By Dex­ter Filkins and Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) One of the country’s most senior pros­e­cu­tors said Sat­ur­day that Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai fired him last week after he repeat­edly refused to block cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tions at the high­est lev­els of Mr. Karzai’s government. West­ern offi­cials con­firm reports that Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and...
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First of all, does anyone know why the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform even held a hearing about steroid usage among baseball players? Was there a dry spell and the Committee couldn't find anything in the government that needed to be reformed? This is the Congress that in 1994 didn't ask for...
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By Mark Sum­ner (Dai­lyKos) When Rush Lim­baugh blames the BP dis­as­ter on “eco-​​terrorists,” I don’t believe he really thinks this is in any sense fac­tual. When Newt Gin­grich com­pares Mus­lims to Nazis, I don’t believe he does it out of igno­rance. When Glenn Beck says that Pres­i­dent Obama will force doc­tors to per­form abor­tions...
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By David Weigel (Slate) One rea­son that oppo­nents are going to have trou­ble legally pre­vent­ing Park51 from build­ing its Mus­lim cul­tural cen­ter is that, in 2000, a Repub­li­can Con­gress passed the Reli­gious Land Use and Insti­tu­tion­al­ized Per­sons Act. The goal of the leg­is­la­tion, sup­ported by a coali­tion of reli­gious groups, was to respond to...
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By Paul McDougall (Infor­ma­tion­Week) Despite Pres­i­dent Obama’s pledge to retain more hi-​​tech jobs in the U.S., a fed­eral agency run by a hand-​​picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 mil­lion pro­gram to train work­ers, includ­ing 3,000 spe­cial­ists in IT and related func­tions, in South Asia. Fol­low­ing their train­ing, the tech work­ers will be placed with...
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By ole­ole­ol­son (Blogs.Alternet) A group of influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the behe­moth social media site Digg​.com have just been caught red-​​handed in a wide­spread cam­paign of cen­sor­ship, hav­ing mul­ti­ple accounts, upvote padding, and delib­er­ately try­ing to ban pro­gres­sives. An under­cover inves­ti­ga­tion has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year....
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(ThinkProgress) This past Tues­day, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-​​TN), who is also a lead­ing can­di­date for the GOP nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor, joined a con­fer­ence call with the right-​​wing National Fed­er­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Busi­ness (NFIB). When the sub­ject of extend­ing unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits arose, Wamp com­plained that giv­ing peo­ple unem­ploy­ment insur­ance was “cre­at­ing a cul­ture of depen­dence...
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By Jules Siegel President Obama needs to hand out some real kisses between now and November. Addressing the Netroots Nation is not enough. He won't get rid of Rahm Emanuel (who is surely too useful in crucial ways), but he can rehabilitate Howard Dean and use his executive powers to make highly visible moves...
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In this truly revolting video, Andrew Breitbart's own words reveal that he is a cynical traitor who revels in ridiculing honest Americans while he embraces Al Qaeda. These are his own words, people. There's no way to explain them away.
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By Nicholas Ric­cardi, (Los Ange­les Times) Every time a cus­tomer buys some of the large fab­ric tote bags from the Dol­lar Store at 43rd Avenue and Thomas Road, Naj­mud­din Katchi sees another piece of his busi­ness vanish. The pur­chase of the briefcase-​​sized shoul­der bags means that another one of Katchi’s cus­tomers, mostly Latino immi­grants,...
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