Michael Regan

The decade-long battle over voting rules, such as ID requirements and registration procedures, continues again this year, Peter Wallsten report in the Washington Post. But this year, some states are focusing on college students. The toughest proposed restriction on student voting is being debated in New Hampshire, where Republicans–back in charge of the legislature after […]

Much of the current debate over the bargaining rights of public employees has focused on money and power, Tom Jacobs writes in Miller-McCune. When it comes to one group of employees–teachers–a new study examines the impact of collective bargaining rights on students, and reaches a troubling conclusion, Jacobs says. The study just published in the […]

Embroiled in two wars, battered in the polls and battling Republicans on every front, President Barrack Obama has at least one consolation at the end of the day: his own home-brewed beer. Not brewed by Obama himself, of course, the blog Obama Foodorama reports–he’s way too busy. But the president and Michelle Obama did use […]

Pollsters and commentators often use the terms “global warming” and “climate change” interchangeably, but which words are used can make a real difference in discussions of the issue, Tom Jacobs reports at Miller-McCune. Citing research published in Public Opinion Quarterly (subscription required), Jacobs said Republicans especially seem influenced by the choice of one phrase or […]

Americans are divided on the level of pay for government workers, but a solid majority thinks they should pay more for their benefits, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. The national poll comes as public employee unions in many states, including Connecticut, are under pressure for concessions to help ease budget problems. The telephone […]

Following his signature Race to the Top education reform program, President Barack Obama wants to apply its underlying principal–state competition for federal funding–to a variety of other areas, John Gramlich reports at Stateline.org. Obama’s proposed budget would have states compete for grants in areas from transportation to juvenile justice, Gramlich says. But his plans face […]

Republicans bore the brunt of public criticism for the federal government shutdown in 1995, but a new poll says both parties would share the blame if it happens again this year, Jon Cohen and Paul Kane report at the Washington Post. Thirty-six percent say Republicans would be at fault if the two sides cannot reach […]

Many political analysts have a “near-obsessive” focus on demographics as a determiner of national election outcomes, Nate Silver says at FiveThirtyEight. Remember “soccer moms” in 1996, or “NASCAR dads” in 2004? But with one exception, demographic characteristics are poor predictors of voting behavior, Silver says, because individual voters fit into a number of categories with […]

In addition to closing a budget gap of close to $2 billion, Massachusetts is tackling another tough fiscal issue: reining in the costs of its first-in-the-nation universal health insurance law. Five years after the law, similar in many ways to the federal reform measure, was enacted in 2006, 98 percent of adults and nearly 100 […]

Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone following events in Washington, but National Journal’s new 2010 vote ratings finds Congress more polarized than at any time in the last three decades. For only the second time since 1982–the first was 1999–every Democrat in the Senate compiled a voting record more liberal than […]

The announcement by the Obama Justice Department that it would no longer defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act grabbed all the headlines Wednesday, John Gramlich says at Stateline.org, but it wasn’t the day’s only good news for gay rights supporters. In Maryland, the Senate voted in favor of a bill to allow same-sex marriage, […]

After 12 years in the U.S., ProPublica reporter Dafna Linzer became a citizen last month. All it took, she says, was steep filing fees, mounds of paperwork, and a willingness to provide the wrong answers if necessary to questions on the citizenship test. The 100 questions and answers that make up the test–applicants must get […]

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have no clear favorite for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination, Gallup says, with Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin in a statistical tie for the lead. The most recent survey shows Huckabee’s support increasing from 12 percent in September to 18 percent this month, Romney’s declining from 19 percent to […]

High-calorie meals and not enough exercise: That’s the recipe for a national epidemic of overweight and obese… pets. New data suggest that more than half of America’s dogs and cats are overweight or obese, Gwendolyn Bounds reports at the Wall Street Journal, and  veterinarians are worried about it. “Obesity in pets is almost the equivalent […]