Stephen Reader

This is Egypt focusing on Egypt. Yes, Mubarak has been one of the major allies of US administrations for decades now, and they knew very well that he was a dictator and ran a police s...

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City Saturday, calling for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. They were optim...

All of them have one common denominator, which is injustice, social injustice. All of those regimes had privileged certain groups in society and amassed wealth through illegal means...

By all measures, President Obama began his 2012 campaign on Tuesday night. He used big numbers—not just ones with dollar signs attached, but ones that exist only in imaginations: 2035. 2020. 2015. The thinking was grand, the planning long-term, the rhetoric Sputnik-ed.

And yet, one of the president’s proposals in his State of the Union address was all about the fine print: closing tax loopholes. Absent from the speech was a broad-stroke promise to raise or lower taxes. The closest Obama came to doing so was a thinly-veiled threat to eventually let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans, this after agreeing to extend them only last month.

Regardless of what happens to the top tax bracket, focusing on tax loopholes is a shrewd move politically, particularly with the president’s 2012 reelection campaign now in view. It realigns the tax debate on the minutiae of the federal code, getting away from the same old tax-versus-spend back and forth.

On Saturday, political newcomer and Tea Party activist Jack Kimball was elected chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, adding new complexity to the 2012 presidential race—the first contes...

If the cap is going to be a vehicle to attempt to have property tax relief, it has to be done in conjunction with or preceded by mandate relief items that we're talking about. The n...

I think Olbermann peaked in a way during the Bush administration because he was able to play offense, and he really touched a nerve with liberal viewers who felt the media had rolle...

Next Tuesday sees the release of "O: A Presidential Novel," which tells the story of an incumbent president named 'O' seeking reelection in 2012. It's an anonymous author's (yes, anon...

I was with my family two weeks ago in Tunisia for the holidays, and we were surprised. It was a country that was waiting to explode. People, they start talking, they are not scared ...

The House of Representatives today voted to pass H.R.2, dubbed “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,” by a vote of 245-189, with only four Democrats joining the Republican bloc in voting for repeal. Members of the House of Representatives spent the past two days on the floor arguing over the bill's merits.

The debate was marked by a now-familiar back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans, with each trotting out almost as many numbers and anecdotes as there are dollars in the national debt. Given that the bill was certain to pass, but almost certainly has no future beyond the House, this week's proceedings were closer in character to a production of Waiting for Godot than meaningful debate.

The US attorney's office stepped into a hornet's nest they weren't expecting here. Not only Mayor Bloomberg, but advocates for the disabled as well have come out and said, "Gee, we ...

There are very few things the government forces you to do. Participate in the draft, fill out a census form, participate in a jury...but the argument in favor of this is, whether yo...

We are basically seeing that the very tough debate is being presaged in the public sector union that we're having nationally about the social contract that existed and was implied i...

The Republican Case for Health Care Repeal: Certain Uncertainty

The thing that sort of set it apart from most strikes was the sign the men made themselves, and it said "I am a man." That meant this was about human rights, being respected as person...

Finding people is tricky, particularly if they're not making the kind of errors that get you caught. Typically, criminals go to their mother's house or call their family. Bin Laden is...

What these addresses usually become, he goes around the room and talks about the environment, law enforcement, transportation, and you can see the various lobbyists and interested par...

On Tuesday afternoon, beginning his second year in office, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave his first State of the State address. The speech laid out his plans to reform the st...

All of this bleeds into the mood, and the atmosphere in the country, the sense of urgency. It's the difference between having a debate and political philosophy, and constantly communi...

Now that Governor Cuomo has taken office and given his first State of the State address, it's time to track what he does with his mandate. Here's a guide to the campaign promises Andr...