many Americans hit hard by the recession. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) firmly [...]

Sam Seder gives voice to the confusion many are having: after Democrats successfully fought off George Bush’s attempts to gut Social Security in 2005, why did Obama pack his deficit commission in 2010 with people like co-chair Alan Simpson, who are dead set on doing the same thing? BTW, if you haven’t subscribed to Sam’s [...]

If you ever wonder why American health-care costs are so dramatically higher than in the rest of the world, it’s partly a result of the corrupting influence of money in our politics and the dangerous conflicts of interest that plague the health-care system. Frequently, the for-profit health-care companies pay for the continuing “education” that doctors [...]

Surprise–a tiny rise in support for the health-care reform law comes from Republicans. Maybe they realize the law won’t do too much, anyway. In the meantime, other concerns may dwarf the law as November issues at the voting booth.