The four cosponsors of H.R. 423, a bill to keep the addresses of members of Congress private: Joe Baca (Democrat-CA District 43)Ted Deutch (Democrat-FL District 19)Jeff Fortenberry (Republican-NE District 1)Jared Polis (Democrat-CO District 2) Of these four, those which voted YES on H.R. 514, a bill to reauthorize the Patriot Act and revoke the privacy [...]

The House of Representatives rejected protections that might have saved the lives of the workers on the Deepwater Horizon and prevented the tremendous oil spill that resulted from its explosion.

If an oil company isn’t even using the leases of public lands they already have, why should they take on yet more leases… unless what those oil companies really want to do is just squat on their leases of public lands with oil under them only in order to prevent the oil from being drilled, thus decreasing supply and artificially driving up the cost of petroleum products so that they can make a bigger profit without doing any more work.

To vote for this bill was to insult the Constitution of the United States of America, and in doing so, to insult the USA itself. A vote in favor of this bill is a betrayal of the Oath of Office every member of Congress has taken. It is unpatriotic, and a grave breach of trust.

Only someone determined not to see what’s happening around them could deny that America is going through profound economic suffering. Gasoline prices are up, and that means that there’s inflation for practically everything else we buy too. At the same time, work is increasingly hard to come by. New jobs aren’t being created much any [...]

The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, as its name implies, would begin a transition from reliance on out-of-date fossil fuels for transportation toward more efficient transportation by train. It’s exactly what we need to deal with America’s current economic and environmental problems. For some bizarre reason, almost all of the Republicans in the House of Representatives oppose it.

This legislation does exactly what Republicans say they want to do. It makes public schools more efficient. In fact, the bill makes such plain sense that 27 Republican members of the House of Representatives crossed the aisle yesterday to vote in favor of it. Thanks to them, the bill passed, and will become law if passed by the Senate.

It’s especially important to conserve wild cats and dogs, because they’re predators. As such, they help to preserve balance within ecological systems. When predators go extinct, their prey species go through wild boom and bust cycles that endanger large number of animal and plant circles. So, the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2008 is arguably the most important conservation legislation to be presented to Congress this year.

Many of these representatives are progressive Democrats, but some of them are right wing Republicans. Hank Johnson included people from both sides of the political spectrum because he realized that the human tragedy of the fighting in northern Uganda merited a unified approach that transcended domestic politics.

It’s been the mantra of the Republican Party for years now: Support Our Troops! Support Our Troops! Support Our Troops! So, why is it that 17 Republican members of Congress are coming together to support a law that forbids the troops from getting the things they want for support while fighting over in Iraq? They’ve [...]