We are writing to urge you to stand firm against those who would put politics ahead of their country.

For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you allow tax cuts on incomes over $1,000,000 to expire at the end of this year as scheduled.

We make this request as loyal citizens who now or in the past earned an income of $1,000,000 per year or more.

We have done very well over the last several years. Now, during our nation's moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share. We don't need more tax cuts, and we understand that cutting our taxes will increase the deficit and the debt burden carried by other taxpayers. The country needs to meet its financial obligations in a just and responsible way.

Letting tax cuts for incomes over $1,000,000 expire, is an important step in that direction.

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Topping the list of Rangel's transgressions was the misuse of his congressional clout to raise money for a vanity academic "center" named after him at the City University of New York from private donors. Yet somehow McConnell got away with the same kind of dubious dealings at the University of Louisville -- and was allowed to reward BAE Systems, donor of $500,000 to the McConnell Center, with $17 million worth of defense earmarks.

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Among the reasons why such advice is outdated and useless, the most obvious may be that Obama’s position today is stronger than Clinton’s after 1994. Today, unlike then, the Democrats can look forward to retaining control of the Senate. But there are two other overriding reasons why Obama shouldn’t seek to imitate Clinton by immediately seeking compromises with the Republicans.

The first is that he has tried vainly from the beginning of his presidency to engage the Republicans in negotiation over vital reforms, only to learn again and again that they aren’t really interested in anything but sabotage. The second is that compromising with the Republicans isn’t exactly what Clinton did -- or not at first, anyway. Before he could do anything else, he had to push back.

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"This is my 127th event," he recalled as the crowd of 1500 upstate Democrats laughed appreciatively. "And I’ve kept going because I am so concerned that in the fact-free environment of this election, people are going to choose exactly what they don’t want." That concern spurred him on a grueling, 18-hour series of jet hops from two stops in the northern reaches of his adopted state on to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, then Beckley, West Virginia, Louisville, Kentucky, and finally Orlando, Florida for a late-night rally.

The former president always draws enthusiastic crowds, and they listened raptly to his latest political pitch, which included point by point explanations of the student loan reform, healthcare reform and the banking bill to his argument that he and his fellow Democrats -- not the Republicans -- deserve the affections of the Tea Party.

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Neither Stewart nor Colbert is likely to exacerbate the risk they have taken by addressing such touchy questions directly. But some Democrats believe the "crazy" label will stick to Republican candidates, especially those associated with the Tea Party movement -- and that sanity versus its opposite may well be the most effective meme to sway independent and undecided voters during the final days of the campaign.

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"With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in January. "This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages."

But Kennedy and the high court majority were wrong. Because of loopholes in tax laws and a weak enforcement policy at the Federal Election Commission, corporations and wealthy donors have been able to spend huge sums on campaign ads, confident the public will not know who they are, election law experts say.

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These same voices have reliably exploited every chance to damage public broadcasting, not because of any supposed liberal bias, but because they disdain the straightforward, probing journalism that the public network provides every day. What the NPR haters want to see and hear on America’s airwaves is the “fair and balanced mentality” of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Savage and nothing else. After all, they hate CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC with almost equal passion, no matter how much those networks or NPR bend over to accomodate conservative viewpoints.

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Dated September 24, 2010 and signed by Koch himself on company stationery, the letter urges recipients to join “our network of business and philanthropic leaders, who are dedicated to defending our free society” – and specifically to attend the group’s next meeting at a Palm Springs resort in late January. Most revealing is an attached brochure about the network’s most recent meeting, which occurred in Aspen last June 27-28.

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When Kennedy, along with his four conservative colleagues, overturned the century-old limitations on corporate funding of political campaigns, he justified this enormous gift to his fellow Republicans with what amounted to a false promise. Full and timely disclosure of the sources of the expected flood of corporate money, according to Kennedy, would serve the same essential purpose as the discarded restrictions, keeping voters informed by exposing politicians and their business benefactors.

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Still warning of a likely shift in control of the House, the NPR polling team says that while the midterm is still “an ugly election” in the 86 Democratic-controlled districts that they surveyed, this election should no longer be considered a “death march” for Democrats. Their analysis highlights four important new developments:

First, in ten “battleground” House districts currently held by Republicans, the latest numbers suggest that the GOP will “lose a fair number” of those seats bedause their lead has been cut in half since June.

