Op-Ed

A century ago, our nation’s cities were beginning to experience the benefits of electricity. It not only lit up the night, it offered power to a newly industrializing America. By the 1930s, the benefits of electrification were clear and, in the midst of what still stands as the greatest economic dislocation in our history, the U.S. Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act. This universal availability of electricity provided the foundation for the social and economic transformation of the United States in the 20th century.

Democrats last weekend scored their biggest healthcare victory yet, voting to move the $849 billion Senate bill to the floor for debate. While the legislation still faces an uncertain fate and many compromises will likely be made in the weeks ahead, few thought the Democrats would get this far.

With the specter of a jobless recovery looming, Washington has been casting about for ways to put Americans back to work. In the process, the political class has re-discovered infrastructure.

A jury of one’s peers is a guaranteed right of criminal defendants in the U.S. justice system.

At the gym this week, my iPod shuffled to a heavy metal song from the 1980s, pushing me through my third mile with the reminder that “I never played by the rules/I never really cared.”

Word on the Hill is that several members of the Congressional Black Caucus are going to get a pass from the House ethics committee on a trip they took to the Caribbean underwritten by corporations, regardless of what the new travel rules say.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, to a then-unparalleled extent, leveraged the most cutting-edge technologies to reach potential supporters, organize them, raise money from them, and ultimately, get elected by them.

Detroit, the “Arsenal of Democracy,” retooled its factories during World War II and switched from making cars to making tanks, trucks and aircraft for the war effort. Unfortunately, we were so successful that we quickly ran out of raw materials to keep up with the rapid clip on the assembly lines. So Congress took an unusual step, in 1942, of eliminating the import tariff on scrap metal, allowing Detroit to keep military equipment rolling off the line.

A consistent refrain from witnesses during the climate change hearings before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last week was that the nation’s environmental and energy goals cannot be reached without the significant expansion of nuclear energy.

Last week I argued in my column that, even though I strongly oppose the Stupak amendment because I am pro-choice, if things come down to a bad choice — a national healthcare bill with the Stupak language — or a worse choice — no healthcare bill at all this year — I would favor a vote for the Democratic healthcare plan this year, even with the offensive Stupak amendment.