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Crossposted from ColorLines: As the nation marks the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have taken to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to, as they put it, restore our nation’s honor. The Washington Post reports that  “an overwhelmingly white crowd of tens of thousands” Read More

A new poll shows that a majority of the public supports a public option, and it’s time for lawmakers to listen. When Senators like Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch inveigh against a government-provided insurance option, we all know on whose behalf they’re speaking. But the problem is some of their constituents believe the nonsense about Read More

In his inaugural column for the Times, Ross Douthat argues that Cheney should have run for president so that America could have had a stouter debate on torture during the campaign.  McCain couldn’t hold the pro-torture platform because he didn’t agree with the Bush/Cheney stand, and so the Bush/Cheney stand and the viability of their Read More

I’ve been thinking a lot about why our collective sweetheart Damon Weaver, who scored some big interviews at the inauguration but not the biggest one, is so compelling. Sure, he’s adorable. But lots of children are cute, and it normally takes an extra something to warm the icy cage around my heart. I suspect a Read More

Lilly Ledbetter with Barack Obama last year. Lilly Ledbetter worked in a Goodyear plant in Alabama for nearly two decades. It wasn’t until she was near retiring that she found out that her male co-workers in the same position made more than she did — a lot more. (She earned $3,727.  Men in her position Read More

Via Politico: Preeta Bansal, a Harvard-educated litigation partner at Skadden, is rumored to be President-elect Obama’s choice for solicitor general. That person argues the government’s position at the Supreme Court (which will still be dominated by conservatives). “It’s making the rounds in New York’s legal circles, absolutely,” says a former colleague of Bansal’s. She was Read More

Salon has a response from Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray to the new Bush rule that states doctors have a right to opt out of procedures (from abortions to prescribing birth control) they object to on religious or moral grounds. Note: They can anyway. In the final days of his administration, the President is again Read More

Despite the fact that most Americans might hope that Bush lays low in the final days of his historically unpopular presidency, he’s decided to try to push through at least one last-minute agenda: a plan that would allow health care providers to refuse to perform abortions and other procedures they object to on moral or Read More

The New Yorker has, I assume for a limited time, put on its website a 2004 profile of a young African-American running to represent Illinois in the United States Senate.* I can’t imagine it was more fun to read then than now. Among the highlights: the prescient sentiment of all who had met him that Read More

I had a quibble with G.D.’s otherwise fantastic weekend round-up. Margaret Cho, who confessed her dirty dreams about a certain Republican vice-presidential nominee, wasn’t being sexist. In fact, if she had left out the last line, it could have been the most solidly feminist thing she could have done. I understand the point, though it’s Read More

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