It’s not about harm. It’s about hype. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, every year heart disease kills two hundred times more Americans than terrorist attacks killed in the peak year of 2001. In other years, heart disease deaths are hundreds of thousands of times more numerous than terrorism deaths. Yet year [...]

Whether or not you believe that American participation in the war in Libya is a good idea, now is a good time to call your U.S. senators and U.S. Representative through the congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121, and tell them what you’d like them to do. Votes on the war authorization legislation could happen in both houses of Congress as soon as tomorrow.

If Senator Durbin is right, and the real goal of the U.S. war in Libya is to make an international diplomatic maneuver, then Barack Obama has no good excuse for not seeking a congressional resolution approving of war first.

In a time of record-breaking budget deficits, it’s difficult to justify the specific outcome of a pay raise of over $100,000 for millionaires. It’s easier for Republicans simply to talk in general about tax cuts, as if they apply equally to everyone.

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.

The way our economy is set up now, if American corporations really want to ship all their factories and jobs overseas, they can. But should the government reward that behavior? Under the tax code, that’s just what the government does today. Corporations today can get tax deductions and tax credits for firing American workers and [...]

Amy Klobuchar has been one of the two U.S. Senators representing Minnesota for more than two years now, which is long enough for her to decide what kind of senator she’d like to be. Will she be the sort of senator who reads and understands legislation before she votes on it? Or will she be [...]

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 [...]

Senate Candidate Amy Klobuchar, 2006: “I would have advocated for changes to the Patriot Act, including provisions that protect libraries from government searches. With those changes, I would have voted for the renewal of the Patriot Act. In the future, however, I will advocate for additional protections for civil liberties”. Will Senator Amy Klobuchar keep [...]

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 [...]