Sandra Day O’Connor Shattered Glass Ceilings. And She Inspired Lawyers Like Me.

For me, and for generations of female lawyers like me, Sandra Day O’Connor inspired our entrance into the legal field. The service of O’Connor, the first female justice ever to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, made possible the subsequent appointment of the five female Supreme Court justices to serve after her. I mourn her passing not because of her jurisprudence. Rather, I mourn who she was as a trailblazer and what her service at the Court did for women in a field to which I had long aspired. O’Connor…

Read More...

What a lapse in funding might look like in October of 2023

The crazy weather throughout the country seems to be reflected in Congress. On recess, when it returns it will have 12 working days to workout a regular federal budget for 2024. Ain’t gonna happen. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin  to explore the possible consequences, the vice president for policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, John Hatton. Interview Transcript: Tom Temin And it looks more and more like, because of political developments in the short time period, there could be a lapse. But…

Read More...

What do people really mean when they say government should operate like a business?

When the nearly endless debates over the debt ceiling were raging on, the United States didn’t look very businesslike to the rest of the world. Internally, though, you never stop hearing that federal agencies should operate more like a business. This is both true and not true, according to my next guest. The  Federal Drive with Tom Temin got commentary from American University professor Bob Tobias. Interview Transcript:  Tom Temin Somehow, at these times when things are stressful on the political front or whenever people turn to federal agencies like…

Read More...

MoveOn Members Call on Advertisers Like General Motors, AT&T and Subway to Stop Funding Fox News

MoveOn activists across the country are demanding that corporations including Subway, AT&T, General Motors, and Comcast stop funding Fox News, in efforts to hold the network accountable for dividing Americans and spreading disinformation, bias, lies, and hate. Cable companies and advertisers provide two major revenue streams for Fox News, thus enabling the lies they spread. The most effective way MoveOn members can hold Fox News accountable is to demand that these companies “cut the cord” and stop funding the channel through any new advertising or potential increased cable fees.  …

Read More...

This Debt Crisis Is Not Like 2011’s. It’s Worse.

On its surface, the unfolding debt-ceiling crisis looks a lot like the confrontation in 2011 between congressional Republicans and then-President Barack Obama. Once again, a new GOP majority in the House is using the threat of a national default as leverage to force a first-term Democratic president to agree to spending cuts in exchange for lifting the federal borrowing limit. A first-ever default could crash the markets and trigger a recession. But, as in 2011, the two parties remain far apart, with a deadline to act approaching rapidly. Eric Cantor…

Read More...

‘I’m, Like, This Close to Snapping’

Four years and four months ago, a high-school student delivered a speech at a rally outside the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Three days earlier, a gunman had killed 17 of X González’s classmates and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland with an AR-15-style rifle. “We are going to be the last mass shooting,” González told the assembled crowd and cable-news cameras. It wasn’t, of course. In 2018 alone, there were 336 mass shootings in America, according to the Gun Violence Archive; since then, there…

Read More...