Sean Eldridge, the 26 year-old husband of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, has filed paperwork to run as a Democratic candidate in New York’s 19th district, currently represented by two-term Republican incumbent Chris Gibson.

Vermont may soon follow its New England neighbors in decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana. A tri-partisan bill has recently been introduced in the state House that would make the penalty for adults caught with less than two ounces of marijuana simply a $100 fine. A similar bill was also introduced in the state Senate but it would set the limit at one ounce.

As I pointed out last week, there has now been a three year trend of Medicare per beneficiary spending growing at a very slow rate. These three years of slow growth have already produce substantial reductions in the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s new budget outlook.

Last night Yoko Ono presented the 2013 Courage Award to Julian Assange, who accepted in absentia in New York.

The reason the United States spends so much more on health care than the rest of the world is not because Americans tend to consume significantly more health care services. The problem is almost entire that we pay dramatically more for the exact same service. The data is overwhelmingly clear but the point is rarely mentioned in the media and almost never in Congress.

Today, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) named William ‘Mo’ Cowan as the interim Senator for the state. Cowan previously worked as Deval’s chief of staff and will be one of the few African Americans to have ever serve in the United State Senate.

Fresh off of victory and his second inauguration President Obama has seen his job approval rating soar to the highest it has been since the beginning of his first term. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll 60 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing and 37 percent disapprove. Obama’s approval rating had been struck around 50 percent for the last few years but has increased significantly in recent months.

The push for a mythic $4 trillion package has been used to advocate for some idiotic policies and the adoption of a host of recent austerity measures. It is possible though that this goal has already been reached, yet almost no one in the media seems to acknowledge it.

Welcome to Data Privacy Day! To celebrate the fact that, well, we don’t have very much….

A bipartisan group of eight Senators have endorsed an outline for immigration reform, greatly improving the chances of something passing this term.