Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren officially received her committee assignments today, and she will sit on the Senate Banking Committee, with key oversight over Wall Street and the financial system. Progressives agitated for weeks for Warren to get this spot, and in the end it wasn’t that difficult a lift. I’m looking forward to future hearings from [...]

Late last week I noted that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) received $10 million in deferred compensation from his plastics company, after an election that he used $9 million of his own money to win. The similarity between the figures and the fact that Johnson negotiated the deferred compensation with himself, the owner of the company, [...]

The campaign finance rules of the post-Citizens United world are, broadly speaking, that there are no rules. That can be seen in Sen. Ron Johnson’s brazen display: After dropping nearly $9 million from his own pocket to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, Ron Johnson didn’t have to feel the pain for very long. [...]

J.D. Hayworth was endlessly mocked in his failed Senate campaign for a late-nite infomercial touting “free money” from the government. He lost, but it’s shocking how many of Hayworth’s fellow Republicans have no problem condemning “government handouts” while accepting them. Sam Stein explored this today: The most glaring example was surfaced by the Denver Post [...]

I was on a blogger call with Sen. Russ Feingold last night, and I was struck by his desire to lead with his opposition to the war in Afghanistan, as a show of his independence and his Constitutionally derived duty to act as an independent check on the executive. And he painted his opponent, Ron [...]