Yet no one has investigated how this crisis happened. That is irresponsible. A comprehensive investigation is essential to prevent this from happening again.

The well-advertised differences between John McCain and Barack Obama on the war in Iraq may obscure a consequential similarity between their hawkish views on the use of American military force in other places.

The three so-called presidential debates-really parallel interviews by reporters chosen by the Obama and McCain campaigns are over and they are remarkable for two characteristic-convergence and avoidance.

Big Coal is paying close attention to what the presidential candidates are saying about keeping coal part of the U.S. energy mix.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted in favor of the environment only 18 percent of the time this year, according to the annual environmental scorecard by the League of Conservation Voters. But he still trumped Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who got a zero for missing every environmental vote.

Despite their differences over how to pursue the US war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan. Both are wrong. History cries out to them, but they are not listening.

Both parties in Congress played important roles in setting the stage for the ongoing financial meltdown. They did so in moves that reflected not just their ideological priorities, but also the wishes of special interests that have spent millions aggressively lobbying Washington and contributing to lawmakers' campaigns.

Black lung, mining safety, acid rain, global warming -- it's hard to imagine anyone denying those facts of life today. Harder still to imagine anyone denying that coal is dirty, and will ever be clean.

Let's open the debates and have a vigorous and honest discussion about where this country needs to go. It will not only make for better television, it will make for better democracy.

The Wall Street crisis of 2008 was the inevitable culmination of decades of neoliberal economic policy, which views free markets and deregulation as the solution to every problem. Investigative journalist Naomi Klein explains how this dangerous ideology took hold throughout US academia and government, and why the Wall Street crisis should be for neoliberalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for Soviet Communism.

[I]n his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are reviewing their support for allowing individuals to import cheaper prescription drugs...

It is the "dirty little secret in town," said one financial-services lobbyist -- that after lambasting lobbyists on the stump, the candidates need their counsel on how to respond to a crisis with origins too complicated for most industry outsiders to understand.

Barack Obama and John McCain both say they want to change Washington as part of their bids to win the White House. But the price of getting close to the candidates seems a lot like business as usual.

Obama is not only selling out our environment, but displaying political behavior that does not stand its ground.

"The short answer is no," said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center, when asked if Obama could pay for it all. "We're talking about massive tax cuts, significant new spending priorities, and down the road we have enormous economic challenges, particularly on healthcare. Anyone who did first-grade math should be able to figure that out."

FDR said in his 1933 inaugural address that confidence would be restored to the extent ``we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.'' But he isn't on the ticket this year. Does either of the 2008 candidates get it?

Paul said he's supporting the third-party candidates because the two major parties and media had "colluded" to avoid discussing issues and falsely presenting the difference between McCain and Obama as real.

But beneath the harsh rhetoric, the two candidates...seem to be moving toward consensus on their broad-brush strategies, an unexpected development in what was the most contentious issue in the presidential race four years ago.

"I don't think either candidate is treating the deficit, or the debt, seriously. And I don't see any proposals from either one that would make the situation any better," said Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan budget-watchdog organization.

Palin favored increased oil and gas drilling in sensitive lands and waterways, opposed federal action to list the polar bear as a species threatened with extinction and supports a controversial program to allow aerial shooting of wolves and bears as a means of predator control.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States continued spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined. Andrew Bacevich, author of "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism", questions whether the runaway spending actually makes America safer, and why candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties are swearing allegiance to the global "war on terror".

Holding one's breath while waiting for presidential candidates to address the gap between rich and poor is a sure way to asphyxiate.

Democrat Barack Obama has captured $9.6 million in donations from employees working for securities, mortgage and drug companies, compared with McCain's $6.6 million.

The campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) is declining to embrace McCain’s own 1998 tobacco bill, legislation that would have raised taxes to the tune of $516 billion over 25 years.

McCain has hired new advisers, and with them he seems to have worked out a new approach. He is no longer telling the sorts of hard truths that people would prefer not to confront, or even half-truths that they might find vaguely discomfiting. Instead, he's opted out of truth altogether.

As steam billowed out of two giant hourglass towers in the distance, John McCain visibly stepped up his support Tuesday for nuclear power, an embattled industry that he argues must be part of America's energy future.

This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them.

Barack Obama has presented himself to American voters as the candidate of change, but on a weeklong foreign trip that ends Saturday he sounded more like a traditionalist when it comes to foreign policy.

An Obama - McCain - Nader - Barr - McKinney debate would be less crowded than most of the Democratic or Republican primary debates, and much less crowded than the debates in the last French presidential election.

Government watchdog groups and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress credit McCain for helping to save taxpayer dollars and redirect funds to more pressing concerns.

If Obama and McCain are truly interested in changing Washington, they must both, in unequivocal terms, commit to public campaign financing.

The fact is, corporate Democrats have been unified all along, joined at the hip in grim determination to ultimately plant themselves so microscopically to the left of the Republicans that the voters' choice will be just a matter of personality and individual taste.

The presumptive Republican nominee for president and the leading contender for the Democratic nomination are exaggerating what's known about Iran's nuclear program as they duel over how best to deal with Tehran.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. "would serve as the model for my own nominees, if that responsibility falls to me,"

Sen. John McCain's campaign has announced that it is asking individuals to donate as much as about $70,000 to accounts that could help his campaign. The cap on donations to presidential candidates is $4,600 per election campaign.

[M]uch of what [McCain] detailed was a corporate special pleader's dream: a cut in the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent, a proposal to allow businesses to write off the cost of new equipment and technology from their taxes, a ban on Internet and new cellphone taxes, and a permanent tax credit for research and development.

Operatives gain expertise and contacts by promoting politicians, then they make money by advising clients on how to influence those politicians.

The Anheuser-Busch distribution plant stretches for acres, capped by a giant Budweiser sign gleaming in the desert sun. It is here that much of the fortune of Senator John McCain's family is made. His wife, Cindy, is chairwoman of the board. His son from his first marriage, Andrew, is chief financial officer. McCain himself once served as the company's chief publicist.

Just 12 months ago, Senator Barack Obama presented himself as an idealistic upstart taking on the Democratic fund-raising juggernaut behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign said Thursday that it stood by a year-old pledge made with Senator Barack Obama that each would accept public financing for the general election if the nominee of the opposing party did the same. But Mr. Obama’s campaign refused to reaffirm its earlier commitment.