Government

Message From Missouri: No Mandates but Not Necessarily No Reform Message From Missouri: No Mandates but Not Necessarily No Reform

Missouri voters rejected federal mandates. But that mean that they are against expanding access to healthcare? Not necessarily.

Aug 10, 2010 / John Nichols

End of the Tea Party? End of the Tea Party?

The Nation's Ari Melber and Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty debate the reason the Tea Party lost to the GOP in three primaries this week.

Aug 6, 2010 / Press Room

The Breakdown: How to Bust the Filibuster

The Breakdown: How to Bust the Filibuster The Breakdown: How to Bust the Filibuster

Could the Senate start getting things done, if only legislators didn't have to face filibuster threats? This week on The Breakdown: the history of the filibuster, and how to get ri...

Aug 5, 2010 / Chris Hayes

The NRA Won’t Call the Shots on Kagan Confirmation The NRA Won’t Call the Shots on Kagan Confirmation

The National Rifle Association is trying to block Elena Kagan's nomination. But it is failing, badly.

Aug 5, 2010 / John Nichols

Food Stamps or Teachers? Food Stamps or Teachers?

The fight over Congress's jobs bill has made the GOP's midterm election strategy clear: stubbornly oppose anything and everything that might improve the economy and hope voters b...

Aug 4, 2010 / Katrina vanden Heuvel

Slacker Friday Slacker Friday

On Shirley Sherrod and the Republicans' great future hopes.

Jul 30, 2010 / Eric Alterman

War Opposition Grows As 102 House Dems, 12 Republicans Oppose Obama’s Afghan Surge War Opposition Grows As 102 House Dems, 12 Republicans Oppose Obama’s Afghan Surge

House approves "emergency" Afghan war funding, but 114 members vote "no" in one of the strongest shows of antiwar sentiment since the Vietnam era.

Jul 28, 2010 / John Nichols

Energy Policy Fail Energy Policy Fail

A watered-down version of an energy bill is being published today—but Obama can effect clean changes simply by changing the types of products that the federal government bu...

Jul 27, 2010 / Press Room

Anti-Muslim Bigot and Fanatic Explains Islam to the FBI and the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force Anti-Muslim Bigot and Fanatic Explains Islam to the FBI and the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force

The Council on American Islamic Relations is making noise about the fact that an extremist, right-wing anti-Muslim rabble rouser was "invited to offer training to state and federal law enforcement officers." It sounds like something that might have happened under the administration of President Bush, but no—this happened on Obama's watch. Robert Spencer, co-founder of the group Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), is the culprit. According to CAIR, Spencer was called in recently to pontificate to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force. (The JTTFs are law enforcement and intelligence coalitions that began Washington. Soon every jurisdiction wanted the federal dough for a JTTF, and after 9/11 the number of JTTFs exploded.) "Our nation's law enforcement personnel should not receive training from the head of a hate group that seeks to demonize Islam and to prevent American Muslims from exercising their rights as citizens," said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper. "Robert Spencer is the same individual who claims in his new book that President Obama is waging 'war on America.' " He noted that Spencer recently co-authored the book, "The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America," that sounds a "wake-up call for Americans to stop the Obama administration from limiting our hard-won freedoms, silencing our democratic voices, and irreparably harming America for generations to come." According to Loonwatch, the SIOA is so extreme that it seems almost satirical. Like a Tea Party phalanx of radical anti-Muslim bigots, the SIOA says that its goal is educate Americans "about about the threat that Islamic doctrine and those who support it present to our freedoms, and the future of our democracy and country." Its organizers call themselves "scholar warriors/ideological warriors in the cause of American freedom and Constitutional government," as well as in "the defense of…our society of liberty, knowledge, and human decency." Spencer's co-founder, Pamela Geller, is a piece of work, too. Notes CAIR: Geller has posted images on her blog that include a fake photograph of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a Nazi uniform, another fake image of President Obama urinating on an American flag and drawings purporting to depict Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a pig. In a June 25 blog entry, Geller posted a video claiming that Muslims engage in bestiality. This needs repudiation—or, as Sarah Palin would say, refudiation—from the Justice Department, and quick.

Jul 26, 2010 / Bob Dreyfuss

It’s Time to Fix the Estate Tax It’s Time to Fix the Estate Tax

It's been said that only death and taxes are certain. But the "death tax" is anything but certain right now. Costing the Treasury billions, Congress has allowed the estat...

Jul 26, 2010 / Katrina vanden Heuvel

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