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83% of MoveOn Members Back Obama on Health Reform
By John Nichols
Eighty-three percent of MoveOn members say the organization should join the fight to pass the health reform bill being advanced by President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress, despite the fact that the measure falls short of the sort of reform for which the powerful progressive group had campaigned.
That's an important message for Obama and the Democrats, who will need strong support from progressive activists during the final push to pass reform legislation -- and during the 2010 election cycle when much of the political debate will continue to focus on questions of how best to address issues of health-care access and cost.
The MoveOn result means that one of the savviest and most effective progressive organizations in the country will be a part of that process.
(70) CommentsMarch 11, 2010
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65 in House Back Afghanistan Withdrawal
By John Nichols
The U.S. Congress never declared war on Afghanistan, a country where more than 1,000 U.S. troops -- and thousands of Afghan civilians --have died since President Bush ordered the invasion and occupation of that country in 2001.
The vague authorization that Bush received to pursue the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, which was treated by Democrats and Republicans alike as justification for the incursion into Afghanistan is now more than eight years old -- and during that time all of the facts on the ground in Afghanistan and most of the facts internationally have changed.
Yet, the occupation continues. Indeed, the U.S. troop presence is escalating toward 100,000, even as other countries -- including, most recently, the Netherlands -- prepare to exit Afghanistan.
(183) CommentsMarch 10, 2010
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Mourn Granny D.; Then Organize for Clean Politics
By John Nichols
Doris "Granny D" Haddock, whose 3,200-mile walk across the United States at the age of 90 drew thousands of activists into the movement for political reform, has died Tuesday evening at the age of 100.
The Dublin, New Hampshire, grandmother's death came ten years and ten days after she finished the remarkable two-year walk, which she undertook to promote the passage of campaign finance reform legislation (in particular the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform law).
On March 1, 2000, when she finished that walk in Washington, Granny D. told a crowd of more than 2,000 cheering supporters -- including a dozen members of Congress -- who had gathered on the Capitol steps:
(54) CommentsMarch 10, 2010
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MoveOn Referendum: With Obama or Not?
By John Nichols
MoveOn, the online activist community that played such a critical role in building opposition to the Bush administration and in paving the way for its replacement by the Obama administration, is asking members whether it should now support President Obama's health-care reform legislation.
The MoveOn "team" admits in an email to the group's roughly 5 million members that Obama's proposal is "definitely not the bill most of us hoped for at the start of this fight." But, they add, "it does do some important things."
That's reasonable, as is the review of comments from MoveOn members who support and oppose the reform legislation as it currently stands.
(59) CommentsMarch 9, 2010
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Kucinich's Health Reform Dissents Merit Consideration
By John Nichols
Long before Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi began talking up health care reform as a top priority for the Democratic Party, Congress and America, Dennis Kucinich was doing so. Indeed, the former Cleveland mayor, Ohio legislator, two-time presidential candidate and now senior U.S. House members has across the past 35 years been one of the country's steadiest proponents of real reform of our broken health-care system.
So Kucinich's questioning of the reform legislation being advanced by President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi is neither casual nor uninformed.
The congressman from Ohio knows the intricacies of the health-care debate as well as any key player in Washington. And he objects to the compromises contained in the measure the president and the speaker are whipping House Democrats to support. "This bill doesn't change the fact that the insurance companies are going to keep socking it from the consumers," says Kucinich, who argues that, "The insurance companies are the problem and they are getting a bailout."
(140) CommentsMarch 8, 2010
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Iceland Busts the Banksters
By John Nichols
What if Americans had been asked whether they wanted to bail out big bankers and Wall Street speculators?
How many would have voted "no"?
A measure of patriotism feeds the hope that they would have made their opposition known as resoundingly as have the voters of Iceland, who on Saturday rejected demands by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands -- working hand-in-hand with the rapaciuous International Monetary Fund -- that the people of the tiny island nation cover losses triggered by the failure of a private bank.
(142) CommentsMarch 6, 2010
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Why Is Barack Obama Writing GOP Talking Points?
By John Nichols
If you want to know where conservatives in Congress get all their ridiculous talking points about how dysfunctional the federal government is, how incapable the public sector is when it comes to doing anything right and, above all, how worthless federal employees are, we've tracked down the source.
It's not Rush Limbaugh.
It's not Michael Steele.
(144) CommentsMarch 5, 2010
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Michael Foot and the Defense of a Free Press in Wartime
By John Nichols
Michael Foot, the British journalist, author and parliamentarian who has died at age 96, was a comrade and hero of this writer for three decades.
The former Labour Party Leader is worthy of all the tributes that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (who hails her former rival as a "great parliamentarian" and man of "high principle") and so many others are bestowing upon his memory. (As always, Tony Benn says it best.)
But I will remember Foot, above all, for his uncompromising defenses of civil liberties -- especially the freedom of the press.
(77) CommentsMarch 3, 2010
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A Cautious Obama Sort Of Suggests Reconciliation
By John Nichols
President Obama did not mention the "r" word.
But the president did say, in his much-anticipated speech on the urgency of health-care reform, that: "I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform."
If Republican remain in the "party-of-no" position they have maintained since the start of the health-care debate, however, it is going to take more than Obama's belief to get the "up-or-down" vote he desires.
(47) CommentsMarch 3, 2010
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Romney on Palin: "Be Careful... She Has a Rifle"
By John Nichols
A good case can be made that Sarah Palin is a younger, slightly smarter and significantly more outdoorsy Dick Cheney.
But Mitt Romney is taking the comparison of the former Alaska governor and the former Vice President a little too far.
Romney, who prefers that he be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is joking about how his potential rival is--like Cheney--armed and potentially dangerous.
(255) CommentsMarch 3, 2010
John Nichols
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