A new report from Labor Professor John Logan and American Rights at Work details multiple violations of the law by T-Mobile, recurring intimidation of employees, and what one employee called a “culture of fear” preventing employees from joining together in a union. Of course, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) handed the company one of its most harsh penalties: forcing the company to post a flier and promise not to break the law again.

Eric Holder came to NYC this week. He met with the NYPD, the FBI, the US Attorney’s Office and the US Marshals Service. Lower Manhattan in a post-9/11 world is a hardened target. Very hardened. I suspect he came away very impressed by the changes that have taken place in NYC in recent years.

Barney Frank is one of the most well-known members of the United States Congress. His sharp wit and even sharper tongue provides the media, pundits, and political observers with a seemingly endless supply of one-liners that Sarah Palin only wishes she could deliver.

Nearly everyone refers to him simply as Barney. He’s become one of those politicians who is so well branded that the entire world seems to be on a first name basis. It’s a rare status in the political world but one that is well deserved in his case.

Lois Herr has a message for all of you helping to defend reproductive choice by phone banking and spreading the word through One Voice For Choice:

“Don’t forget it’s Stupak/PITTS – I’m the one running against him in PA-16 and I want everyone to know that there’s a radical Republican co-sponsor who should lose his seat over this.”

She’s right. Most of us forget that the Stupak/Pitts amendment’s true author was Joe Pitts, who has one of the most radical, anti-choice records in congress.

No, Olympia Snowe didn’t come up with the idea for triggers. Why are people who write online so challenged in a Google world?

On CBS’s Face the Nation, Senators Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mitch McConnell and Jay Rockefeller illustrated that there is no possibility of a decent health reform bill passing in the dysfunctional US Senate until they blow up its undemocratic rules.

Why do smart Republicans like Senator Bob Corker forget everything they know about the financial markets when they get to Washington? There really isn’t any hope for bipartisanship in financial matters if he can’t see the need for change.

Those of us who pursue a progressive vision of America’s future are disappointed so far in Barack Obama. We should keep in mind, however, that neither America nor any other nation has achieved anything near our hopes for political equality and economic justice. The changes we are fighting for, changes some naively felt simply came Obama’s victory, would be unique in human history. In my own case, the hoped for changes are, after all, utopian, a word that comes from the Greek for “no place.”

With the renomination of the current Federal Reserve chairman meeting some opposition, now is the time to start thinking about who might be a good replacement.

For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.

I’ve been saying for a while that when everything finally unravels, it will probably be revealed that Citibank has been playing the same function as BCCI–the bank that served as the means for organized crime, terrorists, and the CIA to launder money in the 80s–once did.