Over the past week, the mainstream press in the United States has obsessively covered an embarassing incident where U.S. Secret Service agents allegedly employed prostitutes in advance of President Obama’s visit to Colombia. While this incident reflects poorly on the Secret Service and creates issues regarding security, there is a wider scandal that the media largely
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On the heels of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal has a new editorial bemoaning the pressure brought by activist groups on the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate law-writing front better known simply as ALEC. Thanks to efforts by a coalition of watchdog and civil rights activists, plus blogs like Republic Report, the public now knows
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As we’ve noted, one of the biggest problems in Washington is the level of secrecy in lobbying. Communications consultants, lawyers, fundraisers, and other political professionals produce public pressure campaigns and make back room deals without ever registering as lobbyists, so the public is constantly left in the dark about who is really shaping our government.
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Yesterday, SKDKnickerbocker’s Hilary Rosen set off a media frenzy by saying that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann Romney has never “worked a day in her life.” This set off calls for Rosen to apologize to Ann Romney, who chooses to be a stay at home mother. News reports and some critics of Rosen described her as
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Last week, ThinkProgress and DeSmogBlog published internal documents from the Heartland Institute. The files contained information about Heartland donors, as well as plans to develop a school curriculum for children that denied dangers of pollution and global warming. While the Heartland Institute advertises itself as a “free market” think tank, the documents suggest that the
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During the Super Bowl yesterday, the Center for Union Facts ran an ad in support for Senator Orrin Hatch’s “Employee Rights Act,” a bill that would make it much harder for workers to join unions, and easier for union-busting campaigns to decertify currently organized work places. The Center for Union Facts is one of two
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  The Washington Post Company seems on the verge of turning its flagship newspaper into a brochure for the company’s controversial, taxpayer-funded for-profit college division, Kaplan. The latest participant in this process is one of the world’s most accomplished men, Bill Gates. At a time when veterans groups, state attorneys general, and others are seeking reforms
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