This article was reported in collaboration with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, where Lee Fang is a reporting fellow.
 
On January 27, 2010, one year into his term, President Barack Obama used the occasion of his State of the Union address to issue a warning. The Supreme Court had just opened the “floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.” He was speaking about the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Court struck down nearly a century of law, granting corporations vast new leeway to influence the outcome of elections.

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Tuesday September 4, in Charlotte

It fell to Mitch McConnell, arguably the lousiest public speaker ever to practice the political craft, to sum up everything that can or should be said about the Republican National Convention.

Opening the “We Can Change It” themed second night of he convention with a call to remove President Obama, the Senate minority leader declared that it was time to put “Mitt Ryan” in charge of the republic.

In a chat with the website Reddit, President Obama called for serious look at a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.

"Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change," Obama wrote.

Some people in Washington want to cut Social Security and veterans' benefits, by cutting the cost-of-living adjustment. But there's a better way to cut government debt than cutting Social Security and veterans' benefits: cut the bloated Pentagon budget.

Not only would that protect Social Security and veterans' benefits, it would save 380,000 jobs. And cutting the Pentagon budget would mean less war in the future: the Pentagon wouldn't have the money to occupy other people's countries. 

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Tuesday September 4, in Charlotte

Is it really "fair and balanced"? I don't mean the ridiculous Fox TV channel, whose right-wing ranters mock their own PR slogan – but, rather, a network that actually matters in our society: America's legal system.

Remarks by a conservative Arizona Republican Congressional candidate that Middle Easterners' "only goal in life is to cause harm to the United States" have landed her in the midst of a dispute over whether the comments amount to hate speech.

Tea Party-backed Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, who was born in Mexico and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, won the Republican primary on Tuesday to run in an Arizona Congressional district that flanks the border in southern Arizona. She faces Democrat Raul Grijalva, a five-term incumbent, in the November general election.