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In another of the Bush administration’s awesome midnight rule changes, the White House announced Friday that visitors to national parks may now carry concealed

After failing to pass an extension of unemployment benefits earlier this week, the House tried again -- and succeeded, 270 to 153. The Senate will take up its

Following on the heels of Osama bin Laden’s latest diatribe, counterterrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann flags a new message from another al-Qaeda figure -- this one

The Personhood Florida logo (Pic via personhoodfl.com) Though support for “fetal personhood” measures seems to be growing across the country, an examination of the movement’s detractors reveals an interesting personhood foe — pro-lifers who say the effort to ban abortion could backfire. In some states, like Mississippi, personhood support is fairly widespread.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is having trouble raising money to pay down her huge campaign debt, and her former strategist Mark Penn is making the task far

Sam Stein at Huffington Post reports that a high-juiced Dem official says Jim Steinberg -- he of the quality bartending skills -- may become Hillary Rodham

Senate Democrats this morning tried to pass a 30-day extension of unemployment benefits (among other things), designed to allow the upper-chamber more time to

Activists are taking issue with a plan being negotiated between BP and the Obama administration for feeding the fund meant to compensate victims of the oil

Glenn Greenwald is doing some good work right now, following up on a post about the 2004 frenzy over MoveOn.org’s Bush in 30 Seconds contest -- when a few

Dave may be correct that the conservative rebuke to Keep America Safe has possibly peaked -- conservatives, after all, don’t have an interest in keeping their

There’s plenty of criticism being directed today at Sen. Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who single-handedly prevented the Democrats from extending the

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Moments ago, aboard the Straight Talk Express jet, the McCain campaign issued its first public comments on the indictment of Sen. Ted

Today could be Abortion Day in the Senate. A non-public option compromise might be better than a compromised public option. A quarter of the opposition to

According to The News Service of Florida , Florida health officials have “less than three months” to develop a detailed Medicaid-overhaul plan to sell to the Obama administration. But whether or not the federal government will give Florida a go-ahead with its proposed overhaul is unclear, due to certain provisions that “conflict with basic federal laws.” Among these conflicts is a provision that allows Medicaid providers to opt-out of providing family planning services on “moral or religious grounds.” # The Medicaid reform bill recently passed by state legislators is only an outline of what will be proposed to the feds. Currently, agencies such as the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) are developing concrete proposals to show the federal government

Secure Communities, a federal immigration enforcement program, is once again at the center of a debate, this time about the possibility that local law enforcement should be able to opt out of the program. # According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the program allows local law enforcement agencies to compare the fingerprints of every person arrested and booked with FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records. But critics of the program point to data from Immigration and Customs enforcement, which they say shows that Secure Communities leads to the detention and deportation of people who are not criminals

A Saginaw County judge ruled this week that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision means that property owners in the dioxin-contaminated Tittabawasee floodplain cannot sue Dow Chemical for damages in a class action. Operations at Dow’s Midland plant have spread dioxin — a highly toxic and cancer-causing byproduct of the chemical manufacturing process — and other chemicals, through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and into Lake Huron .

Looking for bi-partisan support for his stimulus package, President Barack Obama wants to hold off on letting bankruptcy judges help struggling homeowners.

If anyone doubted the willingness of the White House to stick its neck out for health care reform this year, President Obama likely put those questions to rest

On mortgage giant Freddie Mac’s blog, Featured Perspectives, executive Don Bisenius takes on strategic defaulters -- underwater mortgage-holders (that is,

Jim Risen broke the story in yesterday’s New York Times, but now you can read the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s full report about the narcotics problem

Democrat Kathy Hochul is reportedly streaming ahead of Republican Jane Corwin in the Buffalo-area special election that has been marked out as a first test of the controversial GOP congressional budget plan crafted by Paul Ryan that seeks to “save” Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. Hochul hammered on the Ryan Medicare plan and Corwin defended it mostly by backing away from it. “Just for the record, I am not decimating Medicare!” she told seniors in the aging upstate district

This year, annual congressional financial disclosure forms (PDF), due May 16, would have included -- for the first time -- required information about married

The American Association of School Administrators released a statement today on the Atlanta Public Schools teaching scandal: At its regularly scheduled