Media

Professional football has a big, big problem on its hands, and I'm not talking about the lockout that is jeopardizing the 2011 season.

Dave Duerson was once a world-class athlete, a perfect physical specimen whose pro football career included Super Bowl championships with the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. Friends and former teammates would tell you that he was also a bright guy — a graduate of Notre Dame with a degree in economics and, at least for awhile, a successful businessman.

When CenturyTel, a Louisiana-based phone service provider, merged with Embarq last year, the state Rate Counsel hammered out an agreement with CenturyTel that required the company to invest heavily in capital improvements over the four years following the deal.

Creative ideas regarding energy, education, jobs and so forth have trouble even getting a hearing.

The United States is not racked with the turmoil that is shaking the Arab world, or the tragic devastation that has hit Japan. We are not in a state of emergency. We’re in a moment when it is possible to look thoughtfully at the American landscape and take rational steps to ensure a better, more sustainable future.

Just a Prelude to the Real Fight, Robert Hiltonsmith writes at The American Prospect. What Republicans really want to cut is Social Security and Medicare, he writes.

As Michael Lipsky explained today, "One would think it hard to find a politician who opposes reducing preventable dangers to children. [Pompeo] has stepped up to this challenge."

There is an April 6th hearing on the Democrat’s appeal of the Indiana Recount decision that allowed White to proceed as Secretary of State. The next question, apart from the allegations in the indictment, is whether White was eligible to be on the ballot at all.

You’ll find the Indiana Democratic Party’s “Brief in Support of Reversal of Indiana Recount Commission” (pdf) at the Indiana Law Blog.

NEW YORK – As budget debates continue to play out at the state level, it is apparent that Americans everywhere are still suffering from the long-tail of the recession and need jobs, not austerity measures that will likely reverse emergent economic gains. A new report by the policy center Demos addresses this need head-on, calling for an affordable and efficient federal jobs program that could meet critical community and national needs while providing meaningful employment for millions of people who lost their jobs in the Great Recession. 

To focus an investigative spotlight on an entire religious or ethnic community is a violation of everything America is supposed to stand for.

It has often been the case in America that specific religions, races and ethnic groups have been singled out for discrimination, demonization, incarceration and worse. But there have always been people willing to stand up boldly and courageously against such injustice. Their efforts are needed again now.

Reflecting on the current anti-government sentiment, Patrick Bresette—Associate Program Director of Public Works: The Dēmos Center for the Public Sector— calls for a need to rebuild trust in government by rebuilding trust in each other: finding shared goals, identifying common purposes and promoting the belief that problems can be addressed together.