Kate Sheppard

FIRST RACES. NPR has been running a series on current presidential candidates and their first major campaigns. The pieces look at their first big races, and the lessons they learned by either winning or losing. It offers insight into this career-shaping era of the politicians as we see them today. Obama talks about how he […]

BEST YET? Matt, along with The Onion’s AV Club, is trying to convince us that 1997 was the best year for music. I’m going to avoid that debate, but it leads me to a similar question I’ve been pondering since a recent conversation: What has been the best year for domestic politics so far? What […]

NEWS ON NEWS. It had been rumored for a while now, but today the New York Times announced that as of midnight tonight, they’ll be bringing down pay walls on their website, exactly two years after they started charging $49.95 a year for complete access to the site. The pay wall was deterring drop-in readers […]

SHOWING UP STILL THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN ABILITY TO WIN THE GAME. After all but John McCain declined invitations to participate in a Spanish-language debate, the GOP front-runners have now decided not to talk to black voters, either. McCain, Giuliani, and Romney had already opted out of the Sept. 27 debate at historically black […]

HABEAS CORPUS, PLEASE. On the same day that Chris Dodd gave a notably rowdy speech at the SEIU Political Action Conference, he and Patrick Leahy announced that they would be introducing the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Last year’s Military Commissions Act effectively stripped it […]

MUKASEY AND MERITS. Since his nomination was announced yesterday, many writers have been fairly gleefully touting Michael Mukasey‘s independent streak (see: Lithwick, Greenwald, NYT, WaPo). Heck, even Chuck Schumer likes him. But despite his laudable ruling that Jose Padilla had a right to a lawyer, he also determined that American citizens detained in the U.S. […]

DEAL OR NO DEAL. Robert mentioned it this morning, but another important aspect of the Blackwater issue is that the company was awarded a no-bid contract to work in Iraq. Blackwater USA is (well … was) a private firm providing security for U.S. Embassy personnel in Iraq. There had been multiple complaints about the firm […]

DODDMENTUM. Heading up the line-up of Democratic presidential candidates slated to speak at today’s Service Employees International Union Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., today, Senator Chris Dodd took the opportunity to highlight his labor-related achievements in his 26 years as an elected official and called for a renewed commitment to middle class America. “The […]

BANKING ON IT. Bank of America, the giant bank everyone hates but is joining resentfully, has announced that they are further penalizing those who haven’t submitted to their dominance yet by increasing non-customer fees on ATM withdraws to $3. The $1 increase was introduced quietly over the summer, and is sure to prompt other banks […]

ESTIMATES, FOR WHATEVER THEY’RE WORTH. A British polling agency released a new study this week that suggests that even the highest estimates of Iraqi deaths so far have been far below the actual toll. The poll, conducted by a group called ORB, asked 1,462 adult Iraqis, “How many members of your household, if any, have […]