Republican senators like Chuck Grassley may ask some excellent questions, but some of his colleagues are likely to be in attack mode. Here are eight lines of constructive senators should pursue, along with some specific questions for each of them.
Nobel Prize-winning economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman spoke with MSNBC's Chris Hayes on January 27, 2013. In this clip, Krugman responds t...
Despite often nice-sounding rhetoric from the president, this administration has continued with a wide range of policies antithetical to progressive values.
There it was in the recent Fiscal Cliff deal -- more tax breaks for windmills, electric cars, biodiesel, algae (algae?!), and of course 14 different flavors of ethanol. How many failures will it take before progressives wake up to the fact that they are being sold a bill of goods?
There are times, when writing about the political world, when it is impossible not to feel like I am trapped inside a Jonathan Swift satire. This is one of those times. Real life and farce blur into one, and we all pretend this is normal. Sigh.
If we can't trust banks to run a foreclosure review process with some amount of precision, how in the heck do we expect them to run the world's financial systems and not take us for a deep dive again?
If people steal money and commit fraud and never have to go to jail or pay any real penalty, they generally keep doing it. It is equally true of street criminals and Wall Street bankers.
I suppose that he can't be much worse than Timothy Geithner, but that should be scant cause for cheer over the news that the president has nominated Jack Lew as Treasury secretary.
It is imperative that the administration finally break from Wall Street on economic and regulatory policy. Jacob Lew's nomination suggests we're in for more of the same.
So it looks like Jacob "Jack" Lew is indeed going to be President Obama's next Treasury Secretary, NBC's John Harwood reported on Wednesday. The first question everybody wants answered about him is, naturally, what is the deal with his crazy handwriting?
Today in religion news: gay marriage at the Washington National Cathedral, anti-Catholicism and Chuck Hagel, kirtan chanting as worship, the "spiritual but not religious," faith at the inauguration, an Orthodox Jew at Treasury secretary and Muslims rallying in New York.
And so it goes, the revolving door between government service and big money in the private sector spinning so fast it becomes an irresistible force hurling politics and high finance together so completely it's impossible to tell one from the other.
It would be hard to find a Washington political insider with greater power and fewer enemies than Jack Lew, who's moving over from the OMB directorship, which he's occupied twice, to become the White House chief of staff.
I have been wondering when it was coming that Bill Daley would resign. I have known Daley for a quarter century now, and have always liked him personally, but Bill as chief of staff never made sense.
The higher Barack Obama soars with his populist rhetoric, the more he calls attention to the enormous gap between the promise of hope and change that he campaigned on in 2008 and the actions he has taken as president -- especially regarding the economy.