Leading congressional Democrats have given their approval to a vastly expanded program of US covert warfare against Iran, according to an article by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, published in the New Yorker, and made available on the magazines web site Sunday.

President Bush issued a Presidential Finding, a classified notification to top congressional leaders about the covert program against Iran, last year, after the Democrats took control of the Senate and House of Representatives in the November 2006…

The 100% true story of how an aged racist senator from South Carolina named Strom Thurmond came to believe that James Brown - The Godfather of Soul - was an actual honest to God U.S. Ambassador and, thusly, should not have to pay taxes.
Today is the five year anniversary of Thurmond’s death.

Your blogging Senate Pages came to Capitol Hill in the late '90s — just in time to catch the tail end of Thurmond's record-setting filibuster against civil rights legislation. Thurmond's virulent racism was no longer…

Now that the Senate moved one step closer towards tracking all online transactions, it appears that there is only one place in the United States where your security is truly valued. Unfortunately, it’s a members only club.

One Response to “Senate Gets Cloture, Grassley Still Needs to be Stopped”

Congress is going to decree that the President has the power to order private citizens to break the law, as well as to spy on our telephone calls and emails with no warrants. Well done, Democrats!

What's particularly amazing about this whole process is that the House leadership unveiled this bill for the first time today — and then scheduled the vote on it for tomorrow. No hearings. Nothing. They all have less than 24 hours to…

The “few bad apples” theory put forth by the administration for the Abu Gharib is only partly true. The bad apples are at the top of the pyramid

In his opening statement, Levin asked: "[H]ow did it come about that American military personnel stripped detainees naked, put them in stress positions, used dogs to scare them, put leashes around their necks to humiliate them, hooded…

The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation.

Rutten writes that, along with earlier revelations, “the current Senate investigation has established definitively that the drive to make torture an instrument of U.S. policy originated at the highest levels of the Bush administration…

Efforts are underway to disrupt the plans of the House Democratic leadership to give the President warrantless eavesdropping powers and give the telecom industry full-fledged amnesty

Reid said that he would not ask his members to vote against the bill and that he still had not reviewed the language, pointing out that negotiators have been saying for weeks that they had a deal on the contentious issue.When Tom DeLay ran the…

Senators Christopher Dodd, from Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad, from North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, refinanced properties through Countrywides V.I.P.? - Got discounted loans you an me don’t and save over 10K / year in mortgage payments. Where is the FBI ?

(2)(A)A Member, officer, or employee may accept a gift (other than cash or cash equivalent) which the Member, officer, or employee reasonably and in good faith believes to have a value of less than $50, and a cumulative…

John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It’s not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the

The Supreme Court today did what the Founders envisioned it should do: it protected our basic constitutional guarantees from erosion and assault by a corrupt majority within the political class. In so doing, the Court took a mild though important…

At the ACLU’s annual convention this week, Sen. Arlen Specter called for support for a shield law for journalists and said that the government should take the place of telecoms as defendants in the lawsuits over the NSA’s domestic wiretap program.

Specter warned that courts' increasing willingness to go after journalists' sources threatened to create "more than a chilling effect; it is a freezing effect" that would hamper the publication of important…

You might not be aware of an important decision that the United States Senate will be considering in the next few days. This decision will determine whether or not housing consumers will be able to get fair, safe and affordable mortgage credit, which of course is a major part of the health of the national housing market.

The national mortgage market meltdown dramatically raised the cost and reduced the availability of mortgages in my market. Higher limits are helping to revitalize local housing markets, providing safe, fair and affordable mortgages for our…

Two House members said Wednesday their Capitol Hill computers, containing information about political dissidents from around the world, have been hacked by sources apparently working out of China.

Wednesday's disclosures came as U.S. authorities continued to investigate whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the…

When Obama buttonholed Lieberman the other day in the Senate regarding Lieberman’s attempts to tie Obama to Hamas, Lieberman said the exchange was “cordial and friendly.” Now he’s saying that Obama was using “sleazy tactics.” Quick, call he WAAHmbulance…

Obama had to keep the gloves on? while battling Hillary; theyre coming off now and he knows time is short. The polls? keep saying McCain and Obama are tied, but no one says what the polling methodology is. If its phone polling then…

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, pushing debate over the world’s biggest environmental concern to next year for a new Congress and president.

“It's a huge tax increase,” argued Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a prominent coal-producing state. He maintained that the proposed system of allowing widespread trading of carbon emissions allowances would…

A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.

The committee found that the administration's warnings that former dictator Saddam Hussein was in league with Osama bin Laden, a highly inflammatory assertion in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaida attacks, weren't…

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney knowingly lied to Congress and the public about the threat that Iraq posed to the United States in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, according to a long-awaited report from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney knowingly lied to Congress and the public about the threat that Iraq posed to the United States in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, according to a long-awaited report…

[His incest “joke”] rubbed folks in the Mountain State the wrong way, especially those who are sick and tired of hearing West Virginia incest jokes. Already, members of the West Virginia congressional delegation - Republicans and Democrats alike - are ticked off.

My brother-in-law Warren W Burnett a former Police Officer here in the Monsey NY area of Ramapo Township NYS once quoted himself as saying ” I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken.” How true he was. While this might be…

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is a flop. He pretends to be a conservative, but sells them out. Graham spends most of his time trailing behind John McCain like a valet. In sum, in the words of conservative movement stalwart Richard Viguerie, “Lindsey Graham is part of the problem.”

South Carolina's Lindsey Graham is a flop. He pretends to be a conservative, but sells out conservatives and insults them while doing so. He pretends to be effective at reaching across party lines, but the only thing he effectively does is…

Hillary Rodham Clinton ranks as only No. 36 out of 49 Senate Democrats, more of whom favored Barack Obama.

But the seniority arithmetic is only the beginning. There is also the personal challenge of returning to a club where more Democratic members, some quite pointedly, favored Senator Barack Obama and spurned her. For Mrs. Clinton, who has spent…

McCain gets 4 Pinocchio’s for claiming he can save ??100 billion a year on earmarks.

Foreign Affairs and Military Affairs are considered his strong suites, I say why? Other than what he received at various military schools there is scant evidence he is any more of an expert than any other former military pilot. Many of his…