NewsTrust - Congressional Oversight - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Rand Paul Wants Koch Brothers Thrown in Jail!

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Brad Blog - Sep. 24 (Opinion) - Lee Fang at Think Progress offers devastating coverage in response to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)'s recent claim to The Street's Mallory Factor (video here) that those who pollute streams with benzene should be thrown in jail. "I don’t want to pollute the water. I don’t want to pollute streams," said Paul, ...

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Why President Obama Is Losing the Budget Fight

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - Friday night’s dramatic budget agreement represented a major defeat for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. On substance, John Boehner and Congressional Republicans received $7 billion more in spending cuts than they originally asked for. From a messaging standpoint, the entire debate unfolded on the GOP’s terms (excerpt for a brief interlude concerning Planned Parenthood)—the discussion was about how much to cut, not whether to cut or who would be impacted by such cuts or if such cuts would depress economic growth. The word “jobs” was practically absent from the debate.

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Blackwater Strikes Again

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - Jul. 10 - by Christopher BrauchliThe Gods have their own rules. -Ovid, Metamorphoses One of the many nice things about being a United States Senator is that you can ask just about anyone in government to explain actions being taken and anticipate a response and, in many cases, a change in conduct. Here is one example of how a United States Senator was able to influence policy. It pertains to Blackwater. read more

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The General and his Senate Vassals

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Military.com - By Winslow Wheeler - Jun. 25 (Opinion) - Whatever you may think of General Stanley McChrystal and his succession by General David Petraeus, something very sad is about to happen. The Senate Armed Services Committee has already scheduled its hearing for the constitutionally required confirmation of General Petraeus in his new job. Watch that hearing. (It will occur at 9:30 am on Tuesday, June 29 and will be broadcast by the committee's webcast, and surely C-SPAN.) You will observe how useless and ineffectual the Senate Armed Services Committee, among others, has become at performing its most important job.

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The Relentless Pursuit of Extreme Energy

Thu, 20 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Michael T. Klare - May. 20 (Opinion) - Yes, the oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in staggering quantities could prove one of the great ecological disasters of human history. Think of it, though, as just the prelude to the Age of Tough Oil , a time of ever increasing reliance on problematic, hard-to-reach energy sources. Make no mistake: we're entering the danger zone. And brace yourself, the fate of the planet could be at stake.

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BP Safety Record: 97% of the Worst Violations

Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

thedailygreen.com - By Dan Shapley - May. 17 () - Two BP refineries not only account for 97% of all "flagrant" violations in the U.S. refining industry, but most of the violations cited were classified as "egregious willful," according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration records.

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White House Should Stop Pandering to Wall Street

Sat, 08 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - May. 08 (Opinion) - he White House opposes three important financial reforms that have drawn bi-partisan support in the Senate. It should reverse course.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Sex, Lies and Oil Spills

Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - May. 05 (Opinion) - A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP's oil spill is that the gulf blowout is Obama's Katrina. In truth, culpability for this disaster can be laid at the Bush administration's doorstep.

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Authority in the Internet Age

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Nancy Scola - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - A DC Circuit Court Decision has called into question the FCC's ability to regulate the Internet.

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Celebrating Sen. Ted Kaufman, Accidental Leader

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Arianna Huffington - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - At a time when our political and financial landscapes are littered with villains and those unwilling to take them on, it's refreshing to find someone in the halls of power that we can unabashedly celebrate.

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Enemy Congress

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

thenewamerican.com - Mar. 18 (Opinion) -

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Obama threatens to veto greater intelligence oversight

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - One of the principal weapons used by the Bush administration to engage in illegal surveillance activities -- from torture to warrantless eavesdropping -- was its refusal to brief the full Congressional Intelligence Committees about its activities.

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Too Big to Fail - Too Big to Exist -

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

senate.gov - By Senator Bernie Sanders - Nov. 06 (Statement) - Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would break up financial institutions that are too big to fail. "If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," Sanders said. "We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy. We should end the concentration of ownership that has resulted in just four huge financial institutions holding half the mortgages in America, controlling two-thirds of the credit cards, and amassing 40 percent of all deposits."

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Rep. John Conyers: Why David Broder Is Wrong

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By John Conyers - Sep. 04 (Comment) - The decision whether to investigate possible crimes connected to our interrogation programs is simply not a political one.

