Politics is all about priorities. On the motion to extend unemployment insurance benefits for laid-off Americans searching for jobs but unable to find jobs: Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri voted to deny Americans unemployment insurance. On the motion to cut funding for the F-22 fighter planes that were designed for fighting a Soviet air force [...]

The same inconsistency is there when it comes to the relative power between federal and local governments. Right wing activists say that local governments should have power above the federal government’s power, when local governments want to deny people rights. When local governments seek to protect constitutional rights, however, the same right wing activists show no respect for local decisions.

It is in this spirit that yesterday, the following 39 Republican members of Congress signed their name to a legal brief urging a court to block D.C.’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

On the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday, Representative Todd Akin of Missouri declared public schools a menace to society. And teaching children to read? According to Akin, that’s downright Soviet: The thing that strikes me the most, and I don’t want to overuse the welcome that you’ve extended to me, is this. There [...]

Wherever one stands on the question of just how the ideas of Confucius should be categorized, it’s clear that some of the opposition to H. Res. 784 was not at all based in a loyalty to the separation of church and state

Todd Akin was first elected to Congress more than eight years ago, giving him more than enough time to get his bearings, figure out how a bill becomes a law, and gear up for some actual work. Here’s the sum total of the legislation Todd Akin has introduced in the 111th Congress: H.R. 1216: a [...]

The Larochelles were seeking to separate the flag from the Constitution, and to make it a symbol of religious belief – and officially recognized by Congress as such. Congressman Mike Turner was more than happy to help them do this – and to try to use the boy scout as a tool to push religion as a wedge issue – when he introduced H.R. 3779.

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.