Barack Obama’s DOJ finished its homework assignment: to tell the Courts how it will deal with all the men Bush detained. But it basically amounts to renaming the same authorities and powers Bush claimed.

The Treasury has been pouring money into AIG, which pours it right back out into the pockets of its derivative counterparties. How many of those counterparties want more of our money so they can reap huge profits from toxic waste?

In Family of Secrets, Russ Baker exposes many new details from the Bush family history. Those details may make you question what you know about US history.

I was on MSNBC last week trying to make this point, but I don’t think I made it as well as Ron Paul does — it’s easy to pick out salacious-sounding “earmarks” and harumph around in the press like you’re the pig that just found a giant truffle, but it really just obscures a much larger problem that progressives and libertarians agree on: there needs to be more transparency in government.

As Rick Williams said when I visited Break the Matrix to discuss recruiting Ron Paul Republicans for primary challenges, the talking points of FDL’s No More Dough Til We Know Where It Goes campaign could have come off a Ron Paul website. 

A couple weeks ago western North Carolina activist and blogger Gordon Smith of Scrutiny Hooligans penned an expose about what went wrong with the highest ranking local Democratic elected official in his area, Blue Dog Congressman Health Shuler. Two weeks later– yesterday, to be precise, Gordon officially announced his own campaign for city council in the biggest city in Shuler’s district, Asheville (population 90,000/greater metro area is 370,000). Today we’ve asked Gordon to join us at Firedoglake to talk about his grassroots efforts in the district and about transitioning from blogger/activist to actually running for office.

Yesterday, Tristan Anderson, 37, a member of the nonviolent International Solidarity Movement from Oakland, CA was shot in the head by the Israeli Defense Forces with a high velocity tear gas canister and is in critical condition with major injuries after surgery.

School district after school district is passing out the pink slips. We’re talking rich districts, poor districts, my district, your district. Hundreds of pink slips, thousands of pink slips, to teachers, administrators, librarians, teachers’ aides, custodians, cooks . . .

Now that the recount and the contest trial are over, I thought it was time to recognize those groups and individuals who made major contributions to the coverage of this story.

The trial part of Norm Coleman’s contest of Al Franken’s certification as the winner of the 2008 election for Norm’s old Senate seat is now over. The contest has now gone into the hands of the judges of the Election Contest Court, who will be spending the first part of next week having over a thousand rejected absentee ballots examined, opened, and otherwise handled to see if they can be added to the official vote count. If all goes well, they could have a ruling ready by this time next week.

This morning, I’m asking for your help. Those of you who’ve been around here a while know that this is my least favorite part of blogging, but here goes: I know this comes at a time when a lot of folks are struggling. But the same economy that’s caused budget uncertainty for a lot of folks?  It has also caused our ad revenues and donations to falter as well the last few weeks as everyone’s budget tightens up. Paying for hamster chow to keep the servers humming along nicely takes some money. We do try to keep things humming along at a snarky yet satisfying rate.