Donna Cooper: Ineffective and Unfair: Conservatives target preventive health care for the ax

  It seems we’ve entered the season of shortsighted thinking. With 50.7 million uninsured Americans, Republicans are on a rampage to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Adding insult to injury, the most recent House Republican plan to cut the federal budget deficit this fiscal year took a scalpel to $10 billion in federal grants that provide health care to indigent women and children, slashing $2 billion in federal funding that is bound to have very expensive consequences.

Gary Palmer: Excessive government spending is a bi-partisan problem

  It is time for Republicans in Congress to cut federal spending as promised and keep faith with the voters who put them back in the majority.

  According to a report released on February 8th from Rasmussen Reports, 1954 was the last time government spending in the U.S. declined in one year's time. Federal, state and local governments alike are now reaping the consequences of decades of excessive spending and poor stewardship of taxpayers' money. Unlike the federal government that can print more money, state and local governments are being forced to balance budgets or risk going bankrupt. In a February 7th article, The Wall Street Journal reported that "Governors around the U.S. are proposing to balance their state's budgets with a long list of cuts and almost no new taxes, reflecting a goal by politicians from both parties to erase deficits chiefly by shrinking government. So, if states can do it, why can't the federal government?"

  That is a good question that Democrats and Republicans alike should have to answer.

Senator Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches # 1235

  History is powerful. It tells us that which once seemed impossible became possible, then probable, then reality. It also tells us that which seems impossible now, can become possible, then probable, then reality. History is a road map of the past and of overcoming. If we use history, it becomes a guide to the future and a force for our coming new challenges. Black history is also history and therefore powerful in the same way.

  I speak a good bit throughout the year but I speak more in February than in any three months put together. That’s because it’s Black History Month. I have speeches scheduled for February in the following places: Monroeville; Butler; Gadsden; Albany, GA; Jacksonville, AL; Montgomery; Selma; Huntsville; two in Lowndes County, Burkeville and Fort Deposit; and two in Greene County. A couple of these are not strictly about Black history but become about Black history anyway. I try to respond to every February speech request because Black history is that important.

Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: Surveying the new "ethical" landscape

  The first legislative regular session of the quadrennium is looming. Our new Republican led majority House and Senate will convene on March 1 for the four month 2001 session. There are a good many GOP freshmen in the group. However, they are no longer greenhorns. They have an organizational and special session under their belts.

  The sweeping and significant overhaul of our state ethics laws passed by these legislators shortly after they were elected may very well be looked at four years from now as their hallmark accomplishment of this term. This ethics reform legislation passed by this GOP led legislature will change the culture of Montgomery.

Sheldon Richman: The Unraveling of U.S. Mideast Policy

  The blow to U.S. foreign policy by the popular uprising in Egypt cannot be overstated. The Egyptians’ demand that Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt with an iron hand and billions of American taxpayer dollars, step down is unquestionably a major setback to the U.S. governing class and its plans for the Middle East. Since the end of World War II, critics of U.S. policy have warned that defying the people of the region in favor of authoritarian ruling elites was doomed to failure. As things now begin to unravel, we see that those critics were right.

  President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say they support the aspirations of the Egyptian people. Previous officials have said that too. But let’s be clear. American officials support those aspirations only so long as they do not impede U.S. policy. Those officials are smart enough to know that if the Egyptian people have no way to let off steam, the lid will blow. So when the president says he supports reform, he means reform no deeper than necessary to take pressure off whatever the U.S. government regards as important.

Charles C. Haynes: County can uphold religious freedom by taking Commandments down

  It’s not every day that a school board votes unanimously to ignore legal advice, defy Supreme Court precedent and invite litigation.

  But that’s exactly what happened earlier this month in Giles County, Va., when members of the board ordered school administrators to hang the Ten Commandments on the walls of the county’s five public schools.

  Rehang, actually. Until December 2010, framed copies of the Decalogue had been displayed in schools alongside copies of the Constitution for more than 10 years. Following a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the district’s superintendent (on the recommendation of counsel) took the commandments down.

Michael Ettlinger, Adam Hersh: There are foolish things to defund in the federal budget

  What do we have to do, be hit on the head with a brick before we regulate financial markets? Well, actually, we already did get hit on the head with a brick—or the economic equivalent thereof—the worst recession since the Great Depression due in large part to the negligent supervision of our financial markets by regulators during the George W. Bush administration. And yet, there’s serious talk about nipping new regulatory enforcement in the bud by starving the implementing agencies of funds. How many bricks is this going to take?

  For all its failings, Congress doesn’t like getting hit in the head by economic bricks. So, voila! In 2010 Congress went through a very painful process of passing financial market regulatory reform. The representatives of Wall Street, however, did their best to make the regulation as weak as possible. The resulting legislation isn’t perfect—arguably, it didn’t go far enough or put authority in all the right places—but there is no serious question that it’s way better than the brick-inviting system that existed before.

Ian MacIsaac: Health Care: The American Political Soap Opera, Vol. 612—A Dispatch from Sunny Florida!

   The situation has gone to hell down in Florida! While the rest of us were busy discovering where Tunisia was on a map and learning about Egyptian politics for the first time since the pharaohs, the courts in Florida were busy initiating the very early stages of a high-level legal fuckaround involving the Obama administration’s 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: specifically, the part of the law that requires all Americans to purchase (hopefully cheaper-than-before) health insurance by 2014. A Florida judge named Robert Vinson has just ruled the health care bill unconstitutional on the basis of this provision. The Justice Department is sending the case to the 11th Court of Appeals, but either way they rule someone will petition the 11th Court’s ruling. From there this bugger’s got nowhere to go but right on up to the highly conservative US Supreme Court, which is a Big Deal for all of us and a Bad Deal for the Democrats and the Obama administration, which does not have a numerical majority of close friends on the SCOTUS. Yep, now only a matter of a nice pointless pre-SCOTUS show trial, a few months, and lots of wasted money and angry lawyers. Ho ho. God Bless America.

Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: From Hill to Hubbard

  The overwhelming Republican tidal wave that engulfed the South in November basically washed away every white conservative Democrat in the region. The most conservative Blue Dog Congressional Democrats bit the dust from Texas to Georgia, including Alabama.

  However, there was one anomaly. In Montgomery a young ardent and earnest Democrat named Joe Hubbard defeated a Republican to win a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. He was one of only a handful of Democrats nationwide to unseat a Republican in a legislative seat.

Edwin Feulner, Ph.D.: Still not making the grade

  “I’ve seen the people at 4 o’clock in the morning, waiting, hoping that they would win a seat for their child in a better school. This is not fair. Parents deserve more choices.”

  That’s Bill Cosby, voicing his support for National School Choice Week. His words capture the real issue at stake here: Too many children are being robbed of a good education. And their parents, despite a desperate desire to change that situation, feel helpless. They’re stuck with whatever the local public school gives them.

  Now, many communities across the country are blessed with good public schools and caring teachers. But many other kids, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, are not. For those who are unfortunate enough to grow up in these areas, going to school is an ordeal, not an opportunity.