republicans

Gas prices have been edging up since February, reaching $4 a gallon this Easter, and Republicans are gearing up to make a stink about it. To blame Democrats, that is, for setting things up this way. Blaming green energy initiatives for driving up prices, House Republicans are planning to hold hearings on a slurry of bills aimed at expanding domestic oil production in response to high gasoline prices. Even the President admits gas prices effect his standing in the polls. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"The real issue is who was actually at Guantanamo, how were they treated, and this revelation gives us another chance to look at that," says Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who joins Laura in studio to discuss the latest disclosures from WikiLeaks--nearly 800 files on the detainees at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Though President Obama promised to close the prison when he was elected, it remains open and 172 people remain imprisoned there, Warren notes, and argues that this disclosure could be another opportunity to rethink that policy. Shirin Ebadi was the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first woman to serve as a Chief Justice in her native Iran--a right taken away from her with the 1979 Islamic revolution. Since then, she has fought for human rights, particularly those of women and children, and has campaigned to restore the rights of women in Iran. While visiting New York, Ms. Ebadi took time out to sit down with Laura and discuss the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, the struggle for civil rights in Iran, and why the revolutions will be incomplete without democracy and rights for women. Michele Bachmann and Nikki Haley joined a Tea Party crowd in Columbia, South Carolina to talk politics--and a Democratic consultant was in the crowd, talking to rally attendees. And finally, Laura points out some differences between US and overseas media coverage of the WikiLeaks Guantanamo documents--and why it matters, even if the complete documents are available online for all to see. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Paul Krugman called it “The War on Elizabeth Warren.” Yves Smith wrote about “The Elizabeth Warren Rorschach Test.” There's no doubt that the insightful Harvard professor turned administration official, tapped first to chair the Congressional Oversight Panel into the bank bailouts drives conservatives a little wild. And nothing drives them wilder than the prospect of her heading up a Consumer Finanacial Protection Agency that might actually protect consumers. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"Even knowing what's happening in Japan, we have Republicans saying we have to cut regulatory spending on places like nuclear energy," says Mike Papantonio, who notes the similarities between the refusal to learn from BP and the refusal to learn, now, from a deepening disaster in Japan. From the shift of the risk of dangerous fuels onto the taxpayers to the glib "every energy type has its dangers" dismissals, Mike breaks down the problems with the ways we talk about disasters, energy policy, and why we don't seem to want to invest in clean, safe fuels like solar and wind.