TELEVISION coverage of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the southern US states of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi has brought home to millions of people the scale of suffering there.

As the 2006 election draws nearer, Congress is becoming the battleground for Bush administration policies. The President’s loyalists continue to support the war drive and privatization of Social Security, but more than a few are jumping ship. The shifts within Congress, and breaks in the Republican stronghold, provide an important opening to mobilize voters, blunt the attacks, and build support for bold pro-worker legislation.

While the purpose of this article [is] to use satire to delineate the “reality” of an administration by pretending that it would violate its most sacred tenet, total protection for the rich and powerful, the Bush administration has shown us that it is capable of saying and doing anything, however absurd. The only way to have a happy ending, Hollywood or otherwise, is to concentrate all of our efforts, 24/7, on driving the Republican Right from power and repairing the damage of a generation.

The old Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once compared religious leaders who attacked the Soviet Union as comparable to the priests who threw holy water on the weapons of the Czar’s armies. But Pat Robertson has gone Nikita once better, advising the U.S. government on National Cable Television (actually the Family Channel, formerly the Christian Broadcasting Network) to murder Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory ...of directing employers to pay women the same as men ... was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."

Groups demand that the Bush administration condemn right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson's call to assassinate Hugo Chávez. States revolt agains the No Child Left Behind school privatization scheme. Students demand real financial aid. Faith communities step up their role in the peace movement.

“There have been almost daily revelations that Roberts was a charter member of the Reagan-Bush legal policy team that attempted to dismantle the civil rights remedies,” including affirmative action, previous presidents backed, said Ralph Neas, executive director of People for the American Way.

The current effort by Congress to pass a flag desecration amendment is largely attributable to the war in Iraq. Supporters hope that at least 67 Senators, the two-thirds majority needed to forward the amendment to the states for ratification, will be too fearful to vote against it and run the risk of being labeled “unpatriotic.”

Congressional Republicans are worried, and they should be. Under their leadership, say the polls, Congress' approval rating couldn't fall much lower. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are viewed more and more has having an agenda that is closer to the interests of the majority of the people. While one may poke holes is this conclusion, all the numbers point to the possibility of an electoral shift in the 2006 election.

For the length of next year, the nearly 600,000 residents of Washington, D.C., will continue to pay federal income taxes and to send their kids to die in Iraq (thus far in greater proportion than any other area of the country), but will be deprived of any representation in either house of Congress.

One lawyer is a smooth, handsome corporate attorney whose political loyalties, partisanship, and ideological moorings earned him a seat on the fast track to the top positions in corporations and now in judicial branch of the US government.

An unpopular war drags on, gas prices rise and rise, as a cloud of scandal gathers over Washington D.C. At times, it seems as though the 1970’s never ended: it’s just Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s Quaalude-laced, faux populist snake oil caused us to sleep through the 80’s and 90’s – and now we’re awakening, hungover, groggy, queasy, still in the midst of that ugly and odious era.

ast week the Republican-controlled Senate voted to make permanent most of the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. Democrats blocked a measure favored by the Bush administration that would have allowed the FBI to seek "administrative" subpoenas that do not require a judge’s approval.

As more information about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ record is made available, it is increasingly clear that the Senate judiciary committee would be well within its rights to block confirmation. The White House packaged Roberts as a non-controversial, non-ideological nominee and announced its expectation of confirmation quickly, as early as next month.

The Bush administration has nominated a smooth corporate lawyer with all the right university, law school and gentleman’s club connections to replace Sandra Day O’Connor at the Supreme Court. Questions will be asked of course, particularly on Roe v. Wade, but the federal judiciary’s collaboration with right-wing Republican administrations in the undermining of workers’ rights and civil rights and civil liberties should be seriously addressed.

After revelations that Judge John Roberts misrepresented his membership and role in the extremely conservative, judicially activist Federalist Society, the White House continues to withhold key documents related to his ideological views on overturning key legal principles considered settled by most Americans.

A majority of Americans favor single-payer health coverage, a shift to renewable energy, the protection of natural resources, investment in education, and protection of civil rights. And very nearly a majority of Americans – a strong majority of Democrats – favor impeachment of the President if he lied about the reasons for war.

Why would Judge John G. Roberts lie about being a member of the Federalist Society (FS)? Along with several major news organizations, Political Affairs reported that Judge Roberts was a member of the arch-conservative lawyers’ and judges’ association. Roberts demanded that these major news organizations retract their stories saying he had no memory of being a member of the FS.

Over 100 people, few if any of them employed by the corporate media, filled a press conference room in the US Capitol on Monday to hear artists, advocates, and experts speak against the current energy bill and against a proposal to dump the nation's nuclear waste on the land of a native American tribe in Utah.

Despite all of our nation's high-minded ideals about free speech, our government considers dissent an unnecessary and dangerous evil. Recent developments amply demonstrate that when it comes to our government's distaste for freedom of expression, history most definitely repeats.