This morning, the presidential nominating effort called Americans Elect introduced a new web feature called “Candidates,” in which it rates a select group of American politicians on the basis of their policy agreement with two documents: 1. Majority or plurality answers to a Ipsos Public Affairs Poll apparently commissioned by Americans Elect corporate staff, the [...]

The federal government has spent approximately one and a half billion dollars funding abstinence-only sex education programs without seeing any positive results. At a time when programs that have been proven effective, such as Head Start and the WIC nutritional program, are being cut, the failed abstinence-only experiment should not be spared.

Eighteen Democrats and one independent from the United States have signed a letter urging the President and the Attorney General to return to a commitment to equality in the United States. The letter asks Attorney General Eric Holder to allow the decision that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is unconstitutional to stand.

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Richard Durbin just offered an amendment to S. 1692, a bill reauthorizing Patriot Act surveillance powers. It would have only required that when national security letters (NSLs) are issued without constitutional warrants, they have to be limited to surveillance of those who are suspected terrorists, suspected spies, or people [...]

This morning, a visitor to the website franken.senate.gov will encounter a canned message: “Sorry, the web page you have requested is experiencing technical difficulties.” Senator Al Franken is upgrading his web page from a canned, stand-in version (the one all new senators get) to a new, fully-formed and customized web page. As he warms to [...]

As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, Al Franken refused to make any comment about the FISA Amendments Act, a bill which became law while Franken was running for election. The FISA Amendments Act(read text of the law here) legalized a massive electronic operation to spy on the personal communications of millions people [...]

Trying to figure out Al Franken’s Senate identity is a bit like trying to visualize a Jackson Pollack painting by connecting four dots. To date, Senator Franken has made just three bill cosponsorships and written one piece of legislation, Amendment 1570 to this year’s military appropriations bill: “The Secretary of Defense shall modify the Certificate [...]

Dan Maffei, running for the House of Representatives in the 25th congressional district in upstate New York, doesn’t have the big money connections Al Franken has. Yet, Dan Maffei has had the courage Al Franken hasn’t had. Dan Maffei has spoken out against the unjust and unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act.