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Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich Asks Congress If We Can Afford to Fight the "Long War"

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

c-span - By Andrew Bacevich - May. 18 (Speech) - ...we once again find ourselves mired in a protracted war of an indeterminate nature, with no foreseeable end to the U.S. commitment. Just as in the 1960s we possessed neither the wisdom nor the means needed to determine the fate of Southeast Asia, so today, we posses neither the wisdom, nor the means, necessary to determine the fate of the greater middle east.

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Billions Dished Out in the Shadows

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthDig - By Robert Scheer - Mar. 03 (Opinion) - This is crazy! Forget the bleating of Rush Limbaugh; the problem is not with the quite reasonable and, if anything, underfunded stimulus package, which in any case will be debated long and hard in Congress. The problem is with what is not being debated: the far more expensive Wall Street bailout that is being pushed through—as in the case of the latest AIG rescue—in secret, hurried deal-making primarily by the unelected secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

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Senators bail out their banker buddies but stiff workers and their unions

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Hightower Lowdown - By Jim Hightower - Jan. 01 (Opinion) - The reason that the Wall Street bailout has not worked is quite elementary. Congress and the White House attached no requirement whatsoever that the recipients of our money use it to make loans! It seems that Washington didn't feel that it should "interfere" in the decisions of the financial deities. Country rubes attending their first carnival sideshow are not this gullible.

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Wall Street on trial

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Andrew Leonard - Sep. 24 (Opinion) - What Bernanke and Paulson want to do is set up a series of auctions for various forms of securities that at present nobody wants to buy because they don't know what they're worth, and arrive at a price for them that is higher than the "fire-sale prices" that they currently deserve. They want to jump-start a new market, using as a carrot the prospect that the federal government will buy the bad assets at whatever the auction declares. This could be a "reverse auction" in which, basically, the holders of bad debt bid for the right to sell their securities to the government by lowering their asking price, or it could be some other kind of mechanism. In fact, there could be different mechanisms for different classes of securities. Bernanke and Paulson couldn't be explicit on the details, because, quite frankly, they haven't figured it all out. The words "complicated" and "complex" came up more than once in Tuesday's hearing.

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DHS blew $15 billion on 11 failed contracts

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Majikthise - Sep. 17 (Opinion) - DHS blew $15 billion on 11 failed contracts. In its testimony before the the House commitee on homeland security, the Project on Government Oversight identified the following factors that contribute to the massive waste at DHS:

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Time To Create Some Martyrs

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Pruning Shears - By Dan Fejes - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - Congress has been timorously asking for the President to observe our systems of checks and balances to little effect. It is now time for action, even if it means some big names on the right become lauded as fallen heroes.

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President Bush Claims Executive Privilege in EPA Investigation

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Janet Ritz - Jun. 21 (Opinion) - President Bush has claimed executive privilege as his reason for denying Henry Waxman's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee access to documents that would prove whether he [President Bush] pressured the EPA to lower smog standards.

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Senator Obama and Private Military Contracting

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Balkinization - By Laura Dickinson - Mar. 24 (Opinion) - right now there are more contractors than troops in Iraq, which is an enormous shift in the way we project our power overseas, at least as compared to how we've done it in the last fifty years. It's not clear precisely how many of them are authorized to use force, in tasks such as providing security or conducting interrogations.

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What happened to the Senate's "60-vote requirement"?

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:55:44 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - So why would 44 Democratic Senators make a flamboyant showing of opposing confirmation without actually doing what they could to prevent it? Is it that a filibuster was not possible because a large number of these Democratic Senators were willing to symbolically oppose confirmation so they could say they did -- by casting meaningless votes in opposition knowing that confirmation was guaranteed -- but were unwilling to demonstrate the sincerity of their claimed beliefs by acting on them?

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Judge Mukasey and the Groucho Marx Principle

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:00:15 -0700

Balkinization - By Jack Balkin - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - This New York Times article suggests that Judge Mukasey cannot announce that waterboarding is illegal at his confirmation hearings for Attorney General because of concern that this would lead to criminal prosecutions and civil suits against CIA operatives who performed interrogations. Do not believe it.

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Phone Jamming Cover-up at DoJ? Conyers Wants Answers

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:15:56 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - It happened nearly five years ago, but House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) still has plenty of questions about the New Hampshire phone jamming case. In a letter Wednesday, he asked Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler a number of questions about the case, focusing in particular on whether the Justice Department has "adequately investigated and prosecuted" the case. You can read the letter here.

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