Ruth Lopez - Why Rush Limbaugh went off on Sandra Fluke - and what the hell is up with the GOP?

There has been much public hand-wringing over, "women's health v. religious freedom", in the last few weeks, as pretty much everyoneexcept the extreme right wing of the Republican Party has tried to wrap their collective brains around why the GOP seems so hell-bent on self-destructing over a seemingly settled issue like women's rights. Instead, it's been one incongruous visual after another of Right Wing religious men attempting to interject themselves into the most intimate areas of women's lives. And Rush.

You can see the stunned amazement on the faces of women under 40, wondering how professional male politicians, whether in their state legislature or Congress, could think for even a single moment that they could possibly have the right to tell women whether or not they should be able to get birth control? Or, yes, even have the right to tell them whether or not they can get an abortion? 

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Rush-Limbaugh-went-off-by-Ruth-Lopez-120308-232.html

Simon Johnson - Making the United States More Like Greece

One of the big problems in Greece over the past decade or so is that the government was not honest with its data.  Various people assisted in the matter – including Goldman Sachs with respect to some debt issues – but ultimately this was a political decision at the highest level.  The people running the country decided to conceal the true nature of their budget and their debt.  This deception ended up costing the country dearly – completely undermining its credibility under pressure and making it much harder to turn the fiscal and economic situation around.

House Republicans are now proposing something similar for the United States.

Because this concerns deficits and debt, the details may seem arcane – and that is how similar details escaped attention by almost everyone in Greece.  Fortunately, in the United States we have an excellent guide – an article in Tax Notes by John Buckley.  (“Dynamic Scoring: Will S&P Have Company?,” February 28, 2012; at the moment this is available only behind their paywall but in the public interest I would strongly encourage Tax Notes to make this piece freely available – as they have in the past for other important articles.)

Read More:

http://baselinescenario.com/2012/03/02/making-the-united-states-more-like-greece/

Steven Wishnia - The Truth About Drug-Testing the Unemployed

The new federal law that lets states drug-test applicants for unemployment compensation was a small win for the Republican-led efforts to examine the urine of everyone receiving government safety-net benefits. How many people it will affect depends on how the Department of Labor establishes the regulations—and on whether the courts continue to hold that such policies violate the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches.

House Republicans initially wanted to let states drug-test all 7.5 million people collecting unemployment compensation. The compromise reached in the payroll tax-cut deal, along with cutting six months off the time people can collect, authorizes states to test applicants for benefits in two circumstances: if they were fired for using drugs, or if the only occupation they’re suited for is one the Department of Labor lists as commonly requiring drug-testing.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154364/the_truth_about_drug-testing_the_unemployed

Bernard Starr - Romney and Santorum Envision a Caste System for America

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum will no doubt deny that they endorse a caste system. They will insist that they love the plain folks and will enthusiastically point to their family historiesas they compete for blue collar credentials. Rick Santorum, spiffy in his sweater vest, will tell you about his granddaddy who worked the coal mines. And Mitt Romney, decked out in his everyman's jeans, will describe how his daddy, when he was training to be a carpenter before he was governor of Michigan and later a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, could spit out nails, point first. But a hidden agenda lurks beneath these common man stories.

It's troubling that Romney isn't worried about the poor because they have safety nets(which by the way happen to be government programs), especially since more and more formerly middle class Americans have fallen into poverty, losing their jobs and their homes.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-starr/romney-santorum-poverty_b_1318001.html

Brentin Mock - Five Million Voters May Lose Rights in the 2012 Elections

Today’s Super Tuesday primary involves 10 states and 437 delegates at stake for the Republican Party’s presidential prospects. There are two states among that crop that are worth taking a look at: Georgia and Tennessee. Both are emblems for a growing, and troubling, legislative trend in which new election laws mandate citizens to produce photo identification to vote, ask people to prove their citizenship to vote, or outright curtail voter registration efforts.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as many as five million eligible voters could meet difficulties this Election Day due to these new, imposing voter laws.

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http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/03/voter_id_card.html

John Nichols - Battling Big Money: Vermont Town Meetings Will Move to Amend

If the polls are to be believed, big money—in the form of Mitt “Corporations Are People, My Friend” Romney—will be on the march this Super Tuesday in much of the country.

But it will lose some ground at the grassroots level in Vermont.

At town hall meetings across the state, in a great show of small-“d” democratic determination to renew the promise of the American experiment, thousands of Vermont voters will vote on resolutions urging that the US Constitution be amended to declare that corporations are not people.

The resolutions are a response to the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling by the US Supreme Court, one of a number of recent High Court decisions that have for all intents and purposes given corporations and wealthy individuals the “right” to spend whatever amount of money they choose to buy elections.

Read More:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166616/battling-big-money-vermont-town-meetings-will-move-amend

Katrina vanden Heuvel - Super Tuesday’s Big Winner Is Already Settled

The polls haven’t closed, but here’s one thing we already know: The big winners of Super Tuesday are the super PACs and big-money politics. In the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, the super PACs’ farcically described “independent expenditures” were far greater than the spending of the candidates’ campaigns.

A Las Vegas billionaire single-handedly has kept Newt Gingrich in the race. Mitt Romney’s “vulture capitalist” biography may raise doubts in some voters’ minds, but it has helped him sweep the money primary. And while Romney has found it hard to win significant support from Republican voters, his “independent” super PAC — Restore Our Future — has used that dough to carpet-bomb with negative ads any opponent who has risen to challenge him.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/06-2

Senator McCain Wants to Wage War Against Syria

Republican US Senator John McCain, his party's nominee for president in 2008 and a perennial war hawk, urged US military intervention in Syria on Monday. On a speech from the Senate floor, McCain said the US should use its "full weight of air power" against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

"Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary. But at this late hour, that alone cannot be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives.The only realistic way to do so is with foreign air power." He added, "The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad's forces."

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/06

Ruth Marcus - Obama and Romney Exhibit Striking Similarities

The general election is shaping up as a contest between two remarkably similar men.

Not ideologically. Despite the Newt Gingrich-peddled notion that “there really is no difference” between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, the gulf in political philosophy is enormous.

Both men, left to their own devices, would occupy a centrist place within their own parties. But Obama envisions a far more muscular role for government in general and the federal government in particular. Romney’s faith is primarily — excessively, in my view — in the free market.

Still, assuming that Romney becomes the Republican nominee, the two candidates will share surprisingly similar temperaments and habits of mind. They are different from the standard-issue politician — both are more aloof than gregarious, more cerebral than impassioned.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/obama-and-romney-exhibit-striking-similarities-1328804179

David Rosen - The Mass Psychology of Newt Gingrich

Are hypocrites born or made? Is false consciousness a social disease? These are among the unasked questions haunting the 2012 Republican presidential race.

The four surviving candidates are hypocrites. Mitt Romney is the guy-next-door everyman with a quarter-billion-dollars in his pocket; Rick Santorum is the blue-collar everyman who has learned to work the corporate con for self-serving ends; Ron Paul is the white everyman standing before a giant Confederate flag proclaiming that the South was right seceding from the Union; and then there is Newt Gingrich, the shameless everyman who sheds his past like a snake loses its old skin.

Gingrich is the most hypocritical presidential candidate in modern history. But the significance of his hypocrisy can only be fully appreciated in terms of his surprising Jan. 21^st primary victory in South Carolina. Approximately 40 percent of registered Republicans willingly accepting his fiction. This is the politics of false consciousness.

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/the-mass-psychology-of-newt-gingrich/