US politics

By Luke Johnson (RFE/RL) WASHINGTON — Republicans have captured control of the U.S. Senate for the first time in eight years, picking up at least seven seats in the November 4 Congressional elections. The shift means that Republicans will control the three top Senate committees dealing with U.S. foreign policy and national security: foreign relations, armed […]

Republican Party

If Orwell had had a “Ministry of Science” it would look Like GOP Science Committees

contributors

Cenk Uygur, The Young Turks: “”The Republican Party is widely predicted to win control of the Senate as a result of today’s midterm elections. In broadstrokes, that outcome portends a green light for the Keystone XL Pipeline, a blow to the Affordable Care Act and a push for corporate tax reform. But what would a […]

Barack Obama

Top 5 Reasons Obama is Seeking Congressional Approval for War on ISIL

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole President Obama said Wednesday that he would seek Congressional authorization for his war on ISIL or the “Islamic State” Group in Iraq and Syria. This statement comes after months of his administration maintaining that the AUMF of 2001 was still sufficient to underpin this effort. (In fact, it referred to war on […]

Inequality

How Secret Millionaire Donors Bought the Midterms with Dark Money Superpacs

contributors

by Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica In the final weeks before this year’s elections, a super PAC called Key Questions, Key Answers started buying TV ads across Pennsylvania attacking Tom Wolf, the Democratic candidate for governor. “Don’t vote for a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the narrator says in one of the ads as a sheep with Wolf’s […]

Militarization

The Pressure to Escalate: How Washington governs by Whipping up Paranoia

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt via Tomdispatch.com Sometimes it seemed that only two issues mattered in the midterm election campaigns just ended. No, I’m not talking about Obamacare, or the inequality gap, or the country’s sagging infrastructure, or education, or energy policy. I mean two issues that truly threaten the wellbeing of citizens from Kansas, Colorado, and […]

Barack Obama

How a Republican Congress could Entangle the US further in the Middle East

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole The midterm elections in a president’s second term have historically been a time when the president’s party lost seats in both houses of Congress. Only a little over a third of the electorate typically votes in these elections, and they are disproportionately white, wealthy and elderly. In short, a different country voted […]

Republican Party

Shocking things a GOP Senate might do to Women’s Economic Rights (Reich)

contributors

Moveon.org: “Robert Reich explains how a Republican-controlled Senate would attack women’s rights in what adds up to an economic war on women — the third in a series of election videos produced in collaboration with MoveOn.org.” Moveon.org: “The economic war on women a Republican Senate would wage”

Democracy

Bernie Sanders on Breaking Big Money’s Grip on Elections (Moyers)

contributors

Bill Moyers: “Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent senator, is angry about what he sees as big money’s wholesale purchase of political power. It’s a grave threat, he believes, not only to our electoral process but to democracy itself. Two weeks ago, Sanders visited a town hall meeting in Richmond, California, to fire up supporters of Mayor […]

Civil Rights

Will growing gap between rich and poor influence midterm elections?

contributors

CCTV “In the United States, the gap between rich and poor is the highest it has been since 1928. This gap is painfully obvious in a state like Arkansas. CCTV America’s Sean Callebs visited Little Rock to speak to residents about their concerns as part of our ongoing series, Route 2014: The Road to the […]