News & Views

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden said yesterday on The Dylan Ratigan Show that he’d join a Federal task force on investigating the packaging sale of risky mortgages, but that his state would not join a settlement to deal with mortgage and foreclosure practices.

To understand President Obama's state of the union speech, you have to understand his political strategy. From the beginning of his 2008 campaign, his main constituency has always been the major media. His calculation has always been that he can win without the energy companies and even some other big campaign donors, but not if the mainstream media doesn't like him. So, a little bit of populism on the tax issues – for example, the Buffet Rule – is now acceptable, especially in the context of deficit reduction and Republicans' pro-1% extremism.

Rumor has it that on Monday, after months of negotiation with big banks, the White House may announce a settlement that would let the banks off the hook for their role in the foreclosure crisis -- paying a tiny fraction of what's needed in exchange for blanket immunity from future lawsuits.

(Reuters) - Humbled by a stunning loss in South Carolina, Mitt Romney said on Sunday he would release this week the tax returns demanded by rivals as he bids to regain the upper hand in the volatile Republican presidential race. (Congrats to RootsAction for this victory.)

On December 30, the Montana Supreme Court delivered a New Year’s gift to the nation, upholding a century-old ban on corporate political expenditures in state elections.  The decision has gone underreported amidst the hoopla of the Republican primaries—even assuper PAC spending skyrockets and there is an emerging understanding of its corrosive impact—but the Montana case sets up the first direct challenge to the disastrous Citizens United decision as we approach its second anniversary.

In this rare interview, Dr. King talks with NBC correspondent Tom Petit about why he chose to "take a vigorous stand" against the U. S. government's undeclared war in Vietnam, for which he had received widespread criticism from the news media, civil-rights groups, religious and labor leaders and President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.

On December 30, the Montana Supreme Court issued a stunning ruling, rejecting arguments that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United vs. FEC applied to Montana’s century-old ban on direct corporate election spending. The 5-2 ruling overturned a lower court and reinstated Montana's Corrupt Practices Act, a citizen initiative passed to confront some of the most overt corporate corruption in American history.

"Today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack." The words are those of Arundhati Roy, the Indian author and activist, but they could also be those of anyone trying to draw up a balance sheet of the first decade of Gitmo, as the US's concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay has come to be known.

War industry CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a year, putting them in the top 0.01 percent of income earners in the U.S.

RootsAction endorsers Jim Hightower and Laura Flanders yuck it up with goggles, meat sticks and more. All in the name of ending corporate dominance of our political system. Hilarious!  Check it out.