ANOTHER YEAR OF THE WOMAN? Senators Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer and representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler will reintroduce the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress today, and will announce hearings on women�s equality in the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Conservative online media is already up in arms , lamenting the funding the ERA would likely provide, for the first time, to poor women on Medicaid who need to access abortion. Yes, the ERA would help progressives fight for women�s bodily rights. But it is also a crucial legal protection -- one first introduced in Congress in 1923 -- necessary to end workplace discrimination against women, fight wage inequality, and stop obviously sexist corporate practices, such as insurance companies covering the cost of Viagra, but not birth control pills . I remember Maloney speaking at a young women�s leadership event last summer and lamenting the Democratic Party�s...

A LIBERAL CASE FOR PORK? In September, TNR �s Brad Plumer argued � the liberal case for pork .� Call it vote buying if you will, but today, The Washington Post reports that House Democrats are tempting Iraq fence-sitters by adding $21 billion in domestic appropriations to the $124 billion war bill that sets an August 2008 deadline for pulling American troops out of Iraq. Waiting another year-and-a-half to remove our troops from harm�s way is less than ideal for many progressives, but Pelosi is waging a bare-knuckled fight just to get a veto-proof majority to support this bill. It puts Louisiana Republicans in the awkward position, for example, of either supporting redeployment or voting against tens of billion dollars in funding for Hurricane Katrina relief and flood prevention. The Post reports: For Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), there is $25 million for spinach growers hurt by last year's E. coli scare. For three conservative Democrats in Georgia, there is $75 million for peanut storage...