Three years ago, when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, he said:
"It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign...we are upholding one of this nation's first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness. If we stay focused, as Lilly did, and keep standing for what's right, as Lilly did, we will close that pay gap and ensure that our daughters have the same rights,...
Retired Republican House and Senate staffer Mike Lofgren spoke with Truthout in Washington, DC, this fall. Lofgren's first commentary for Truthout, "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult," went viral, drawing over 1.2 million page views.
For most of my three-decade career handling national security budgets in Congress, Iran was...
Let's be clear what is and what is not happening in Syria.
Lined up in support of regime change in Damascus are the Middle East's major Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Also backing regime change, though less publicly, is the international network known as the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni powerhouse that is providing much, if not most, of the increasingly militarized Syrian opposition forces, especially in Sunni strongholds such as Homs. And backing the Sunni-led...
President Obama today will go to a fire house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington to tout his plan to promote hiring of veterans as first responders. It's a program that is sorely needed to address an American travesty: One out of every eight of the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are out of a job.
But as today's unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, the economy could still use a job corps for the rest of us as well.
The news is good: 243...
N.D.A.A. DAY OF ACTION: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3 Nationwide Protests Against the National Defense Authorization Act Today Occupy protesters and concerned citizens across the country will gather outside congressional offices from noon to 7 p.m. to protest the National Defense Authorization Act 2012 (H.R. 1540). Protesters are calling upon their congressmen to repeal Section 1021 and 1022 which could lead to the indefinite military detention of Americans without due process. Some protesters...
(Chicago, Illinois) The proposed $25 billion settlement agreement between state Attorneys General and five big banks involved in the robo-signing scandal would encourage the banks to help homeowners who are in less need of assistance and provide little relief to the most troubled homeowners, according to news reports.
"What the country and the housing market needs is a bold and broad fix - not broad immunity for banks' criminal behavior. Any settlement that is just about robo-signing...
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
- Mark Twain
A bottle of whiskey, a shot glass, and an article to write.
I'm not going to lie and say this particular combination hasn't come together before on my desk, but it has been rare enough to be considered special, and here we are. You see, something struck me out of the clear blue a while ago: the very first article of mine Truthout ever published happened...
The statue of Civil War General James B. McPherson, which sits in the center of the square in downtown D.C. that bears his name, was used by Occupy D.C. protesters today as the center pole for a "tent of dreams," in rebellion against a National Park Service bar against sleeping in the park.
Inside and around the blue makeshift tent hundreds of Occupy D.C. supporters were chanting, singing, dancing and making it clear that the Occupy movement-even as it fights for the right to...
Senate Republicans announced a bill on Monday that would allow Canadian oil company TransCanada to begin construction of its proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline that would run 1,700 miles from Canada to Texas.
The bill's top sponsors - Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), John Hoeven (R-North Dakota), David Vitter (R-Louisiana) - are the same lawmakers who authored a provision in the payroll tax cut extension in December that required President Obama to approve or deny the...
A week or so ago, we read in The New York Times about what in the Gilded Age of the Roman Empire was known as a bacchanal - a big blowout at which the imperial swells got together and whooped it up.
This one occurred here in Manhattan at the annual black-tie dinner and induction ceremony for Kappa Beta Phi. That's the very exclusive Wall Street fraternity of billionaire bankers, and private equity and hedge fund predators. People like Wilbur Ross, the vulture capitalist;...
