The Feed

On Thursday night, Mitt Romney officially accepted his party’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate. Although Romney has been the GOP’s presumptive nominee since late April, the delegate roll call at the convention this week made it official. There were more than 2,000 delegates — men and women of all ages and backgrounds, from all 50 states, the District ...

When, if ever, should the executive decline to defend in court a federal law it has concluded to be unconstitutional, and yet still enforce that same statute? The question is presented by the Obama Administration’s decision to enforce, but not defend in court, Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”). But the DOMA ...

In the space of two weeks, two different courts have come to two different results in evaluating the legality of two similar voter identification laws. In Pennsylvania, a state trial judge upheld the newly enacted voter ID law under the state’s constitution, while Thursday in Washington, a federal panel rejected Texas’ similar ID law under ...

Americans are rightly concerned about significant sums of corporate campaign cash capturing their elected representatives. Even more troubling, though less reported, is the flood of campaign money that has poured into elections for state court justices over the last two decades. Judges are supposed to be independent, fair arbiters of justice. In the Citizens United era, however, ...

Austerity is now “in fashion,” as governments respond to the revenue shortfalls of the crisis through deficit reduction plans and fiscal stability pacts, and economists blame it on the profligate spending of households and countries. Consumers, they say, bought houses they could not afford and countries consumed more than they produced, while loose monetary policies made this spending ...

Look behind the pomp and circumstance of the conventions and you’ll quickly discover the naked auctioning of our democracy. A marathon of invitation-only, lavish events sponsored by the one percent. Politicians and super-lobbyists grinning and gripping each other along with bottomless booze, jumbo shrimp, and billions of dollars in campaign, Super PAC and secret contributions. ...

During Mitt Romney’s time at its helm, Bain Capital cleverly invested in, and made enormous profits from, companies that The Washington Post describes as “pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components.” Where pioneers have gone, settlers have followed. Today, outsourcing by the country’s largest multinational corporations has become ...

Today, Ghana’s President John Mahama, UK Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell and I travelled to northern Ghana to announce a new five-year development program for one of the poorest regions of West Africa. Our hope is that through public leadership, community participation, cutting-edge technologies, and private investments, the region will slash poverty, hunger and disease ...

In 1852, Frederick Douglas spoke these words to express the sentiments of the American Slave to an audience observing Independence Day. Now, 170 years later, these same words could reflect the feelings of hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania residents on Election Day who will have their rights suppressed because of new voter suppression laws. This ...

“We have exposure across numerous strategies, which could have been affected for the positive and the negative,” said Anne Simpson, head of governance at Calpers. “Meanwhile, we await the regulatory investigations, which will drive the outcome.” The large banks ensnared in the world-wide probe of interest-rate manipulation also might have suffered losses given their sprawling ...