In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino has just published an excellent account of the Pecora Hearings, the shorthand name given to the hearings of the Senate Banking Committe in February 1933, during the waning moments of the Hoover administration. The hearings were named not for the committee chairman, the well-motivated but less-than-charismatic chairman …
Nothing is going to get done about the abuses in Congressional redistricting that almost certainly going to take place next year, especially now that the GOP has seized the whip hand in so many states with victories in gubernatorial and state legislature races. As Aaron Blake reported yesterday in The Washington Post, “When the next …
There is no shortage of self-analysis about America’s position, insightful and otherwise, especially this week. Sometimes the views of other can offer an altogether helathful shock. The German news magazine Der Spiegel this week offers a lengthy cover story called “A Superpower in Decline: Is the American Dream Over?” Some of their observations: “The fall …
On the heels of last night’s big Republican wins in the midterm elections (control of the House, several more Senate seats, a whole bunch of governorships and state legislatures), there is a kind of reasoning going on this morning that follows this line: people didn’t like the health care bill, therefore they didn’t like big …