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The Kentucky Republican Senate candidate made headlines yesterday when he proposed a national sales tax to replace the income tax, but Paul is scarcely alone in preferring a tax that falls most heavily on the middle class, workers and the poor. Rep. Ryan’s budget "roadmap," released earlier this year to much fanfare in the conservative and mainstream media, relies on an 8.5 percent "business consumption" tax -- yet another name for what Europeans call a VAT. From Arizona to  Maine, Republican candidates seem increasingly eager to impose a national sales tax -- and although they usually say this new tax would “replace” the income tax and abolish the IRS, such fantasies aren't contemplated by Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee.

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Hodge, author of "The Mendacity of Hope," a scathing new critique of Obama and all his works, and Alter, author of "The Promise," a balanced but generally favorable report on Obama's first year, clashed under the auspices of the Agenda Project in New York City. Their lively, live-streamed, intelligent discussion, moderated by Erica Payne, will also be televised on C-Span's BookTV later this month -- just in time to further dispirit (or possibly inspire) Democratic voters.

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Last spring, conservatives angrily denounced a Department of Homeland Security study of the violent potential of the revived militia movement as a political abuse by the Obama administration -- and forced DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano as well as the White House to back away from the report. But Gellman's reporting shows that top officials at the FBI and other agencies are in fact deeply concerned over that possibility. While they don't expect a mass militia assault on Washington or on federal officials in the countryside, they worry about what a deranged loner, armed and trained by a militia group, might do when he becomes impatient waiting for the right-wing revolution. As they listen to the furious rhetoric emanating from organizations such as the Ohio Defense Force, they search nervously for any sign of the next Timothy McVeigh.

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This year's real conditions for Democrats are certainly threatening, but there are indications that the impending repudiation will not be as devastating as suggested by the current narrative. Whatever ultimately happens in the House, where a Republican takeover appears likely if not inevitable, the Senate will probably remain under Democratic control -- despite enormous spending by "independent" groups such as the Club for Growth, the voice of Wall Street conservatives; American Crossroads, the Karl Rove outfit; and the Chamber of Commerce.

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Apart from the ongoing conversations, speeches and announcements, this year’s CGI features a significant subplot: the revived peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. With nearly 70 current and former heads of state on hand, Bill Clinton knows how to use the unique forum he has created to serve a very specific purpose, like promoting a sense of optimism and urgency about the Mideast peace negotiations currently overseen by his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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Bringing together the disparate elements of the right without a charismatic and credible leader like Ronald Reagan remains a challenge, however, since many Tea Party voters are libertarians and independents who have never felt called to the battlements of the culture war. What they seem to share, aside from the perennial aversion to taxes, is a powerful instinct to stigmatize Muslims and seek confrontation with Islam.

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At a late-night fundraiser for state Sen. Tarryl Clark, Clinton described Bachmann as the epitome of a trend he regards as profoundly dangerous to the nation’s future. "Your opponent," he told Clark, "is the ultimate example of putting ideology over evidence."

"I respect people with a conservative philosophy," he continued. "This country has been well-served by having two broad traditions within which people can operate. If you have a philosophy, it means you’re generally inclined one way or the other but you’re open to evidence. If you have an ideology, it means everything is determined by dogma and you’re impervious to evidence. Evidence is irrelevant.

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More than a flaky Florida pastor’s cancelled threat to burn the Quran (or the actual scattered torchings that took place the same day), the ground zerio rally answered the question posed repeatedly over the past few weeks: Why are millions of Americans suddenly caught up in a torrent of fear and fury over Islam so strong that both the president and the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan have warned of deadly consequences? What motivates the outpouring of rancor against Muslims, especially in the conservative media? How did they escape until now?

The answer is that until the advent of the Obama presidency, Republicans had no reason to scapegoat Muslims or demonize Islam -- and indeed, they could not have inflamed those prejudices without damaging their own leaders, especially George W. Bush.

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The authoritative "terrorist trial report card" – produced by New York University Law School’s Center on Law and Security -- finds that in the top 50 plots prosecuted by the Justice Department following 9/11, more than 80 percent of the defendants can be defined as "homegrown."

According to the report, which will be released early next week, the past year has seen a greater number of "significant terrorism plots" alleged than in any single year since 9/11 -- including the attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit; two bomb plots in New York City; two bomb plots against federal buildings; the scheme to bring dozens of young men, mostly from the Minneapolis area, to join the Al-Shabaab organization in Somalia;  and the shootings at Fort Hood and at an Army recruitment center in Little Rock, which were the first killings attributed to jihadi terrorism on American soil since 9/11.

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