After days of backroom arm-twisting to gain enough votes to cut more than $50 billion from vital working family programs, Republican leaders in the U.S. House postponed action on the bill Nov. 10 because they failed to find the votes to win.

In support of the brave and intelligent citizens of Vermont who recently passed a resolution to secede from the union, I decided to update and modify our Declaration of Independence to fit the circumstances we are facing in 2005. Despite the numerous distinctions between then and now, in some significant ways, little has changed...

Endless discussions on this topic that I've had in the real world and online suggest that the Democrats' failure thus far to push for impeachment is contributing to cynicism and distrust of both parties. If you cannot demand impeachment for the highest crime imaginable (taking a nation to war on the basis of lies, lies formally and feloniously told to Congress on March 18, 2003) then you can never impeach...

In the midst of the Libby indictments and crumbling façade of the most corrupt administration ever, we are seeing more devastating policies set to take effect as the administration and the Republican Party simply no longer care what you may think about what they do.

It was once a day to remember peace, and then a day to remember war, but now perhaps, it’s just a day to forget. It’s past midnight, on the morning of November 11, 2004..We came to New York in part... to stand at the spot where I had stood in March of 2002, looking for some meaning in Ground Zero – only to find none.Two and a half years later – after two wars, tens of thousands of dead, and tens of thousands of words written trying to make some sense of it – I came to look again...

At least half of the 86,000 people known to have died in October's devastating quake in northern Pakistan were children. In an interview with IRIN, country representative for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Pakistan, Dr Omar Abdi, highlighted the impact the disaster has had on children

Countries that voted [for the blockade] (4): Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau, The United States. Countries that were not present for the vote (4): El Salvador, Iraq, Morocco, Nicaragua. Countries that abstained (1): Micronesia.

Prior to a historic vote by the UN General Assembly, the Cuban Foreign Minister, Felipe Perez Roque, delivered a speech condemning the US blockade of his country and providing evidence of its negative impact on the island and of its territorial nature.

Last week the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative unit of Congress, released a report indicating that the Pentagon has been calling up reserve soldiers who are ill or medically unfit to serve. The reservists are serving primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The measures, put on California's special election ballot by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, would have extended probation for teachers, restricted union political fundraising, given the governor more power over the budget, and taken redistricting out of the hands of elected officials.

The Bush administration thinks we are all a bunch of idiots, too stupid to know the difference between truth and lies. Bush & Co. seem to think that, regardless of what the facts are, they can get us to believe the opposite. If it's day, they'll convince us it's night. Black, white. You know the drill.

The Bushites use "the low levels of political awareness" of the people to consciously mislead them (they still link 9/11 to Iraq!). They are also undercutting democracy. They have gerrymandered the voting districts so that if only 48 percent of the people vote for them and 52 percent vote against them they still get "almost 55 percent of congressional districts." Remember, when fascism comes to America it will be waving the American flag.

Months after Plame’s identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak, Cheney continued to hide the fact that he and his aides were intimately involved in disseminating classified information about her to journalists.

UN agencies and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have forecast a current shortfall of $42.4 million needed to carry out the most immediate life-saving activities during the month of November alone, without which many programmes will have to close. Funding is desperately needed for shelter, camp management, logistics and early recovery.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Tuesday´s vote at the 60th UN General Assembly against the US on the 45-year blockade of his country will be a sound and smashing victory for the Cubans.We expect this 14th consecutive vote will give a clear and determined sign in favor of the rights of the Cuban people(and more topics)

When the Summit conclud[ed] on Saturday, it is unlikely that any major new developments will be there to create headlines. No radical programs will be implemented, nor will major agreements be signed. It is possible that there will not even be any lofty proclamations.

Speaking in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, at the start of a two-day tour of the two nations, Kenzo Oshima said "delicacy, skills and good judgment" were needed to try to resolve the situation. He was visiting the region following reports of military movements on both sides of the 1,000-km frontier, over which the two nations fought a two-and-a-half-year war that ended in 2000.

Prop. 75 would unfairly restrict political involvement by teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public employees and their unions but would do nothing to limit big corporations, which regularly spend shareholder money on politics without permission. Corporations already outspend unions in national politics by a 24–1 margin.

American workers’ freedom to form unions, which has enabled millions of employees to make family-supportive wages and benefits, is under attack by employers—and the nation’s labor laws are not protecting against employer intimidation and harassment, according to both Reagan- and Clinton-appointed members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Almost 75 percent of the electorate voted in the first round on 11 October, but since then heavy rains have left more polling stations inaccessible, some people who trekked home to cast their ballot cannot afford to make a second journey, and others are no longer interested now that their candidate is not in the race.