Stephen Reader

We're not repudiating leadership on the end game, we're just saying, 'We were sent here with a mission, the mission was to reign in spending, and we are going to be more conservative ...

This is now a direct, full-scale intervention. The no-fly zone, I think even from the beginning it was clear, was going to essentially be a slippery slope into other things...It was a...

Taking Wisconsin as an example, several states seeking to close budget gaps have put collective bargaining rights for public employees on the table. Some Governors have also proposed ...

The bottom line is, 57 cancer deaths are anticipated for every 100,000 [people exposed.] Very low doses of radiation would not produce radiation sickness; it would produce a very tiny...

The reason I went to the floor is not only because I thought the agreement was extremely unfair. The main point is, America today has the most unequal distribution of wealth in any ma...

The earthquake and tsunami just overwhelmed these systems. They evacuated 180,000 people, and I think even senators like Joe Lieberman, who have been pretty favorably disposed to nucl...

Given that New York City is a coastal metropolis only a few dozen miles downriver from a nuclear power plant, the recent disaster in Japan raises some questions about what impact se...

The U.S. is a nation of immigrants; it has a social pact that is based on everybody coming and building a future together, so a high level of tolerance is required...In Europe, people...

There were obvious omissions from the witness stand. Namely, the Muslim community groups that were not called to sort of speak to the accusations against them, like CAIR. What people ...

»» WNYC's Arun Venugopal is live-blogging the hearings from Washington DC Thursday morning

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is set to hold a long-awaited (and for some, long-lamented) hearing on Muslim extremism in the United States Thursday. Specifically, the hearing will focus on what relationship, if any, exists between radical Islamists, American mosques and other domestic Muslim organizations.

Leading up to this week's hearings, a pro-Muslim demonstration was held in New York City on Sunday, where King was vilified for his insistence on such a hearing. However, another demonstration in favor of King's hearing was held at the same time, during which protesters said it was time for an inquiry into the activities of Muslim Americans.

The list of attendees for the Thursday hearing was released to the public on Monday. Here's a look at who is slated to speak.

One understands why lawmakers aren't chomping at the bit to rein in entitlement spending: it's clear that broad reform is necessary, that systemic change is needed, and that attempts ...

I think there are some bigger questions about what kind of foreign policy Barack Obama really believes in here. He doesn't want the U.S. to take direct military action without having ...

Remember how many schools and bridges and other things we have now were in fact built during the 1930s, done by the WPA. We could have been doing useful stuff. We had a lot of workers...

This week in politics, the biggest news is barely news. In the last days of February, reports surfaced that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was expected to announce the for...

They're demanding a new law to protect women from violence, and in fact they know they need democracy to do that work. They are focusing on these issues including the issue of democra...

He was not somebody who woke up one morning deciding to fleece everyone he knew and cared for. I frankly think that's true. He made hundreds of millions of dollars legitimately, which...

Our government does a lot of things, which is why the prospect of a shutdown to begin later this week can be so daunting and confusing. Basically, during a shutdown, federal agencies must freeze all non-essential services. How does each organization decide what's essential? And what does that word even mean to a government that rarely agrees on what's important?

A shutdown would be bad; hopefully, the budget battle doesn't come to that. Best to be prepared, so here's a rundown of how our government makes these difficult choices.

We're trying to move more patients, the more difficult, high cost ones—people with disabilities, people on long term care, with mental illness—to move these populations into various f...

[Prices] are not being moved by fundamentals. Supply is ample...What you have instead is a price being driven merely by the amount of money that flows into oil as an asset class, whic...

Popular wisdom, at least since February, tells us that Jon Huntsman, Jr., is now a threat to President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

On January 31, Huntsman tendered his resignation as U.S.  Ambassador to China, a position for which he was tapped by the current president. In 2009, Huntsman resigned as the Republican Governor of Utah in order to join the Obama administration in this capacity. During his tenure as Ambassador, reports indicated that Huntsman and the president got along well, enjoying a solid working relationship despite coming from opposite parties. His term as Ambassador does not officially end until April, but Huntsman got into hot water in February by attending an anti-government protest in Beijing and getting caught on video.

Now that the band is breaking up, Obama’s camp is worrying—quite publicly—that Huntsman may go solo.