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Members of the Republican leadership in the Minnesota Senate have introduced legislation to ban state funding for abortions, just weeks after saying that creating jobs and fixing the budget deficit would be the party’s top priorities.

Mike Konczal, a writer for the Atlantic, makes a very prescient statement on his blog about the difficult time the unemployed have had in getting their interests taken as seriously as the interests of the wealthy and powerful: We just had to bribe the top 3% with massive tax cuts for the next two years in order to keep unemployment insurance extensions in place for another year. Unemployment benefit extension are a net job creator and should have been a no-brainer, but it couldn’t pass without a massive bribe

In making its decision to expand offshore drilling earlier this year (before the massive oil spill in the Gulf), the Obama administration did not work closely

The number-one factor fueling high school dropouts across the country is pregnancy and parenthood, a problem Colorado Congressman Jared Polis hopes to address by reintroducing his Pregnant and Parenting Students Access to Education Act . He pitched for the bill Thursday at Denver’s Florence Crittenton High School , a one-of-a-kind facility that provides the kind of “wraparound services” like daycare and counseling that make it possible for young parents to stay in school. Polis says that if the country is going to address the serious social and economic problems that come of dropouts, than providing support for parenting students is the best way to begin.

The White House calls reports that Rahm Emanuel plans to quit halfway through Obama’s term ludicrous. The Washington Post looks at five governors’ races

The strange spectacle of a Massachusetts congressional candidate trying to grab onto Scott Brown’s coattails is over: Bill Hudak, who got in hot water for signs

Democrats and Republicans reached an 11th-hour deal on the federal budget tonight, trimming more than $38 billion and averting a looming shutdown of the government. Colorado’s senior Sen

Snowe gets a nice reward for her yea vote. Here’s what she’s likely to ask for. Dole and other pro-health reform Republicans stand to profit from their

Aztec, N.M., maintains it is no “sanctuary,” and for months has led a campaign to shed the designation.

TPM has a great roundup today of the escalating Republican argument that closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility could be all but impossible because --

Efforts to make an HIV vaccine were dealt a severe blow in September when a 3,000-person trial of a Merck vaccine failed. An analysis later showed that that not

Just hours after Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced that he’d whip aggressively for the public option if the House includes it in its reconciliation bill,

The head of the Electrification Coalition says he is confident that a proposal to incentivize electric vehicles will pass Congress next year as part of a narrow

Scientists for years have warned about the irreversible damage to Appalachian ecosystems caused by mountaintop removal coal mining (which makes sense,

Rep. Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is criticizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the time it is taking to consider license renewal applications from aging nuclear power plants.

Republicans are groaning over this announcement today from former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge: After careful consideration and many conversations with friends

Gun control advocates say North Carolina’s limits on gun purchases reduce the likelihood of the type of rampage that erupted Saturday in Tucson, Ariz., but

Today’s Washington Post notes a new report from the Project on Government Oversight detailing the problems faced by Inspectors General, the chief auditing

One speaker at last year’s Telluride Mountainfilm Festival was convicted in March of federal felonies. But before his sentencing in June, climate activist Tim DeChristopher will be back again this year to talk about his disruption of federal gas leasing in Utah. Not so, Greg Mortenson.

From the Banking Committee, they are Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Jack Reid (D-R.I.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.),

John Gizzi of Human Events gets an interview with Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) in which the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee gleefully