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http://media.salon.com/2015/05/hillary_warren_de_blasio.jpgEarlier this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with a gaggle of bored reporters and some boldfaced names in the progressive movement, unveiled a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” Much like the media event that accompanied its unveiling, the agenda is supposed to be understood as a kind of 21st-century, liberal version of the storied “Contract with America,” the PR stunt that, as legend (erroneously) has it, rocketed Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party to power after the 1994 midterm elections. As my colleague Joan Walsh reported on Thursday, this backward-looking attempt to lay out a...

According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton told a group of her fundraisers that she will have a litmus test for her nominees to the Supreme Court (if she should win the presidency): they will have to agree with her that the 2010 Citizens United ruling must be overturned.  In that ruling the Supreme Court held that corporations have First Amendment rights to engage in political speech and to spend money on such speech.  In making her pledge, Mrs. Clinton follows Bernie Sanders, who is also running for president.If Republican critics of Mrs. Clinton wanted to be demagogues about it,...

Ah. It looks like Bill Clinton is in da house: 'Bill Clinton hopes to be Hillary Clinton’s First Man in the White House, but there’s a big ‘if” … if she invites him to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. ”If she wins the election, the chances are 100 percent that I’ll move back,” the former president told David Letterman Tuesday night on “The Late Show.” ”By the way, if I’m asked!” he added with a smile.' Ha-ha! Cracking jokes about cheating on your wife (because that’s what this all refers to of course): hilarious! Oh man, I can’t stop laughing....

The Wall Street Journal reported on the Stephanopoulos scandal on Friday, and found another national TV anchor in the database. “Judy Woodruff, the co-anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour, gave $250 in 2010 to the foundation’s aid efforts for victims of the Haiti earthquake.” She was a senior correspondent then, before Jim Lehrer retired. Woodruff initially recalled the donation as being for $1,000, but based the $250 amount as the one on her 2010 tax return. Woodruff tried to make it sound bipartisan: “I made the gift in response to an urgent joint appeal from former President Clinton and...

After a drunken game of Monopoly went awry, a woman picked up a planter and belted her male opponent in the head, say Saskatchewan police. RCMP officers arrested both of them in North Battleford, Sask. after receiving a 911 call at 3:44 a.m. Wednesday morning. The woman, 43, was then charged with assault with a weapon and breach of probation. “These two individuals that were involved in this incident — we’re very familiar with them, and we deal with them on a regular basis,” said Sgt. Amber Clark.

The 2016 presidential election is attracting an unusually large number of hopefuls. The Republicans will probably field more than a dozen candidates and the Democrats, as many as five. Presently, very few of these supposed contenders have a real chance of becoming president. Republicans Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz are long shots. On the Democratic side, that term applies to everyone but Hillary Rodham Clinton.. ~snip~ If you tell them in private, "You do not have a chance to be president," they will point to underdogs who won, such as Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, or front-runners who...

The Task Force offers a detailed and ambitious set of proposals that build on the recommendations adopted by the three governments at the Texas summit of March 2005.The Task Force’s central recommendation is the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity.Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America. Shared challenge of uneven economic development. A fast lane...

That the standards of transparency are seemingly higher for an NFL Super Bowl quarterback than for a former Secretary of State and presidential wannabe does not bode well for our republic nor speak well of the state of the so-called mainstream media. But the double standards regarding media treatment of Tom Brady versus Hillary Clinton are many and troubling. We should all be asking ourselves just why there is more concern and angst over Tom Brady’s use of slightly deflated footballs to get a better grip and improve his chances of winning a football game than regarding Hillary Clinton’s use...

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, addressed a gathering of Iranian teachers on May 6 who repeatedly responded to his address by chanting in unison: “Allah is great! Khamene’i is the leader! Death to the enemies of the leadership! Death to America! Death to England! Death to the hypocrites! Death to Israel!” According to an English-language transcript of the speech published by the BBC, the Iranian teachers interrupted the ayatollah with chants calling for death to America, England and Israel at three points in his speech. “We say that teachers carry out the task of the prophets; this is the...

