Not A Great Day for Senate Democrats

By John Nichols

In fairness to Harry Reid, no Senate majority leader has ever before begun a new session of Congress with four open seats and a slowly settling contest for a fifth seat.

But Reid really has to do better when it comes to leading the chamber.

On a day when Democrats should have been celebrating their largest Senate majority in decades and setting their agenda for responding to the economic and foreign-policy challenges created by eight years of Republican rule, they were instead talking about refusing to seat an appointee from Illinois and preparing to seat a recount winner from Minnesota.

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January 6, 2009

Is Kaine the Right Choice to Lead Party?

By Ari Berman

Howard Dean will soon be out as chairman of the Democratic Party and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine will soon be in. The Washington Post reports that Obama plans to officially announce the pick later in the week. Kaine endorsed Obama early on, emerged as one of his top surrogates, spoke on the final night of the Democratic Convention and was on the shortlist for vice president. So in many ways, this is hardly a surprising pick.

The way I see it, there are pros and cons to Kaine's selection.

PRO: Kaine will be a good spokesman for the party. As a governor of an important swing state that turned from red to blue, a Spanish speaker and a religious Catholic, he's in a solid position to communicate the party's message and help it grow. While he was governor, Virginia Democrats won two US Senate seats, flipped the state Senate and added seats to the House of Delegates. Accordingly, Kaine saw firsthand the value of Dean's 50-state strategy. Kaine's gubernatorial election in 2005 was the first race Dean poured a lot of money into and Virginia became an early pilot program for the 50-state strategy.

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January 5, 2009

Honor Claiborne Pell By Renewing Checks on Warmaking

By John Nichols

Former Rhode Island Senator Clairborne Pell, who gave his name to the federal college-grant program and did more than almost anyone else in the latter years of the 20th-century to foster rational foreign policies, was a mentor to Vice President-elect Joe Biden and an inspiration to President-elect Barack Obama.

So how should Obama, Biden and their congressional allies honor the six-term senator who has died at age 90?

Supercharge funding of Pell Grants? Absolutely.

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January 2, 2009

What To Do About Blagojevich's Pick to Replace Obama

By John Nichols

Illinois Governor Rod "Who Wants to Buy a Senate Seat?" Blagojevich is reportedly set to appoint former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to the US Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Lynn Sweet, the savvy political reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, says the announcement will come Tuesday afternoon.

Burris, a former rival of Blagojevich, is in many senses a fine pick.

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December 30, 2008

Ask Obama For a Torture Special Prosecutor

By Ari Melber

The Obama transition team is taking questions again at Change.gov, throwing open the site this week for citizen input. The first run of this experiment was a mixed bag. The platform was open and transparent, but the official answers felt more like old boilerplate than new responses. When the submitted questions parrot toics in the traditional media, of course, the exchange can feel like a dated press conference. But here's a vital question that few reporters have ever presented to Obama:

Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?

That question ranked sixth in voting last time -- out of over 10,000 submissions -- but the transition team only answered the top five questions. Now that Vice President Cheney confessed his support for waterboarding on national television, flouting the rule of law, the issue is even more urgent. Activist Bob Fertik, who has submitted the question twice, explains how you can vote to press this issue on the transition team:

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December 29, 2008

Puff Goes the GOP's Credibility

By John Nichols

Republican leaders are objecting loudly and appropriately to the bizarre decision of a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, Chip Saltsman, to send members of the RNC a CD containing a song titled: "Barack the Magic Negro."

The song, a crude dig at President-elect Barack Obama's supposed lack of authenticity as a "real black man" and at the reactions of whites and African Americans to his candidacy, goes to the tune of the Peter, Paul and Mary children's classic, "Puff the Magic Dragon."

RNC chair Mike Duncan, who is running against Saltsman and several other contenders to lead the battered party, declared, "The 2008 election was a wakeup call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party. I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."

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December 29, 2008

Go To 1:18 In This Rick Warren Interview

By Max Blumenthal

Inside the mind of America's Pastor:

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December 24, 2008

Torture-Fan Cheney Securing Worst Veep Title

By John Nichols

Twenty-three percent of Americans surveyed by CNN say Dick Cheney is the worst vice president in history.

Another 41 percent say Cheney has been a poor No. 2.

So, as the draft-dodging, corporation-coddling, obscenity-spewing, torture-sanctioning shredder of the Constitution prepares to leave the position he should have been forced from by Congress, almost two-thirds of Americans rank Cheney as bad or worse than Spiro Agnew.

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December 22, 2008

George Bush's Bully Bridge Loan

By Laura Flanders

When President George Bush announced $17.4 billion for General Motors and Chrysler, it wasn't so much of a bridge loan, it was more like bully tactics. The Bush bucks come with all sorts of ties, most of them around the UAW's neck.

The loan's split into $13.4 billion now and another $4 billion later. GM and Chrysler will get the second installment in February only if they succeed in forcing workers to agree to accept slashed wages and work rules and auto retirees agree to sink half of their retiree health care fund into company stock.

Meanwhile, for the banks that have received handouts from the Treasury Department's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, there's no bullying. There's not even oversight. Asked by ABC News last week, how or if they'd spent the money they've received sixteen banks pulled a Palin. They simply refused to answer the question. How much have they spent on staff bonuses? The Government Accountability Office dug for an answer to that and found that "the standard agreement between Treasury and the participating institutions does not require that these institutions track or report how they plan to use, or do use, their capital investments."

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December 22, 2008

Caroline Kennedy's Campaign

By John Nichols

Never having sought or held public office, Caroline Kennedy is something of a political blank slate.

But as she competes, aggressively, for the soon-to-be-vacant New York Senate seat of Hillary Clinton, who will leave to become President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of State, Kennedy is doing the right thing.

She's talking about where she stands on the issues.

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December 21, 2008