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Everyone on the left side of American politics, from the near end to the far end, has advice for Occupy Wall Street. I’m no exception. But it’s useful to acknowledge first that this movement has accomplished things that the more established left didn’t.

The problems of growing economic inequality and abuses by the masters of the financial world have been in the background for years. Many progressives longed to make them central political questions.read more >>

Several states – all with Republican majorities in the state legislature – having been fighting to have portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 declared unconstitutional.

Now, an Alabama county is asking a federal appeals court in Washington to strike down a judge’s September ruling that upheld the Act’s constitutionality, the Blog of Legal Times reports.read more >>

The media reform group Free Press on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the government's so-called network neutrality rules designed to prevent anticompetitive behavior online, saying they don't go far enough.read more >>

Postal workers rallied Tuesday across the country in hopes of drawing attention to Democratic-backed legislation supported by their labor unions that they believe would best fix the U.S. Postal Service’s financial woes.

At a rally in downtown Washington, several dozen workers angrily targeted Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who is co-sponsoring a bill that would set up a financial control board to overhaul USPS finances — and possibly force layoffs.read more >>

The Justice Department announced on Monday that it would not ask the full Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reconsider a three-judge panel’s ruling against the 2010 health care law. That presumably leaves the government to appeal its loss directly to the Supreme Court, although Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the next steps.read more >>

Thousands of Washington area homeowners facing foreclosure have deluged state housing agencies with last-minute appeals for help from a $1 billion federal mortgage assistance program set to expire at the end of the month.read more >>

Washington is among eight big-city metropolitan regions in which minorities became a majority in the past decade, according to a new analysis of census data showing white population declines in many of the largest metro areas.

Along with Washington, the regions surrounding New York, San Diego, Las Vegas and Memphis have become majority-minority since 2000. Non-Hispanic whites are a minority in 22 of the country’s 100-biggest urban areas.read more >>

Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced Monday that the House will do away with its page program, a storied tradition that has brought young people to work in the Capitol for nearly as long as Congress itself has been an institution.

Citing high costs and advances in technology that have reduced the need for the program, the Ohio Republican and the California Democrat said in a joint statement that the program — which costs the House more than $5 million, or about $69,000 to $80,000 per page — is outdated.read more >>

The Democrats' strategy to tackle soaring unemployment was made tougher this week by passage of the debt-ceiling law most party leaders endorsed.

The Democrats are pushing a jobs agenda that relies heavily on targeted domestic projects like highways, airports and broadband networks – precisely the type of discretionary spending many party leaders just voted to cap as part of the debt-limit package.read more >>

To much of America, it may appear that the battle to lift the debt ceiling simply proved that Washington is broken. But as messy and ugly as it was, it also has been a clarifying moment — one that could define the terms of engagement of the 2012 election and shape the battle as one of two vastly different governing philosophies.read more >>