Russ McBee

As the sun finally begins to rise and banish the darkness of the Bush years, we continue to witness an alarming chain of eleventh-hour regulations emanating from the White House. The latest of those offenses against decency was published today: The Bush administration yesterday granted sweeping new protections to health workers who refuse to ...

Today, President Bush awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal (the second-highest honor a civilian can receive) to a slate of 24 recipients. One of those recipients was convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson. Good grief. Colson played a central role in the corruption of Nixon's hideous regime, which Bush seems to think is worthy of a ...

Diebold (now called ''Premier,'' since their previous name has become radioactive) has admitted that their electronic voting machines contain a critical flaw which can drop votes: A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to ...

Thirty-one members of the US House of Representatives seem to think the establishment of an American theocracy is a more urgent matter than any of the economic, military, or environmental problems we face. Those 31, including Tennessee's own resident wingnut Marsha Blackburn, have co-sponsored HR 598; the bill's stated purpose is: Supporting ...

By a lopsided vote of 349-62, the House of Representatives voted today to impose a moratorium on seven regulations promulgated by the Bush White House which would have eliminated $13 billion in Medicaid funding for health care for the poor. Every House Democrat and two-thirds of House Republicans voted to stop the enactment of the regulations, ...

Here's reason #1 Mike Huckabee is absolutely unfit to serve as President of the United States (Raw Story via HuffPo): ''I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,'' Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. ''But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the ...

The mighty Joe Powell is soliciting answers to a set of questions for his readers. Here are the questions (in bold) with my answers underneath each one: 1) Do you have a preference for any one candidate in the current race for President of the U.S.? Please give a reason for your choice (or lack of one). I'm voting for John Edwards for several ...

Democratic candidates for the Presidency would do well to pay attention to the fundamental, structural issues facing the American workforce, issues which have so far been given short shrift by most of the candidates. First, the quality of the workplace: It would be positively revelatory to hear a presidential candidate truly speak to the ...

Almost all of modern history has transpired as the result of a single gunshot fired in Sarajevo in 1914. When the Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Hapsburg Archduke Ferdinand, Bismarck's famous prediction came true: that a catastrophic war would engulf all of Europe, and that it would start ''over some damn foolish thing in the ...

Not surprisingly, Republican Fred Thompson wants to do away with Social Security and replace it with a privatized system which would benefit those in the upper income brackets and penalize the poor and middle class: Thompson's plan draws on ideas favored by conservatives: a reduction in benefits, rather than an increase in payroll taxes; and a ...