Are you fed up with the double-standard whereby a black candidate has to answer for the words and deeds of all his or her past associates while white candidates get a pass?

Recent stories about airline mergers, rising airfares and safety concerns remind me of a Daily Show skit called 'Airplane.' Broadcast on April 8, this skit exposed the Federal Aviation Administration’s failure to conduct regular inspections of our nation’s air fleet. Turns out that, under the current Administration’s FAA, inspectors are pressured not to do their jobs.

April 28, 2008. Today the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s restrictive voter ID law. On this same day, the New York Times ran an article about ongoing voter suppression tactics in Florida. These two stories are very much related. Each represents a triumph for conservatives who have used allegations of voter fraud to push measures that disenfranchise the most marginalized members of our society. To reverse this assaut on voting rights, we need a long-term democracy agenda.

Nothing illustrates conservatives’ mastery of double-speak quite so well as their phony war on voter fraud and other efforts to suppress voting. With front groups called “American Center for Voting Rights” and initiatives labeled “Ballot Access and Voting Integrity,” one could get the impression that the sponsors care about protecting and expanding an important part of the democratic experience. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Regarding rescue plans for homeowners caught up in the mortgage crisis, Senator John McCain has said: “It is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly.” But what about the Wall Street firms whose irresponsible lending practices created this mess? For them, McCain and the Bush administration have agreed to a huge government bailout, in the form of $400 billion in loans at rock-bottom rates.