Other than the payroll tax legislation, the big news in the Senate this week is the defense authorization bill, traditionally seen as must-pass legislation. It seems like every year there’s some big controversy over this bill.  This time that comes in the form of a measure that would mandate indefinite detentions of terrorist suspects in [...]

The forever war caucus in Congress – Joe Lieberman and a host of his fellow conservative reactionaries – are calling for hearings on the Iraq withdrawal announced last Friday. A group of mostly Republican senators is asking Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to schedule a full hearing on President Obama’s decision to [...]

It’s about time people recognize that John Walsh is a miserably bad regulator, and that the OCC is a useless agency. That they happen to be the main regulator for the nation’s banks is a fairly sad but expected corollary to this. But as bad as bank lobbyist John Dugan was running OCC in the [...]

Tonight’s address to the nation from the White House on the future in Afghanistan won’t be terribly interesting. By now we know the outlines: President Obama will announce a drawdown of “second surge” troops, about 33,000 in all, by the end of 2012. So there will still be 66,000 troops or so in Afghanistan by [...]

I know it’s hard to believe, but Goldman Sachs is in some trouble. They may not ultimately see indictments of their executives or massive forced payouts of a large chunk of their profits. But the well-researched, well-described Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, which partially covered Goldman’s lies to their clients and to Congress, could [...]

Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, has issued a subpoena to Goldman Sachs, specifically based on the report written by Carl Levin for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which showed that Goldman duped its clients by touting and selling them bond products that they ended up betting against. This big short of the [...]

I mentioned in yesterday’s Roundup that Carl Levin was hopeful of some action by the Justice Department against Goldman Sachs. Levin wrote the report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee of Investigations not only accusing Goldman of defrauding investors, but lying to Congress about that fraud. At the time, I said that Levin either has real [...]

Hundreds of community, labor and faith leaders rallied at the Wells Fargo shareholders meeting today in San Francisco. Eight protesters were arrested. A smaller group spoke directly to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: A delegation of 12 people – including homeowners facing foreclosure from ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), CCISCO (Contra Costa Interfaith [...]

This is not some back-bencher, but the leading counter-terrorism adviser: President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser called it “inconceivable” that Pakistan was not providing a “support system” for Osama bin Laden, who was killed Sunday in a raid in a mansion north of the capital city of Islamabad. “We are pursuing all leads on this issue,” [...]

There has been more momentum toward the bin Laden death leading to an exit from our occupation of Afghanistan than I expected. I expected more hesitancy from typically cautious Democrats around this point. But here’s Barney Frank making an argument: Explaining his decision to vote for the Afghanistan war in 2001, Frank said, “We went [...]

Standard & Poor’s, one of the three leading credit rating agencies, has has warned the US on the rating of its government debt. S&P is concerned that Democrats and Republicans will not be able to agree a plan to reduce the growing US deficit. The agency has downgraded its outlook from stable to negative, increasing [...]