There has already been the Gang of Six, the Bowles-Simpson Commission, the Gang of Eight, the Super Congress, and the Boehner-Obama negotiation. Even though all these previous bipartisan deficit reduction groups failed, President Obama is apparently not going to stop until he cuts Social Security. According to Politico, Obama is pushing for the formation of [...]

President Obama finally promised to release legal memos on the Targeted Killing program to members of congressional intelligence committees on February 6, 2013, after over 21 formal requests from legislators. But members of these committees have so far only been given limited access to 4 memos and the most important, including those addressing the government’s [...]

There are many benefits to the bully pulpit. The President can easily bring attention to a previously obscure issue and move it to the center of debate in Washington. As the de facto leader of a party, the President can also significantly sway the opinions of his base on a range of issues. A big [...]

Now we are going to see Barack Obama unconstrained. Up to this point there was always something or someone with real political leverage over Obama that played a role in shaping his policy decisions. At different points it has been the Chicago electorate, the Illinois electorate, big donors, corn farmers in Iowa, primary voters in [...]

President Obama is at least rhetorically starting his second term on more liberal note. His inaugural address touched on a litany of progressive goals including climate change, LGBT rights, voting access, equal pay, gun control and immigration reform.

One of the most memorable parts of President Obama’s hour-long press conference on Monday came he was forced to face the issue of his own negotiating credibility problem.

The next looming fight in Congress is clear and the battle lines have already been drawn. The debt ceiling will be reached in roughly two months. President Obama claims that he will not negotiate over it again. Meanwhile Republicans are demanding spending cuts with no tax increases in exchange for raising the debt limit. Republicans [...]

During this fiscal cliff fight, the Obama team has only \drawn two lines in the sand. The first was on raising the tax rate for people making over $250,000 a year.  The other was refusing to allow raising the debt ceiling to be used for political gain. On both of these demands Obama has already [...]

The extension of unemployment benefits and a small amount of infrastructure spending are the only things Obama would have gotten in his recent deal offer that he probably couldn’t force the GOP to agree to by simply waiting them out. Those are both relatively small items compared to a large and deeply unpopular Social Security benefit cut.

We are working with the Tarsands Blockade on an appropriate response to the outrageous behavior of TransCanada. In the mean time, if you’d like to donate to the supply fund, we will be working with the group to send them supplies as they need them.