Al Franken will be declared the winner of the closely-contested Minnesota Senate race against Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) this afternoon.

UNEMPLOYMENT is at its highest level in 15 years. Housing prices won't stop falling. The stock market has suffered its most punishing collapse since 1931, and shareholders have lost $7 trillion in wealth. Millions of workers have lost their jobs; millions more are worried about losing theirs. IRAs and 401k accounts have been decimated, and companies are halting their contributions to retirement plans. Retail sales are dragging, the credit markets have seized up, and worse is expected in 2009. The government has gone to unprecedented lengths to improve the economy, yet the economy keeps getting worse. The federal budget deficit is headed for a trillion dollars, and the national debt is well over $10 trillion and climbing. The number of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track is at or near its all-time high; consumer confidence is at its all-time low.

So what do you do now?

Well, if you're a member of Congress, you give yourself a raise.

FORMER president George H. W. Bush, father of the outgoing US commander-in-chief, today touted another son Jeb for a future presidential bid.

DFLer Al Franken won an impressive share Saturday of what may be the last ballots tallied in the U.S. Senate recount, boosting his unofficial lead over Sen. Norm Coleman to 225 votes heading into a Monday meeting where the state Canvassing Board will certify the final result of the race.

In the end, Sartwell argues, state power does not reside within the consent given it by the people but, rather, on coercion, primarily, the threat and use of deadly force. Sartwell argues that the state use of coercion does not follow from legitimacy. Rather, state use of coercion is without legitimacy and demonstrates the illegitimacy of the state. It is on this point, specifically, that I fully concur. I believe that only human beings have rights. States, like corporations, are mere legal abstractions. What right has a legal abstraction to require of any one of us anything whatsoever? What if 200 million people told the state to fuck off?

Bill Richardson has withdrawn his nomination to be commerce secretary.

Richardson, who will remain governor of New Mexico, is facing a federal grand jury investigation into whether he exchanged government contracts for contributions to three Richardson political committees.

An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton’s foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman’s mall project.

Embattled House Ways & Means Chair Charles Rangel sought a $10 million donation from AIG for a school of public service that City College of New York was building in his honor and later changed his position and approved the subpart F active financing exception (worth millions annually to AIG) that was later enacted as part of the $700 billion bailout bill.

The top Senate Republican said his caucus would block any attempt to seat Democrat Al Franken until an anticipated court case over Minnesota's close election is finished and an official election certificate is conferred.

Stop killing people. The United States is too fond of killing people in order to achieve its objectives. You call it war, but today's wars are not about professional soldiers fighting and killing each other. It is about killing people, ordinary innocent people by the hundreds of thousands. Whole countries will be devastated.

My first hope is for honesty in politics.

I've always wondered how Lyndon Johnson became a millionaire while earning for a lifetime a modest federal salary.

How did Nick Mavroules, who became a Congressman in 1978, avoid detection for so long? He pleaded guilty in 1993 to bribery and racketeering charges.

How come Rep. Charlie Rangel (NY) owns so much property in New York and an expensive villa in the Dominican Republic? -- all of this on a representative's salary.

And isn't that Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich (From Transylvania??), something else? It appears he's tried to, among other things, sell Obama's vacant senate seat for $250 thousand. Do you believe for a minute this is the first time this guy has reached for a shady buck?

Barack Obama heads to Capitol Hill on Monday to confront mounting concerns about the size of his economic stimulus plan, but all eyes will be on the growing farce surrounding his vacant Senate seat that could lead to a physical showdown.

When the smoke clears, you can expect Roland Burris to be Illinois' junior Senator, despite efforts on the state and national level to keep him out of the seat.

Members of Congress are due to get their annual raises this month, but many of their constituents believe they should forgo the bump in pay in light of tough economic times.

"How can they even think about it?" asked Kathy Krystock, of Meriden.

The first time I read a transcript of Nancy Pelosi's speech to AIPAC (one of Apartheid Israel's many mouth pieces in America) a few years ago, I thought that Pelosi should not be the House leader, instead I thought she should be tried for treason. In fact I think our entire Congress is in need of civics lesson. I think George Washington's farewell address should be required reading for our loyalty challenged Congress.

A small group of placard-waving pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered near U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's vacation retreat in Hawaii on Tuesday to protest against the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

Obama has made no public comment on the strikes, which Israel launched on Saturday. Aides have repeatedly said he is monitoring the situation and continues to receive intelligence briefings but that there is only one U.S. president at a time.

Some critics, however, say Obama did choose to speak out after the attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai in November in which gunmen killed nearly 180 people, condemning them as acts of terrorism.