A football player in Canada has been fined by both the Canadian Football League (CFL) and his team over anti-Semitic tweets, The Toronto Star reports. The CFL and the Montreal Alouettes fined defensive lineman Khalif Mitchell an undisclosed amount for “tweets violating the league’s social media policy”, according to the report. The CFL and the Alouettes began looking into Mitchell’s social media conduct after B’nai Brith Canada, the Jewish human rights advocacy group, alerted them to “hateful content” on his Twitter account. Mitchell recently tweeted a link to a 2015 YouTube video titled “The greatest lie ever told – The...

WINDSOR, Ont. - A new bridge between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit will be named after hockey legend Gordie Howe. Howe, who is now 87, was born in Floral, Sask., and came to be known as "Mr. Hockey." The still-to-be built Gordie Howe International Bridge is expected to be operational in 2020. The Windsor-Detroit corridor is the busiest commercial land crossing between the two countries and the border has long been a bottleneck. Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the announcement today along with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder at the river separating Canada and the U.S. Harper praised Howe as a proud...

ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos donated $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, records show. The contribution is publicly available information, but the host had not previously disclosed it to ABC viewers, despite taking part in on-air discussions about the Clinton Foundation and its controversial relationship with foreign donors. Stephanopoulos, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, confirmed the donation to POLITICO’s Dylan Byers after the Free Beacon contacted ABC News for comment. The host, who acknowledged making two donations of $25,000 between 2013 and 2014, issued a statement of apology for failing to disclose his contributions. Stephanopoulos’s...

The Royal Canadian Air Force is saddened to learn of the death of Arthur Francis (“Art”) Sherwin, former honorary colonel of 426 Transport Training Squadron, which is located at 8 Wing Trenton, Ontario. “Arthur was a pleasant and caring gentleman, who embraced his role as honorary colonel of 426 Squadron,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Ryan Deming, 426 “Thunderbird” Squadron’s commanding officer. “He took every opportunity to engage and speak with squadron members, epitomizing the values and ethos of the RCAF. “His life experience, particularly during the Second World War, was inspiring to the Thunderbird family. His presence will be missed.” Honorary Colonel...

A number of foreign donors pledged new support for Clinton Foundation efforts during a conference in Marrakech last week, raising questions about the strength of Hillary Clinton's campaign promise to cut off foreign donations to her family philanthropy while she runs for president. The Kingdom of Morocco was among the foreign entities that committed to new projects at the Clinton Global Initiative event, which drew dozens of big-ticket donors to the country for a three-day meeting headlined by Bill Clinton. Hillary was slated to attend the Marrakech conference before her name was quietly removed from the schedule earlier this year...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is getting more firepower to help with damage control. Politico writes Correct the Record, an outside rapid response and research group dedicated to defending the records of Clinton and other Democratic presidential candidates, is reorganizing so it can coordinate with the former secretary of state’s campaign and devote all its resources to her. Correct the Record is splitting off from its parent organization American Bridge 21st Century, and will register with the Federal Election Commission as a stand-alone super PAC.

Toronto police identified a body found in the water near the city’s Beaches neighborhood as that of missing Morgan Stanley sales trader Murray Abbott. ...

This weekend, a dozen Republican presidential hopefuls showed up at the South Carolina Freedom Summit. They were there to court primary voters who will winnow the presidential field next February. Judging from the speeches, it’s going to be an ugly race. What the candidates are selling, and primary voters are buying, is vituperation against people who don’t look, talk, or pray like the Republican base.............. [SNIP of stuff that sounds good to me - Santorum was on fire] ...............Mexicans, Muslims, gays, rats, roaches. Christian superiority, military contempt for the president, and gauntlets thrown down to queer-loving CEOs. It’s going to...

NEW YORK – A prominent lawyer and a top government watchdog in the nation’s capital are calling for the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation to be shut down as a Wall Street analyst prepares to issue a second report documenting what he believes is systematic financial fraud warranting a criminal investigation. Wall Street analyst and investor Charles Ortel, in his first report of his in-depth probe of the Clinton Foundation, found what he characterizes as an elaborate system devised by the Clintons to enrich themselves through schemes such as skimming tens of millions of dollars from U.N. levies imposed...

Welcome to day 29 of the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign! In those 29 days -- including April 12, the day she announced, and today -- Clinton has taken a total of eight questions from the press. That breaks out to roughly one question every 3.6 days. Of late, she's taken even fewer questions than that.