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Al Franken is certainly behaving as if it’s inevitable that he’ll eventually be seated as Minnesota’s junior senator. This morning the Democrat tapped

Anyone who thinks they’ll be able to repeal ObamaCare is kidding themselves, said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. If they want to stop it, they need to stop it now.

According to a new report, the reduction to unemployment benefits being negotiated this week in the Florida legislature will have a greater impact on black and Latino workers than on their white counterparts. # A Florida International University Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy report (pdf.) issued Wednesday states: # The disparity in unemployment rates shows that communities of color in Florida have been the hardest hit by the recession in Florida and will therefore likely take much longer to recover. This is an important consideration for state policy makers who are proposing changes to Florida’s unemployment compensation system.

A few months ago I pointed to declassified references in the 2005 Office of Legal Counsel torture opinions to guidelines issued by former CIA Director George

Democratic California Rep. Barbara Lee on Friday introduced legislation aimed at addressing the on-going criminalization of persons living with HIV infection and Reps. Hansen Clarke and John Conyers of Detroit have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.

Arguing the current standard for student assessment is a perversity that leads to a race to the middle, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) successfully introduced an

Supplemental Security Income payments go only to the elderly and disabled with less than $2,000 to their name. Now, Congress has let the safety net payments lapse for refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries and seeking refuge in the United States.

spon-sor, n. 1. one who vouches or is responsible for a person or thing. Forget policy for a second. Democrats and Republicans can’t even agree on the

Some instances of government secrecy are genuinely malign, but most are frivolous. The cardinal example there is the intelligence budget. For reasons no one has

The full policy paper released on the heels of Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) speech today makes it clear: Republicans want a bipartisan commitment to no new taxes

It’s been almost two years since the privately-run prison in Appleton has held prisoners. But in early 2012, the prison’s owner, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), expects to fill Appleton’s Prairie Correctional Facility and another facility in Colorado with 3,256 inmates from California. In the last ten years, the revenue of CCA, the country’s biggest private prison company, has almost doubled, according to their annual reports.

The anti-abortion movement can claim a small victory in its crusade against Planned Parenthood. A recent Florida statewide survey of 807 likely voters in 2012 found a majority supports cutting federal funding for Planned Parenthood. # The survey conducted by Viewpoint Florida found total support for cutting federal aid to the chain of reproductive health service providers is 54 percent, and opposition was 38 percent.

The rapper will.i.am was all over the Democratic National Convention last week. He was headlining a big concert in downtown Denver on the night of Obama’s

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- aka the Mormon church -- is running a mega ad campaign in nine mid-sized and mostly non-coastal American

The Aid for Women abortion clinic in Kansas City, one of the three abortion clinics left in Kansas, has lost its license to operate in the state. All three clinics had to meet new regulations that were part of a bill aimed at shutting down abortion clinics, and so far Aid for Women did not. # The new law signed by the governor set standards for all clinics that includes “having an emergency door that can accommodate a gurney … maintaining proper emergency equipment, drugs and protocols, having proper lighting and ventilation, lavatory areas, and spaces for the sterilization of surgical equipment

Republicans in the Iowa House and Senate and the Branstad administration have rolled out a set of nine initiatives related to regulatory reform that they say will expedite business and business expansion in the state, but progressives who attended a series of meetings the GOP lauded as precursors to the proposals are calling foul. According to a GOP press release, “these initial reforms came about as a result of their highly successful and very well attended 11 city tour this spring.” The release notes that more than 1,000 Iowans attended, nearly 175 testified and approximately 300 public comment forms were collected. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a statewide progressive group that calls on government and corporations to put people first, believes that the Republican proposal is ignoring the testimony of more than 175 of the organization’s members who attended public hearings across the state, calling for “stronger and more effective public oversight over factory farm polluters and other big-moneyed corporations.” The nine initiatives, which the GOP has pledged to champion in the 2012 General Assembly, are: All state departments and agencies have a searchable and user-friendly rules database on their websites

The former CEO of the Iowa meatpacking plant that was the scene of the nation’s largest-ever mass arrest of immigrant workers last May has been arrested on

It was a small, shotgun-style, wooden frame house in a modest neighborhood on Cleveland’s East Side. It was home to the Maynards, a family with six

ASPEN, Colo--It is true that in the rare instances when I actually look up from my laptop, where I spend most of time doing political research or working hard

From FreedomWorks’ pro-freedom positions to Senate hopefuls’ campaign platforms, national security and foreign policy ideas are strikingly absent.

Via The Minnesota Independent, shortly after the Web-tracking site Technorati revamped its algorithm for ranking blogs and other Websites, The Washington

LANSING — The Senate Committee on Reforms, Restructuring and Reinventing approved a resolution Wednesday morning that starts the process to revoke partner benefits for unmarried state workers. The benefit plan was approved by the Michigan Civil Service Commission in January.

While much of the mainstream media -- Charlie Savage at The New York Times and John MacKinnon at The Wall Street Journal, among others -- were reporting

It appears the evolution of Gov. Rick Perry’s prayer event began even earlier than recently reported in Time, and is part of a wider strategy by influential