As if being linked to one high-profile criminal case weren't enough, President-elect Barack Obama's name may soon pop up in another federal prosecution, this one involving a massive Ponzi scheme (no, the other massive Ponzi scheme). In addition to the Rod Blagojevich pay-for-play probe, Obama could figure in the upcoming fraud trial of Norman Hsu, the disgraced Democratic fundraiser who was charged last year with operating a $60 million pyramid scheme. According to investigators, Hsu, a major Hillary Clinton fundraiser, pressured investors to donate money to political candidates with whom he was aligned.

Democrats, it’s time to clean the House. Start at the top.

When the 111th Congress convenes in January, it is time for a change -- a change of the Speaker of the House. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) in her two years as speaker has enabled a pro-Bush, pro-corporate agenda almost as facilely and frequently as Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

In November 2006, voters put Democrats in the majority in Congress to end the Iraq occupation and hold Bush responsible for the war. But the among first things she did when she became speaker was take impeachment off the table, giving Bush a blank check to wage the Iraq war for two more years.

Showing disdain for those opposed the war, Pelosi snubbed peace demonstrators outside her San Francisco home, morphing into Bush who refused to meet Cindy Sheehan and peace protesters outside his Crawford, Texas, compound.

As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, at least one unpleasant episode from his unpopular presidency is threatening to follow him into retirement.

A $70m lawsuit filed by Dan Rather, the veteran former newsreader for CBS Evening News, against his old network is reopening the debate over alleged favourable treatment that Bush received when he served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. Bush had hoped that this controversy had been dealt with once and for all during the 2004 election.

President–elect Barack Obama blew the first opportunity that had come his way to show that unlike his predecessors, he was going to adopt a more even-handed approach to the Palestine question by choosing to keep quiet after savage Israeli airstrikes across Gaza.

As of this writing 284 Palestinians have been murdered, over 700 injured (many in critical condition); most are innocent civilians living in the most densely populated area in the world—Gaza. This is the highest one day total of dead and injured by Israel’s terrorism since its founding in 1948.

An attorney for convicted fundraiser Tony Rezko is listed as the owner and taxpayer for Barack Obama's Chicago mansion, according to records obtained by WND.

The president oversaw a period of eroding economic and political power, in which the rise of China, India and others was a major factor, but assisted by an aversion to him and his policies.

Why, exactly, are thousands of God-loving Spaniards paying almost twenty bucks for Barack Obama to relieve himself in their nativity scenes? Somewhere between tradition and transition lies perhaps the funniest Christmas story you'll learn this season.

The much-criticized pardon of Isaac Toussie has been rescinded, according to the White House in a Wednesday statement:

Officials are casting doubt on an early projection that up to 5 million people could jam downtown Washington on Inauguration Day, saying it is more likely that the crowd will be less than half that size.

District of Columbia authorities said the earlier estimates were based on speculation surrounding the historic nature of the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African-American president. After weeks of checking with charter bus companies, airlines and other sources, they’re reassessing.

VP mocks successor, doesn't regret 'F*ck yourself' remark

The government itself runs a fraud much bigger than Madoff's. Our Social Security system is the very definition of a Ponzi, or pyramid scheme. If the government truly had an interest in protecting people's savings, they would allow people to opt out of Social Security altogether. We would cut wasteful spending, such as our overseas empire, to honor current obligations to seniors, and eventually phase the program out.

A new national poll suggests that almost a quarter of Americans think that Dick Cheney is the worst vice president in American history.

It may be that all that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will be able to prove in court is that Boss Blago is spectacularly guilty of wretched appearances, but nothing tangibly provable. Naturally that assumes that the published criminal complaint harbors the worst of the upcoming indictment. If it does, as virtual platoons of criminal defense lawyers are now observing, then Roddy B. could very well walk.

President-elect Barack Obama and his family arrived Saturday in his native Hawaii for a holiday vacation set to be interrupted with the release of an internal investigation about his aides' roles in allegations of public corruption.

No presidential transition team in recent history has ranged as widely as Barack Obama's in its attempt to find out what minefields he may be walking into. For example, The Washington Post notes, 10 teams of 135 explorers, wearing yellow badges, have descended on dozens of Bush administration offices and agencies to look into their programs, policies, and records.

Emanuel did contact the governor's office about the appointment and left Blagojevich with the impression that he was pushing Valerie Jarrett, a close Obama friend, so he wouldn't have to compete with her in the White House for Obama's attention, said a person close to Blagojevich. The person was not authorized to talk about the governor's discussions regarding the vacancy and requested anonymity.

Keep your coincidence caps handy, folks. People involved in elections and voting machine companies seem very unlucky. Especially those in Ohio (4 of the 7) and Georgia (2 of the 7).