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Abu Aardvark frets that the attention paid to shoe-thrower Muntader al-Zaidi will distract from Human Rights Watch’s brand new report about the kangaroo state

Jonathan Martin has the first look at an email going out to Family Research Council supporters in which Tony Perkins tells conservatives to close their wallets

Well, it didn’t take long for House Republicans to recognize that having Henry Waxman atop the House Energy and Commerce Committee is a greater threat to the

Lambda Legal , a New York-based organization committed to winning gay civil rights through the courts, announced in a press release Tuesday that it would challenge New Jersey’s 2006 same sex civil unions law for failing to bring full equality to gay residents of the state. Lambda, which is teaming with New Jersey LGBT group Garden State Equality , will refer to government studies and press investigations that document the way employers have failed to recognize couples entered into a civil union and how civil unions have been ignored or misunderstood by authorities, often in instances involving critical medical decisions. Colorado nearly passed a civil unions bill this spring that its main sponsors, Sen Pat Steadman and Rep Mark Ferrandino, acknowledged fell short of full equality

For the past four years, every time Moqtada Sadr has made this-or-that tactical retrenchment -- standing down from the August 2004 Najaf battle; going to

About 180 jobs are coming to the Fort Dodge area thanks to a $324 million investment from South Korean company CJ Cheiljedang, but a state senator says Gov. Terry Branstad is still way behind on his campaign promise to create 200,000 new jobs over five years. Branstad today announced the facility, which will produce amino acids through fermentation technologies.

Despite the boom in America’s Hispanic population over the past decade, a recent Pew Hispanic Center report shows that surge (35.3 million to 50.5 million

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will delay the release of his energy legislation until tomorrow in order to give the Congressional Budget Office more

Tom Ross, the chairman of the Republican Party of Delaware, told me after the Republican National Committee state chairmen’s meeting that Rep. Mike Castle

No shocker here: People are mad at Washington. From The Washington Post: Two-thirds of Americans are dissatisfied or downright angry about the way the

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on Tuesday named chief of the Democratic National Committee . # Wasserman Schultz represents Florida’s 20th congressional district, which covers parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties and is member of the House Judiciary and Budget committees. # The Miami Herald reports : # An email from Vice President Joe Biden on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s ascension to DNC chief: # “Debbie has served the people of Florida – first in the Florida State Legislature, and more recently in Congress – for nearly two decades.

President Obama’s Justice Department today, in a two-sentence filing, backed the Bush administration’s position on the 600 or more detainees being held at the

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who last month salvaged the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the Senate’s health reform bill, just issued a statement

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen warns that the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan may result in a catastrophic radiation release that will reach American shores. Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with 39 years of experience and chief engineer with Fairewinds Associates , told the Global Post that he doesn’t have much faith in official pronouncements about the scale of the disaster. Here are some experts: GlobalPost: Officials have said the possibility of a large-scale radiation release is small.

A new report by the Economic Cycle Research Institute, which correctly called the last three recessions, says that a double dip recession is now inevitable. ECRI says that the economy “is indeed tipping into a new recession” and that there’s “nothing that policy makers can do to head it off.” ECRI’s recession call isn’t based on just one or two leading indexes, but on dozens of specialized leading indexes, including the U.S.

At The Big Picture, they’re making the best of what promises to be a scary ride on Wall Street today. Here’s a bit of their advice: I assume that readers

A committee of the Ingham County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a plan to fund an attorney that will be dedicated to helping homeowners battle the growing number of foreclosures based on faulty documents. In a meeting Tuesday night, the General Services Committee of the Board approved a contract worth up to $60,000 for Legal Services of South Central Michigan.

We’ve added some new information to TWI’s ever-evolving Senate Public Option Scoreboard. In addition to every senator’s stance on the public option, the

For most anti-abortion rights groups, there should only be one legal alternative to an unwanted pregnancy: putting the baby up for adoption. In the latest

The white supremacist Website Stormfront.org has been getting unwanted attention since the Holocaust Museum shooting, and it’s prompted something you don’t

One in five women in the United States has visited a Planned Parenthood clinic to receive health care. And three of seventeen women who are also Colorado state senators showed up to sing karaoke at a bar off the capitol Tuesday night to raise money for the organization’s local political arm, Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado . Denver-area senators Lucia Guzman, Evie Hudak and Linda Newell celebrated accessible women’s reproductive health services from their spots at the bar and from center stage at Hamburger Mary’s, where more than a hundred revelers delivered dramatic renditions of classic hits, tossed back cheap drinks and stuffed pockets with prophylactics.

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

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