A year after the BP disaster erupted in the Gulf, Cherri Foytlin walked from her home in New Orleans to the White House, to let President Obama hear firsthand the suffering that continues to affect the residents of the Gulf Coast. Sadly, she couldn’t get an invitation to get past the gate. (Rubbing salt in her wounds — she got to watch Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles stroll past her on the sidewalk on their way inside.)

Meanwhile, BP and certain parts of the government continue to try to spin the news, limiting media access to heroic rescuers, limiting scientific access to spill sites, and otherwise trying to hide the record and avoid accountability.

Access. It’s the name of the game.

In what is likely to be just the first of several dissolutions of democratically elected city governments and school boards in Michigan, the Emergency Financial Manager of Benton Harbor, Joseph Harris, just took away all authority from the city’s elected government.

Why the sudden effort, in the midst of a long and intense budget fight, to poor-mouth Nancy Pelosi? And who’s behind it?

Even though I am not a vegetarian, I know we all have vegetarian friends, and sometimes it’s hard to find something good to feed them for holidays…

Beverly Sills — When The Bloom Is On The Sage, from episode 409 of The Muppet Show.

At any other time, this might have seemed like a pretty good couple of days for progressives.  The Democrats in the House of Representatives showed unusual unanimity today in opposing the social-Darwinist GOP budget devised by Paul Ryan. And after an abortive attempt earlier this month to throw a wrench into the Republican majority’s legislative [...]

President Obama appears to be considering decisive action, but opinion is divided on whether he can act unilaterally.

Now maybe the EPA will get more coal plants retired as soon as possible. This, incidentally, is why you don’t want their regulatory authority curtailed.

I get the feeling that we’re sitting on a ticking time bomb, and we’ll replay this all over again soon.

Last night, I was on BlogTalkRadio with former Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell talking about WikiLeaks, secrecy, and democracy. As a way to illustrate how the secrecy of diplomatic cables hides a great deal of undemocratic ideas, I raised the emphasis State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy placed in a hearing on WikiLeaks on State’s role in pitching US business.

I pointed out that WikiLeaks had revealed that our diplomats had proposed a “military-style trade war” to force Europeans to adopt Monsanto’s controversial products.