This story is several days old. But I wanted to go back and show how, after a pack of lobbyists killed one attempt to get government to use its power to save money and improve health care, another pack of lobbyists are trying to do the same with higher education. Eric Lichtblau (who, IMO, does [...]

As Jason notes, David Axelrod has already taped a CSPAN response to Jane Mayer’s piece on Rahm’s spat about distractions like “the law” and “human rights” with Eric Holder and Greg Craig. In it, Axe appears to try to distance the White House from the decisions that have been attacked in the last few weeks, [...]

I first teased out Rahm Emanuel’s role in reversing Obama’s early efforts to reclaim our country from torture last July. In August, my comments at Netroots Nation focused on Rahm’s role in preventing accountability for torture. I kept tracking Rahm’s campaign to prevent accountability here, here, and here. Today, Jane Mayer has an extended profile [...]

Speaking of improper influence in defense contracting, BAE just settled the British and American fraud investigations against it. BAE Systems will admit two criminal charges and pay fines of £286m to settle US and UK probes into the firm. It will hand over more than £250m to the US, which accused BAE of “wilfully misleading” [...]

Brian Beutler reports that the Republicans are prepping to make sure no additional support for jobs gets passed next week. Senate Democrats want to vote on the first installment of a jobs package as early as Monday, amping up the pressure on Republicans to get aboard. But for the moment, they’re not biting. “We’ll have [...]

I’ve been puzzling all week since this happened last Saturday (January 30, from the pool report). President Bush 41, with former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush rolled up to the White House at 9:35 for a meeting with POTUS. At 10:09, the two emerged to fat, driving snow flakes. Responding to a called question, 41 said [...]

There has been a lot of discussion of how foreign companies will be able to influence elections and politics given the Citizens United deal. But foreign companies are already dominating our politics. Consider Richard Shelby’s decision to place holds on all of Obama’s nominees unless some federal money that may benefit Alabama gets released. Sen. [...]

The failure of the Obama Administration to support the Dawn Johnsen nomination, a far less than good faith effort that finally resulted in Johnsen’s nomination being killed by operation of Senate Rule, was not due to a lack of 60 votes for cloture on the nomination, but instead was to permit the abuse of the OLC, just as the Bush Administration before them, in order to cover up governmental illegality.

Just take a look at these traitorous accusations a certain Congressperson made about the CIA yesterday: misleading and some might say lying to Congress by the intel community The [intelligence] community covered it up, this committee can’t do its job if you don’t share information with us What is the community unwilling to share with [...]

Yesterday, Dennis Blair gave the House Intelligence Committee an explanation of the “specially permission” that the Government grants itself before it places a US citizen on its kill list. The U.S. intelligence community policy on killing American citizens who have joined al Qaeda requires first obtaining high-level government approval, a senior official disclosed to Congress [...]