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The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida’s executive director, Howard Simon, appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show last night to talk about a host of personal freedoms he says Gov. Rick Scott has infringed upon since taking office early this year.

Carbondale’s denizens shouldn’t have to lie down in front of bulldozers any time soon. Efforts to drill for oil and gas in Thompson Divide have been met with fierce opposition from residents and leaders in Pitkin County — so much so that the executive director of the Aspen Wilderness Workshop previously told The Colorado Independent that his neighbors in Carbondale say things like, “Over my dead body,” and “Just tell me when it’s time to lie in front of the bulldozers.’” Thompson Divide (Image: Thompson Divide Coalition) Then last month, Pitkin County Commissioner George Newman flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with Colorado’s congressional leadership and urge them to stave off drilling in the Thompson Divide area, which consists of 221,500 acres spread out over Pitkin, Gunnison, Garfield, Mesa and Delta counties. There are as many as 81 leases in the area; half of them on terrain that is currently roadless

During one of the most important Senate committee meetings on K-12 education in the past decade, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) had an active roll in pushing through a bill aimed at overhauling the much-maligned No Child Left Behind. The legislation, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), was proposed by the two leading Democrat and Republican Senators in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and articulated many of the terms and conditions states must honor to receive federal education dollars

The LetsTalkLiberty Twitter account is reporting every step that Carl Swensson and his small group of Birthers are taking around the Capitol. Two recent tweets

The Netanyahu government in Israel is claiming that the Bush administration had a secret deal with Netanyahu’s predecessors to allow Israel to continue

There were few surprises this morning from President Obama, who was in Strongsville, Ohio, to promote the health reform proposals the Democrats hope to move

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) vouched for Ahmed Wali Karzai in a speech on Monday, saying he was never shown any evidence that the brother of the Afghan president

The one-day moneybomb for Rand Paul’s campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, modeled on the 24-hour fundraisers that fueled his father Ron’s

Abby Johnson (Pic via thatsabortion.com) Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group that has its sights set on Planned Parenthood, announced yesterday that the group has hired Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood employee turned high-profile anti-abortion advocate. Planned Parenthood is a national chain of women’s health care clinics that is frequently under attack by anti-abortion groups because some of its clinics provide legal abortions

He may have the edge in surprise after he shocked many with his decision to run for a second term, but RNC chairman Michael Steele may already be on shaky

Provided South Carolina’s GOP can raise enough money to host the coveted first-in-the-South GOP presidential primary, the state will significantly impact

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is holding a hearing right now about contractors in Afghanistan before a Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee. (I

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) called on the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday to investigate TransCanada and their Keystone XL pipeline project over allegations that the company was conspiring with other tar sands oil companies to manipulate oil prices in the United States. In a letter to FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz, Wyden cited testimony before Congress from an industry analyst representing the oil companies where he appears to agree that the pipeline will raise oil prices in the Midwest by bypassing the refineries in the Great Lakes region.

It’s premature, misleading and beside the point. Stop reading now. We shouldn’t even be talking about it. Having cleared the caveats, this new Rasmussen poll

Manny Miranda, the chairman of the Third Branch Conference and the author of a letter that has asked Senate Republicans to consider a Democratic filibuster

Contrary to the calls for President Obama to explictly support the Iranian opposition that Weigel reported on today, here are two Republican voices calling for

The leader of South Carolina’s Focus on the Family affiliate, the Palmetto Family Council, was among several conservative leaders recently asked to weigh in

Moments after the Obama-Biden Transition team announced former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) would head a health care policy working group in the new

Whether it’s intellectual honesty or another case of a liberal refusing to take his own side in an argument, yesterday at the United Nations, several senior

Dean Baker thinks so. In a talk at the DC bookstore Politics and Prose last night, the progressive economist suggested that we could save billions on Medicare

President George W. Bush’s former aide and adviser, Karl Rove, has reportedly been instructed to ignore another congressional subpoena, this one issued earlier

This morning, Standard & Poor’s released the latest update of the Case-Shiller home price index, considered the best measure of national housing prices. The