Of course California's prison inmates are entitled to reasonable 21st-century health care. Unfortunately for taxpayers, Clark Kelso, the federal receiver in charge of California's prison health care has, as state Attorney General Jerry Brown noted at a news conference last week, a "gold-plated wish list" for California's prison health care system.
Something shifted in the political dialogue last week when the House version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act failed to pick up a single Republican vote.
For the time being at least, it looks like political labels don’t matter as much to Americans as they face an uncertain economic future.
Wednesday night's House tally on the Democratic stimulus package, where not a single Republican voted in favor, was another shot across the bow for this incredibly unmanageable $900 billion behemoth of a program that truly will not stimulate the economy.
Despite the Internet’s rise in popularity, a new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that a plurality of adults (44%) spend more time talking to others on the phone than through other types of communication. Less than a third (31%) mostly converse with others in person, while 17% say they communicate by text message or e-mail.
There's a debate going on in some Republican circles over which groups of the electorate the party should target.
Ronald Reagan isn’t just a Republican thing anymore.
Ten days into his presidency as the details of his historic economic rescue plan become clearer, Barack Obama still enjoys the confidence of a majority of voters that he knows how to handle the struggling U.S. economy.
How fortunate for Barack Obama that Rush Limbaugh, big radio personality and leader of the instinctual far right, has yet to retire to a sunny island with his bottles of pills. At a moment when Republicans on Capitol Hill feel they must pretend to negotiate with the popular new president over spending to revive the economy, he blurted out what they really feel.
This is the Republicans' big contribution to our economic recovery: They want to make sure that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes using tax identification numbers don't get a cent of their tax money back in the refunds enacted by Congress. Oh, yes, and they want rich people to get tax refunds.
The 2008 election these days may seem long ago and far away. But it is worth remembering that while the Republicans had a bad time at the polls in November, they fared well in the array of contests that concluded the election cycle in December.
Public support for the economic recovery plan working its way through Congress is modest, but the proposal is likely to pass for a very simple reason: Voters want to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt.
Last night’s House vote on the Democratic stimulus package, where not a single Republican voted in favor, was another shot across the bow for this incredibly unmanageable $900 billion behemoth of a program that truly will not stimulate the economy.
Twenty-seven percent (27%) of American voters believe the nation is heading in the right direction. That’s up from 21% just before Barack Obama was inaugurated as President and up from 14% just before the election.
One thing for sure: Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on the future direction of the Republican Party.
Public support for the economic recovery plan crafted by President Obama and congressional Democrats has slipped a bit over the past week. At the same time, expectations that the plan will quickly become law have increased.
I envy Sports Man. He can rise above his own problems by focusing on the triumphs or setbacks of The Team.
Some political analysts have interpreted the 2008 presidential election as an ordinary retrospective election. With a very unpopular Republican incumbent presiding over unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a weak economy, 2008 appeared to be a Democratic year.
Over a third of the Senate voted against Tim Geithner's confirmation as treasury secretary, though he did pass the test by 60 to 34 early Monday evening.
Sixty-one percent (61%) of American workers say that if they leave their current job, it will be their choice, a significant drop in confidence from four years ago.
