AP reports: “Senate Democrats on Wednesday suggested Republicans should join their call for a nonpartisan ‘truth commission’ to probe whether the Bush administration abused its power, or face partisan congressional investigations.” ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ Rodriguez just wrote the piece “A Call for Truth, Reconciliation and Justice Post-Bush.” The author of several books and a research associate…

ROBERT WEISSMAN HARVEY ROSENFIELD Weissman, director of Essential Information, is lead author of a 231-page report, “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” released today. He said today: “The financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence-purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation…

RUSSELL MOKHIBER Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, Mokhiber just wrote the piece “Obama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead,” which states: “President Obama’s White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table. Obama doesn’t even want to discuss it. “Take the case of Congressman John…

GAR ALPEROVITZ Available for a limited number of interviews, Alperovitz is co-author of the new book Unjust Desserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back. He said today: “The Obama effort is positive, but it needs to be put in larger perspective to understand its limitations: The…

ELLEN SHAFFER Shaffer is co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis, focusing on health policy. She said today: “Obama said his plan will be only a ‘downpayment on what we must have: quality affordable health care for every American.’ He stuck with the program for cost control he campaigned on: large investments in preventive care…

A host of organizations today released the following statement: “We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a nonpartisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice…

In the last few days, many Americans have been surprised by the sudden willingness of Republicans, such as “Lindsey Graham, Alan Greenspan, John McCain and a bevy of scholars and publicists on the payroll of the Peter G. Peterson Institute” to endorse bank nationalization, write Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson in a new article out…

February is Black History Month. Malcolm X was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965. KEVIN GRAY Author of the new book The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, Gray said today: “Whenever anyone uses the phrase ‘by any means necessary’ we automatically think of Malcolm X, otherwise known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.…

President Obama is in Canada today. CLAUDIA FEGAN and via Mark Almberg Co-author of the book Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience, Fegan is former president of Physicians for a National Health Program. She said today: “Obama has said that if we were starting over, a Canadian-style system…

The New York Times reports: “President Obama will send an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan this spring and summer in the first major military move of his presidency, White House officials said on Tuesday. The increase would come on top of 36,000 American troops already there, making for an increase of nearly 50 percent.”…