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The new budget put out by the Obama administration has been depicted by Republicans as a liberal wish list, filled with endless spending paid for by higher taxes.

Yesterday, the New York State Assembly voted overwhelmingly in support of paid family leave legislation. The bill was part of a package put forward by Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. And with its 84-40 passage, the old idea of providing workers paid time off to care for sick relatives or a new baby entered a new phase. Now, with Silver’s bill and another introduced by Sen.

Much of the rancor around why they opposed Debo Adegbile for heading the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been about Mumia Abu-Jamal. But it seems from their line of questioning that there’s also an agenda to undermine the Civil Rights Divisions’ duties to enforce voting rights and protect Americans against discrimination.

While increased federal spending for higher education faces an uphill battle in Congress, pressure is mounting from Democrats in Washington, D.C., to raise state appropriations for higher education.

"No one who works full-time should have to raise their children in poverty," Senator Barbara Boxer said. She was talking about raising the minimum wage during aspeech to the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition to citing the moral reason the federal minimum wage deserves a second look, she also made an economic argument. "When working people have a little more in their paychecks, they spend a little more in their communities. So that's what we're trying to do," she added.

For higher education and student debt, this year’s budget mostly includes proposals we’ve seen from the Obama administration in previous budgets, speeches, or elsewhere.

Shaun McCutcheon doesn’t like that there is a cap on the total amount of money that one person is permitted to contribute to federal candidates, parties, and political-action committees. And he is hoping that, someday soon, the Supreme Court will grant his wish by striking these limits when it rules on his case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.

Should moral judgment be stripped out of social policy? Eduardo Porter argues yes today in the New York Times, calling for an end to the demonization of deadbeat dads -- a stance he says hasn't worked and shifts attention away from the economic reasons that low-skilled men find it so hard to be effective breadwinners these days. 

Today, Senate Republicans and Democrats voted to block President Obama's pick for Justice Department Civil Rights Division head Debo Adegbile, the former lead attorney on voting rights for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Republicans opposed him mostly because of his involvement as an LDF lawyer in the appeal for the imprisoned human rights activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Adegbile's assistance in that case was filing a brief claiming that the jury in Abu-Jamal's trial—where he was convicted for killing a police officer—received improper instructions for their deliberations.