Senate Republicans block minimum wage hike  —  Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked the Democrats from fulfilling a campaign promise to increase the federal minimum wage, demanding that the pay hike include tax relief for small business.  —  On a vote of 54-43, Democrats fell six short …

Big States' Plan for Earlier Primaries Scrambles Race  —  As many as four big states — California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey — are likely to move up their 2008 presidential primaries to early next February, further upending an already unsettled nominating process and forcing candidates …

The Money Just Wasn't There for Kerry  —  As John Kerry just found out, $13 million is sometimes not enough.  —  That amount, which the senator from Massachusetts still had on hand after running for the presidency four years ago as the Democratic nominee, is only a fraction …

Outrage Over Texas College MLK Day Party  —  Event featured Aunt Jemima, gang apparel, fried chicken, malt liquor  —  Students at a Texas college threw a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that featured attendees wearing gang apparel and Afro wigs, carrying malt liquor, handguns, and fried chicken …

Senators-in-Chief  —  Congress has no Constitutional power to micromanage a war.  —  To understand why the Founders put war powers in the hands of the Presidency, look no further than the current spectacle in Congress on Iraq.  What we are witnessing is a Federalist Papers illustration …

Turnaround in Baghdad  —  There has been a flurry of press reports recently about insurgents battling American and Iraqi security forces on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and around the rural town of Buhruz in Diyala Province.  These same insurgents also claimed to have shot down a Black Hawk helicopter near Buhruz.

Incomes and Inequality: What the Numbers Don't Tell Us  —  The growing inequality in wealth and income has led many people to question whether the contemporary American economy is rigged in favor of the rich.  While there is little doubt that the gap between the wealthy and everybody else …

HALFWAY MEASURES....I don't want to jump all over Barack Obama before he has a chance to present his ideas in a serious way, but can I just say that I found his healthcare speech today distinctly underwhelming?  He starts out with his trademark high-flown rhetoric ("Plans that tinker …

2008: Hillary vs McCain?  —  Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner to win the Democratic party's nomination for President in 2008, but the Republican race will be a close contest between Senator John McCain and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani — with McCain edging Giuliani by a three- to four-point margin.

Congress's Iraq Quagmire  —  ON TUESDAY nearly every member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warmly endorsed Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, and a number wished him success or "Godspeed" in his mission.  Yesterday some of the same senators voted …

Hillary in Blogistan: On Blogads, The Netroots and Peter Daou  —  Hillary Clinton did not wait long after her weekend presidential campaign announcement to step foot in the blogosphere: By Monday her technically fledgling but long-assumed campaign had a major step toward engaging web users …

INTERVIEW-U.N. climate report will shock the world -chairman  —  Source: Reuters  —  A forthcoming U.N. report on climate change will provide the most credible evidence yet of a human link to global warming and hopefully shock the world into taking more action, the panel's chairman said on Thursday.

Blue America: A Chat with Senator Dodd, Part II  —  Yesterday Senator Chris Dodd refused to back down when Beltway Establishment symbolism and nonbinding advocate Joe Biden tried to pressure him to withdraw his legislation to force Bush to ask Congress for permission to escalate his war in Iraq.

New Trend on The Rise: the Patriotic Terrorist  —  Whenever I visit this lovely blog, I usually run into someone - a "leftist," if you will - who finds pleasure in things that make our country or the President look bad.  I suppose I could say these angry types are no better than cheerleaders for terrorism.

Helping Lara Logan  —  Sometimes it's hard to swim in the mainstream.  —  There has been much heated debate over the past few years over media coverage of the Iraq War.  The Bush administration has repeatedly attacked the 'liberal bias' of the mainstream news industry …

Vice President Cheney on CNN  —  WOLF BLITZER, CNN: And joining us now, the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney.  Mr. Vice President, thanks very much for doing this.  —  VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: It's good to see you again, Wolf.  —  BLITZER: We heard the President mention …

Otto Frank's Letters Discovered  —  Two summers ago, Estelle Guzik, a volunteer archivist at New York City's YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, came across a curious file previously not indexed: a cache of letters written by Anne Frank's father, Otto.  The roughly 80 documents …

Who Was Milton Friedman?  —  1.  —  The history of economic thought in the twentieth century is a bit like the history of Christianity in the sixteenth century.  Until John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936, economics …

Rumsfeld's transition raises questions  —  Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department.  —  On Jan. 4, Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said.

Run, Al, Run  —  The ideal candidate for the Democrats may be the man who won the popular vote in 2000 — and who opposed the war in Iraq from the very start  —  A stiff Vice President campaigns on his administration's legacy of unprecedented prosperity.  Looks terrible on TV.

Obama's Appeal to Blacks Remains an Open Question  —  CHICAGO — Looking around at the overwhelmingly white audience that was applauding Sen. Barack Obama's luncheon speech on Iraq at a downtown hotel recently, the Rev. B. Herbert Martin expressed both satisfaction and concern.

Bush Plans New Focus On Afghan Recovery  —  Extra $7 Billion Would Go to Security, Roads  —  After the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion, the Bush administration is preparing a series of new military, economic and political initiatives aimed partly at preempting …