Tea-party leader leaves post over racial remarks

Tea-party leader leaves post over racial remarks: "Williams, a talk-radio host with a long history of making racially tinged statements, had become a growing problem for Tea Party Express and the candidates it supports.

Tea Party Express is among the few organizations in the larger federation that has raised large amounts of money and has attempted to sway elections. Its support was key to Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle's primary victory and it has paid for television ads in Massachusetts, Michigan and Alaska."

Feinberg Says Bonuses Paid by Troubled Banks Were Unmerited - NYTimes.com

Feinberg Says Bonuses Paid by Troubled Banks Were Unmerited - NYTimes.com: "With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited."

Daniel Schorr, Aggressive Journalist, Dies at 93 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Daniel Schorr, Aggressive Journalist, Dies at 93 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com "At CBS, Mr. Schorr won three Emmy Awards for his coverage of the Watergate scandal and took pride in his often blunt reporting on the administration. In one instance he hurriedly began broadcasting after acquiring a copy of Nixon’s notorious “enemies list” only to discover in reading the names aloud that his was No. 17."

"Voice of the opposition": Fox News openly advocates against Democratic Congress, White House | Media Matters for America

"Voice of the opposition": Fox News openly advocates against Democratic Congress, White House | Media Matters for America FOX Entertainment is the mouth piece of the Republican Party.

Op-Ed Columnist - Addicted to Bush - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Addicted to Bush - NYTimes.com
"But they have a problem: how can they embrace President Bush’s policies, given his record? After all, Mr. Bush’s two signature initiatives were tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq; both, in the eyes of the public, were abject failures. Tax cuts never yielded the promised prosperity, but along with other policies — especially the unfunded war in Iraq — they converted a budget surplus into a persistent deficit. Meanwhile, the W.M.D. we invaded Iraq to eliminate turned out not to exist, and by 2008 a majority of the public believed not just that the invasion was a mistake but that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into war. What’s a Republican to do?

You know the answer. There’s now a concerted effort under way to rehabilitate Mr. Bush’s image on at least three fronts: the economy, the deficit and the war."

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle | The Nation

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle | The Nation

Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now

Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now"Of course when attempting to determine why the people's will is so frequently frustrated in our system, any author would be remiss if he did not turn first and foremost to the power of money. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics calculated that approximately $3.47 billion was spent lobbying the federal government in 2009, up from $3.3 billion the previous year. By the final quarter of the year, lobbies were handing out $20 million a day. The most generous spreaders of wealth were in the pharmaceutical and health products industries, whose $266.8 million set a record for "the greatest amount ever spent on lobbying efforts by a single industry for one year" according to CRP. At one point, PhRMA employed forty-eight lobbying firms, in addition to in-house lobbyists, with a total of 165 people overall, according to the Sunlight Foundation's Paul Blumenthal."