I try to be cynical, but I can’t keep up. Not only is Congress punting rulemaking to captured and compromised regulators, Wall Street lobbyists are now actually drafting the bills. “Wall Street writes its own laws” used to be a useful polemic, now it’s a statement of fact. Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to [...]

During Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee he made an interesting statement in response to a question from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA): JOHNSON: I yield the balance of my time to you. HOLDER: I would say this with regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material. That [...]

Behold the power of finance capital. Despite shitting the bed and making us all clean it up, Wall Street will remain essentially the same as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) caved to the banksters and will continue to allow a cartel to control the derivatives market. Under pressure from Wall Street lobbyists, federal regulators [...]

The Internal Revenue Service decided to target conservative groups for higher scrutiny while processing mainstream liberal groups without incident a review of IRS data shows. The IRS had already confirmed earlier allegations of political bias. As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as [...]

The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook As was previously reported, President Obama and Congress gutted the insider trading regulations on Congress. Like a thief in the night Congress and the White House did nothing to call attention to themselves as they stealthily removed key [...]

Irony thy name is Congress. As the federal government conducts political surveillance on all Americans, the preening apparatchiks/future lobbyists of Capitol Hill are furious that a transparency group, Legistorm, is publishing publicly available information. Seriously. The Congress-focused research organization LegiStorm set off a firestorm on Capitol Hill this week as some staffers learned that their personal [...]

Last Friday President Obama signed the sequester order officially launching America’s latest austerity program. Austerity has yet to produce jobs or growth in any country it has been tried in. In fact, austerity is becoming one of the few certainties within economic policy making – the certainty of losing growth if the policy is adopted. [...]

Two more years of tears. In a closer-than-usual vote, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was elected to a second term as Speaker of the House on Thursday, with 220 votes. Eight members of the Republican majority cast protest votes for others including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), and former Comptroller General [...]

Say what you will about the 2010 deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, which helped to set up what we’re seeing this month. But there was definitely a virtue in getting it done by early December, allowing for a productive lame duck session that repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, passed the New START arms [...]

Hearings in Congress today pile on the political debate over the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. The hearings come on the heels of the Pickering-Mullen report, which looked at the actions of the State Department and foreign service leading up to the attack, finding serious deficiencies in management and “grossly inadequate” security at [...]

While waiting around for fiscal slope negotiations to conclude, Congress has bided its time with legislation seemingly timed for the holiday travel season. The House gave final approval to a bill that would give the TSA more leeway when screening checked baggage from international airports that is going on to a separate flight in the [...]