Accountability is a foreign word for the Obama administration, unless you’re talking about walking away from an underwater mortgage.

So let me see if I have this straight: The White House’s official spokesman criticizes “the professional left” for pointing out that Obama has broken his promises on the public option, Medicare drug reimportation and price negotiation, EFCA, DADT, closing Gitmo, restoring government transparency and respect for the Constitution, challenging “the broken system in Washington” and, arguably, immigration and climate reform… and then tells us that Obama wants us to push for change and “hold him accountable”?

We will not get out of this recession until wages stop falling. And one way to ensure that happens is to make sure skilled craftsmen get paid a viable wage. Apparently, we have to start that fight right on White House grounds.

Who are the critics who hate Elizabeth Warren with the fiery passion of an economic meltdown?

After months of relative silence, House Democrats have finally begun to assert themselves on the issue of housing and foreclosures, which is directly harming millions of families and threatening economic recovery.

After the failure this week of an independently-run Afghan National Army mission, it’s obvious somebody’s gotta clean house in Afghanistan. But who’s it going to be, when Afghan president Hamid Karzai can’t get his parliamentary act together and International Security Assistance Force is trying to be more hands-off?

As expected, ProtectMarriage.com has filed an emergency stay of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in the Prop 8 trial with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The stay that Walker put on his ruling will expire on August 18 absent any action from the Ninth Circuit. Walker, who denied the stay motion to ProtectMarriage.com yesterday, doubted that the intervenors even had standing to appeal his ruling, even while they were allowed to argue the case in court.

It appears that “undecided” voters this year are primarily a group of people who really dislike both parties and the candidates put forth this election.

Like a lazy adolescent with senioritis, BP had been intimating that they might not need to finish up drilling the relief well that would permanently stop the Macondo well in the Gulf, arguing that the heavy drilling mud, cement and other containment strategies are holding. Admiral Thad Allen gave that idea the big no-go today.

I can tell you from personal experience that there are many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who would like to be able to speak as directly as Senator Gravel about ending prohibition as a way not only to deal with the problem of violence on the border but also the mounting immigration problem (well, maybe not quite as directly). But they’re all frightened of stepping into the middle of the culture wars.