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When a new Administration comes to Washington, the media devotes a lot of resources to coverage of appointees to Cabinet-level positions. The American public quickly gets a pretty good idea about who theseofficials are, what they have done and what they might do as key members of an incoming Administration. Unfortunately, this same media scrutiny…

Sometimes, you can’t tell the Washington players by the color of their jerseys. For decades, the Republicans have laid claim to the title as the “tough on crime” party. Now, a report issued by the Justice Policy Institute finds it’s not the Republicans, but the Democrats’ recently departed President Clinton who has title to what…

Grover G. Norquist, chairman of the Reagan Legacy Project, is a man with a rapid mission. He and his colleagues want to place the former president’s name on one location after another, while the ailing Gipper is still alive and accorded public sympathy for his condition. For once Reagan passes, he joins other deceased Presidents…

Congress is in a twitter about the Internet. Bills are pouring into the legislative hopper regarding issues of privacy, taxation of sales, wiring schools to the information highway, identity theft, spammers sending unsolicited e-mail advertisements and online gambling. Last month, the Council for Excellence in Government released a plan for “achieving full electronic government in…

As a state dominated by the oil and gas industry and other large corporations, Texas has generated little excitement about government reforms. That’s changing, and much of the credit goes to the bright light that a public interest group, Texans for Public Justice (TPJ), has focused on the state’s judiciary, legislature and the governor’s office.…

There can be no vibrant American democracy without a vibrant labor union movement. Unions enable working people to band together to enliven our modest political democracy and they are by far the most important institution working to infuse at least a modicum of the nation’s democratic values into the economic sphere. Whatever their limitations and…

President Bush may not realize it, but moderate and liberal members of Congress could save him a lot of grief if they voted down or sharply modified the Administration’s proposal for a massive tax cut. Fueled by the excess of campaign promises, the President’s $1.6 trillion tax cut threatens to return the nation to the…

When Bill Clinton headed out of town last month, political pundits were anointing the former President as Washington’s master politician. Perhaps not the most ethical, but the most skilled was a near unanimousverdict. Did these pundits overlook Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chairman who has had everyone from right wing conservatives to staunch liberals sitting…