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Rep. Roskam (R-IL) shakes his Etch-A-Sketch as Pres. Obama looks on. from C-SPAN “[The American people] … have rendered a judgment about what we have attempted to do so far,” said Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the president’s big health care meeting last week.30+31 “[P]ut that on the shelf and … start […]

From Climbing Mountains to Building Schools

K2 from air, West Face (Guilhem Vellut) Greg Mortenson is an American, who grew up near Mount Kilimanjaro, where his father started a teaching hospital and his mother started a school.20+21 From that background, Mortenson became a nurse, and an avid mountain climber — but later […]

“[I]t’s quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly break into Americans homes,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) last month at a Judiciary Committee hearing on the PATRIOT Act.80 A month after 9-11, with half its members shut out of their offices due to anthrax-powdered letters, the Senate passed […]

(Analysis.) Since the Democratic leadership has ignored the “Medicare for All” bill and has instead opted to keep for-profit companies in the basic medical insurance business, though in competition with a non-profit public option, those companies have focused on scuttling that public option.3031 The companies complain that, as a recent ad […]

“It was like someone poured molasses on the enforcement division,” said one manager about the Bush II Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during the chairmanship of Christopher Cox.20 As financial fraud raged on Wall Street, Cox’s management slowed financial law enforcement at every stage of a case.212223 To open a case, […]