Senior campaign officials said Mr Obama...will also appoint at least two Republicans to senior cabinet positions.

If you worked at Saturday Night Live and had to construct a parody of what Republican wing nuts might come up with as a solution to the current financial crisis, you simply couldn't do better than the loopy plan served up by House Republicans this week.

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that today's presidential debates are tightly controlled by a private corporation that was founded by Democratic and Republican party bosses in order to stifle competition. The Commission on Presidential Debates is thoroughly corrupt, from the well-connected lobbyists who run it to its sponsorship by big-money corporate interests and its undemocratic exclusion of independent voices.

"Both the Republicans and Democrats have given the financial services industry everything it wanted. The finance sector has endless amounts of money to influence politics and can outgun the bank regulators every time."

When the Democratic Party holds its convention the week after next, members of Congress will be able to hear singer Kanye West at an all-expenses paid party sponsored by the recording industry.

Many adults in the U.S. are voicing support for a new option in the country's political scene. 56 per cent of respondents believe the U.S. should have a third major political party in addition to the Democrats and Republicans, up six points since June 2004.

More than a year after Congress pledged to curb pork barrel funding known as earmarks, lawmakers are gearing up for another spending binge, directing billions toward organizations and companies in their home districts.

The Democratic and Republican conclaves this summer in Denver and St. Paul, Minn., will be financed overwhelmingly by private money from some of the nation's largest corporations...

America's founders, it turns out, were not as smart as we thought. They assumed that Members of Congress would do their duty and prevent an American president from acting as though he were king.

The U.S. has been on a madcap spending spree on wars and weapons having little, if anything, to do with combating terrorism, nothing to do with the imaginary threat from China and everything to do with sustaining an enormously bloated defense industry.

Former Bush press secretary writes that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

No plans for Memorial Day? Then hurry: Seats are still available for one of the best, not-to-be-missed congressional delegations of the spring season -- featuring a night at the opera -- "Tosca," of course -- in Venice!

Five former U.S. secretaries of State on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran.

The Senate handed Bush a major victory by voting to broaden the government's spy powers and to give protection to phone companies that cooperated in his program of eavesdropping without warrants.

The $3.1-trillion fiscal 2009 budget proposal represents Bush's last chance to establish his legacy. Unfortunately, it will be one of massive deficit spending that will be paid for by generations to come.

The electorate does not want simply a change in leadership; for the Democrats to take over the White House or the Republicans to take control of Congress. Rather, they want something new and different; they want an independent candidate to run for president.

We are left with corporatized, conservative compromisers who add mightily to the argument that the Democratic Party should be forced to change its name to end the consumer fraud it purveys. What should we do about it?

It was the new Democratic majority's inability to work across the aisle that ultimately ensured failure. Like the Republicans they had replaced, senior Democrats chose confrontation over cooperation.

The Senate (reportedly still under Democratic control) seems determined to help President Bush violate Americans' civil liberties and undermine the constitutional separation of powers. Majority Leader Harry Reid is supporting White House-backed legislation that would expand the administration's ability to spy on Americans without court supervision...

President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.

And the worst of it is that the Democrats, who should have been in a strong position -- does this administration have any credibility left on economic policy? -- appear to have caved in almost completely.

Let's face it: Every single presidential candidate with a veritable chance at victory, Democrat and Republican, is in the hip pocket of King Coal.

E-mail messages sent and received by White House personnel during the first three years of the Bush administration were routinely recorded on tapes that were "recycled," the White House's chief information officer said in a court filing this week.

Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.

In April 2006, a federal judge upheld Indiana’s law on voter identification, the strictest in the nation, saying there was no evidence that it would prevent any voter from having his ballot counted.

President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

President Bush may soon have a new reason to avoid left-leaning Vermont: in one town, activists want him subject to arrest for war crimes.

The Senate appears poised to hand the White House another victory with a measure that would make permanent an expansion of government spy powers and shield phone companies from liability for assisting government eavesdropping.

The US was accused last night of trying to derail a global agreement on climate change by proposing that it becomes a voluntary agreement where countries set their own targets and timetables for reduction of greenhouse gases, rather than a legally binding one.

The Bush administration signaled that it would probably keep billions flowing to Pakistan's military, despite the detention of human rights advocates and opposition leaders by Gen. Musharraf.