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How badly do lawmakers want to get out of Washington for the scheduled week-long Presidents Day recess? Well, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) just

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was well received by viewers according to a poll from CBS News. The online poll of 500 people conducted

On the heels of a letter to the Pentagon from human rights groups, the news organizations of four journalists banned from Guantanamo Bay for allegedly violating

Enbridge, the company that spilled at least 800,000 gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River system last year, has announced that it is suspending efforts to scrape the remaining submerged oil from the river bottom. UPI reports that the company said it made a “seasonal decision” to stop cleanup for the rest of the year

As lawmakers continue to weigh in on last night’s health reform speech from President Obama, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip, went on Good

Potential contender for the 2012 Republican nomination for president Mike Huckabee went on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show last night to talk about his new

Monday’s news that President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers are planning to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and prosecute some of the prisoners

Marc Ambinder reads the text of a bill Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) intends to release today to clarify an organizational structure within the Department of

State budget director John Nixon says he thinks Michigan needs to rethink the earmarks used to fund public education. The Associated Press reports: “It’s not that I’m saying we need to cut the school aid fund … (but) a lot of this stuff was put in place 15, 20 years ago when Michigan looked totally different,” he said during a recent interview with The Associated Press. “We just need to strip things down and say, `This is the money we’re bringing in, this is where it’s going

Most of the criticism of the Department of Homeland Security’s guide to right-wing extremism has been along the lines of Pamela Gellar’s panic about the

I think too much is made of the example of the co-conspirator list, McCarthy says.

<p>Welcome to <em>The Washington Independent</em>. We’re an online news organization dedicated to covering politics and policy in the nation’s

A burning sugar cane field (Pic by skatoolaki, via Flickr) The 2012 Farm Bill will be hotly debated in Congress in coming months, as members look to cut spending from the federal budget. But recent reports detail a move to include major agricultural cuts in the deficit reduction plan to be developed by the so-called congressional “Super Committee,” as a way to ensure that legislators don’t make even more drastic cuts when they write the forthcoming farm legislation.

The Wall Street Journal files from that parallel universe today: Thanks to the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon must make

Investing in new education programs or hiring more teachers are worthy goals, but school construction is better suited for the stimulus package.

Ret. Adm. Dennis Blair just refused to answer a very easy question, asked by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.): Is waterboarding torture? I would say that there will

Two years ago, SurveyUSA polled a hypothetical head-to-head contest between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. Here’s the resulting electoral

Senator Richard Durbin , D-IL re-introduced on Wednesday the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, one day after President Obama’s speech on immigration reform. # The DREAM Act – proposed every year since 2000 – would grant people who entered the U.S.

Via TPM. Sen. John McCain may have offered a sneak preview of his debate game plan this morning during an interview with an Orlando TV station. McCain

The past 24 hours have not been kind to King Coal. First, plans to open new coal power plants in Michigan and Nevada were put on hold, and Gov. Mark Sanford