In the current session of Congress, John Linder has not voted for one single piece of significant progressive legislation. There’s no way that Linder’s retirement can be reinterpreted to support claims of a solidly progressive congressional retreat.

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.

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Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, as its name implies, would begin a transition from reliance on out-of-date fossil fuels for transportation toward more efficient transportation by train.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.

When Congressman Broun’s amendment to forbids some Americans from getting married, it undermines the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Congressman Broun’s constitutional amendment says that equality in America is only for some people. Within Congressman Broun’s new vision for America, equality will be traded in for inequality. Paul Broun’s constitutional amendment is anti-equality, and it’s anti-marriage.

There can be no rational objection to the Crane Conservation Act on the grounds of fiscal responsibility. The legislation has been examined and been certified to contain no earmarks for pork barrel spending. The Crane Conservation Act also contains no extra provisions to deal with any matters other than crane conservation. It does not secretly modify any existing U.S. law or provide financial kickbacks to anybody.

Do these politicians expect us to believe their excuses, that their failure to protect endangered great cats and canids is due to conservative principles? That explanation is absurd on the face of it. True conservatives support conservation.

Anyone who is aware of the present day issues surrounding fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization realizes that giving a fertilized egg all the legal protections of a person from the moment a sperm breaks through the egg’s cell membrane is absurd. It doesn’t take a genius to see that H.R. 4157 could never be practically applied without creating some extremely bizarre consequences. Yet, 56 members of Congress are apparently not bright enough to understand these problems.