Members of the Senate left for the holiday break without passing a bill that would provide relief to 400,000 homeowners who are facing foreclosure. For all the talk about doing something for homeowners, we go into this holiday weekend with the status quo intact: a deregulated financial industry and government inaction in the face of market failure.

In today’s housing crisis, what do renters and low-to-moderate-income homeowners have in common? Both groups have been preyed upon by the financial and real estate interests behind the subprime mortgage scandal. Each group is stigmatized in some way: low and moderate income homeowners are being branded as irresponsible, while people who don’t own their homes often are treated as second-class citizens. Both groups need relief. And yet, homeowners and renters are being pit against each other in the battle over how the government should respond to the current housing crisis.

“Generous hope is embedded in the national landscape, waiting to be remembered.” (from A Great Amnesia). While we wait out the final days of the Bush Administration, it is good to be reminded of times in our social history when we were bold and generous. To stir our imaginations, Marilynne Robinson recalls the Second Great Awakening -- a time of big ideas and social experiments spanning the years before, during and just after the Civil War.

I look forward to the day when it will be unremarkable for a woman to run for, and win, the Presidency. At the conclusion of Senator Clinton’s long campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, I cannot help wondering whether or not her candidacy has brought us closer to that day.

In an essay called ‘A Great Amnesia,’ Marilynne Robinson observes that our society has winnowed thoughtful language out of public life. We expect our politicians to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which, as Robinson argues, is very low indeed. Robinson’s observations came to mind as I watched Barack Obama speak in Saint Paul on Tuesday night. I wondered, are we turning a corner, towards more thoughtful language in politics?

Here’s a story about the subprime mortgage crisis that has gotten very little attention: Sometime in 2002, attorneys general in a number of states started noticing dramatic increases in predatory lending activities. When these states tried to enact laws to rein in subprime mortgage lenders, the Federal government issued a ‘pre-emption’ rule that nullified all state-level predatory lending laws.

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.