News & Views

At last weekend’s Netroots Nation gathering in Minneapolis, liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement. Former White House environmental official Van Jones is hoping to change that with a new political effort dubbed “The American Dream Movement.”

Washington — President Obama will talk about troop numbers in Afghanistan when he makes a prime-time speech from the White House on Wednesday night. But behind his words will be an acute awareness of what $1.3 trillion in spending on two wars in the past decade has meant at home: a ballooning budget deficit and a soaring national debt at a time when the economy is still struggling to get back on its feet.

On Wednesday June 22, President Obama announced that 10,000 US combat troops will return from the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2011 and that all troops will be withdrawn by 2014. The news is profoundly welcomed by the military families.  It’s also hailed by the significant majority of Americans who do not think the war is worth fighting and the growing number of Americans who feel that the killing of bin Laden achieved the original US goal of the war.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors approved a resolution on Monday calling for an accelerated end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That resolution will now become official policy of the mayors' organization -- a small symbol of growing opposition to the war in Afghanistan. The mayors are asking that money spent on wars abroad be used in the United States to develop cities and towns. The last time the conference approved a resolution like this was during the Vietnam War.

Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe. Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas’ attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn that Thomas doesn’t just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors — they also do expensive favors for him.

Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe. Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas’ attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn that Thomas doesn’t just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors — they also do expensive favors for him.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) took direct aim at a key part of the Democrats' 2012 electoral strategy during his keynote address at Netroots Nation here Thursday evening.

The Super PAC Priorities USA, which was founded by former Obama White House aides to collect and spend the unlimited corporate funds allowed under the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, and other Democratic Super PACs are nothing short of a disaster for the party, Feingold said.

If you’re a regular listener of Glenn Beck’s radio show and you wanted to contribute to a political group that would advance the populist conservative ideals he touts on his show, you’d have plenty of reason to think that FreedomWorks was your best investment.

But if you’re a fan of Mark Levin’s radio show, you’d have just as much cause to believe that Americans for Prosperity, a FreedomWorks rival, was the most effective conservative advocacy group.

In the latest in a series of revealing interviews, former Colin Powell Chief of staff Lawrence Wilkenson discusses the threat to democracy that the policies of torture and statebuilding represent.

Many commentators and observers, including this writer, argued for a far more aggressive and comprehensive strategy from the White House for getting America out of its economic morass. Obama’s team chose a half-hearted, half-assed stimulus package, and the result is what we see today. Don’t get me wrong, the stimulus helped. But it is running out, and you can see the effects that the empty well is having on state and local governments as they proceed to cut education and essential social services and programs.

Unemployment is high, twice as high for blacks, and the jobs aren’t coming. 80 percent of recent college graduates are moving back home. And there is talk of a double-dip recession on the way, as housing prices are falling, with a faltering real estate market threatening to pull us back down into the hole. The President’s abysmal failure of a foreclosure relief plan is blamed, in part, for the economic woes.