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Earlier today, we previewed an effort by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) to require insurance companies to dedicate a minimum share of premium revenues to health

American Future Fund — a nonprofit with numerous ties to Gov.-elect Terry Branstad and based out of a P.O. Box in Des Moines — spent $9,599,806 in 2010, ranking 7th nationally in spending by outside political organizations , according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. Because the group is registered as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it is not regulated by the Federal Elections Commission or the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board

When Rep. Michele Bachmann’s office declined to rule out a 2012 bid for the Republican nomination for president , religious right leaders responded with glee at what they say could be the next Ronald Reagan — except “swap boots for pumps.” Bachmann has long had a strong relationship with the religious right, and one of the first Iowa Republican caucus polls to include Bachmann show her taking away from two traditional religious right favorites: Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee.

The recent news that the Obama administration is considering sending some Guantanamo detainees to a maximum-security prison in Michigan, plus all the attention

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee, which makes key interest-rate decisions, announced it plans to take no action this go-around. The pace of

Personhood USA co-founder Keith Mason (Pic via personhoodusa.com) Undaunted by the failure of similar initiatives across the country, Virginia legislator Bob Marshall has introduced a bill that would define life as beginning at the moment of conception.

I know Attorney General Eric Holder just announced that he plans to investigate only the CIA interrogators that went beyond what the law allowed, as it was

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) isn’t sponsoring too many ballot initiatives attempting to ban same sex marriage during this election cycle, but

I’ve poked fun at State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood before, so it’s only right that I say that he strikes a pleasing tone about the reported death

The Senate Armed Services Committee just released its summary text of the defense authorization bill it marked up last night. And look what the bill does, just

Although Guantanamo Bay detainee Bahtiyar Mahnut has been invited, along with 11 more of his fellow Chinese Uighurs, to settle in the island nation of Palau, it

The Obama administration’s push to phase out subsidies for private student loan companies and replace them with more efficient direct lending from the

Sometimes grafs from New York Times obituaries can’t help but undermine the points they seek to make. To wit: A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department

Two of Minnesota’s three major-status political parties carried a debt in September, campaign finance records with the Federal Elections Commission shows. The Republican Party of Minnesota carried a debt of twice what the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party carries. And while it raised more money during September than the DFL, the GOP also spent more than it took in

In a rare win for the government in a Guantanamo Bay detainee case, a federal judge ruled Monday that it can continue to hold a 28-year-old Yemeni at the U.S.

A $58-billion plan to extend unemployment benefits, pump billions into infrastructure projects and increase funding for low-income nutrition and health-care programs passed the House -- and died in the Senate as too expensive. Trickle-down economics lives.

When Justice Paul Pfeifer undertook a crusade to restore the death penalty in Ohio in the early 1980s, he was a state senator. Now a state Supreme Court

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who apologized last night after yelling you lie! during the president’s address to Congress, appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is circulating around Capitol Hill a proposal that would allow nuclear and coal with carbon capture and storage technology to count

Dedicated readers know that since March I’ve been trying to determine how the Obama administration conceives of the actual endgame in Afghanistan-Pakistan --

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not pleased with the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s offshore drilling announcement today. Here’s Karen Harbert, president

An important nugget from President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget: The White House aims to scrap $36.5 billion in subsidies to oil and gas producers by repealing