Only days after the Senate reached a tenuous compromise to preserve the judicial filibuster, it appears the first Supreme Court vacancy of the Bush era may be imminent. AP reports that Chief Justice Rehnquist is preparing to step down and that the White House is already preparing to nominate his successor. There is an emerging […]

This week the entire Oregon House Democratic membership rolled out its own group blog. In what looks like a first among the 50 states, the Oregon House Dems have jumped into the blogosphere, both raising their own visibility and Oregon residents' access to them. The Oregon House Dems deserve credit not only for adopting new […]

AP has reported that the Senate 12 have brokered an 11th hour deal to avert a showdown over the nuclear option. The deal announced by Senator John McCain preserves the Democrats right to filibuster, but gives Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor a vote on the Senate floor. If the early blogosphere feedback […]

Over at BlueOregon, there is much discussion about the ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court voiding the 3,000 same-sex weddings performed by Multnomah County. The Court's unanimous decision reflected the more complex landscape for marriage equality proponents in Oregon. Unfortunately but understandably, the Court concluded that Multnomah county officials did not have the authority to […]

The political clash over the tragedy of Terri Schiavo is highlighting once again the Achilles Heel of the conservative movement. Dormant for two presidential elections, the yawning chasm between economic and social conservatives is reemerging, and with it, a serious threat to the Republicans' majority status. As we've noted before, the ascendancy of the Right […]

Three critical points have been almost entirely absent from the media's discussion of the Terri Schiavo affair. I've written about two and others in the blogosphere have done a great job addressing the third: 1. Moral Arguments Favoring the End of Life Support A thorough discussion of the very strong moral arguments in favor of […]

Perrspectives is pleased to announced the expansion of its Resource Center. It offers Democrats, liberals and progressives of all stripes one-stop shopping for political news, polls, columnists, blogs, publications, think tanks, and other organizations. Perrspectives' Resources also include extensive online sources for budget, demographic, economic and electoral data. New additions include: Expanded library of demographic […]

Two recent news developments highlight once again the fallacy of "rational rejection" of the rights of gay Americans by social conservatives. In their ongoing quest to mask theology as social science, they have once run into the dual brick walls of the academy and the Supreme Court. The first instance of conservatives being "mugged by […]

Sometimes, a single day of news tells you everything to know about what is or what is to come. On April 2, 2004, for example, the New York Times featured no fewer than seven stories covering different scandals, deceptions, stone-walling and perversions of science by the Bush administration. November 9, 2004 is another one of […]

My wife and I have just completed “USA Road Trip 2004”, a month-long vacation around America. In our minivan, we drove from Boston to national parks and rural backwaters, sunny beaches and snow-capped mountains. Getting back in touch with America couldn’t have come at a better time. The Abu Garaib abuse scandal in Iraq left […]