US politics

Stephen Engelberg writes at ProPublica Last week’s admission by Sheldon Adelson’s casino company that it had “likely” violated provisions of the federal law barring U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials raises some intriguing questions. Chief among them: Which transactions by Las Vegas Sands and its far-flung subsidiaries are at issue? Adelson, one of the world’s […]

Lois Beckett and Suevon Lee have updated their earlier article at ProPublica. Although published earlier, it inadvertently serves as a canny intervention in the debate kicked off by Justice Antonin Scalia’s snarky comment that the Voting Rights Act extends ‘racial entitlement.’ Scalia is attempting to erase the history of voter suppression in the South. Oral […]

Bill Moyers and his guests look at how Wall Street has captured the government regulators that are supposed to be its watchdogs, how restaurant workers are underpaid, and generally how the super-wealthy are getting away with murder while the 99% have it stuck to them.

Jon Stewart at the Daily Show skewers Senate Republicans, especially Lindsey Graham and John McCain for holding up the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense over petty partisan politics. He points to their hypocrisy in having been uninterested in an investigation of the Iraq War fiasco but their odd conspiracy theories on the […]

Ruth Rosen writes at Tomdispatch.com: In 1968, the Phillip Morris Company launched a memorable campaign to sell Virginia Slims, a new brand of cigarettes targeting women, itself a new phenomenon.  It had a brand-new slogan: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”  The company plastered it on billboards nationwide and put it in TV ads that featured […]