In an act of unusual brilliance this week, the U.S. Senate passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, a law to bar members of Congress and their staff from acting on private information in regards to trading financial stocks.

Christina Romer, former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, served as the keynote speaker at Washington University’s Livable Lives Initiative’s first public event.

We received word last week of plans circulating in the House of Representatives to cut funding for NPR and PBS in order to close the budget gap. For some House members, these cuts seem to represent a general sense of responsibility about the federal budget. We feel that this justification is flawed.

When Americans demand bipartisan solutions from their partisan legislature, Congress must do more than take bipartisan dates to the State of the Union; Congressmen from different parties must move in together. During last week’s State of the Union, Members of Congress broke with tradition of sitting with their parties and sat with people across the aisle.

The truth never seems to carry much weight in Washington, D.C. Since taking office almost two years ago, President Obama has “stimulated a recovery” in the economy, passed a “deficit neutral” health care bill, and “ended” a war in Iraq. Never mind that record unemployment is still around in a stagnant economy that finds over 40,000,000 Americans on food stamps.

So here we are, a day after the election…and the Democrats have lost control of Congress. Even if they maintained a majority in the Senate, they don’t have anywhere close to the 60 votes necessary to pass anything or get anything done.

A breakdown of the passage of the extensive health care bill which will bring coverage to millions of uninsured people and will most directly affect students by allowing them to remain on their guardians’ health insurance policy until 26.

Over the past year, Congress has had to endure many delays to its agenda: Republican obstructionism, the miscellaneous twists in the health care debate, a “snow-pocalypse” as the media calls it, and so on. Yet, still, they seem to take just about every other week off.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service showcased government jobs in an event on Nov. 10, as students look to government jobs in a tough economic climate.

Like many Wash. U. students, I was disgusted by what I heard and read about the discrimination that occurred at Mothers bar. Students I know and respect were unjustly treated like second-class citizens because of their race. This bigotry is reminiscent of the treatment of blacks before the civil rights movement. This period not so long ago reeked with injustice as “separate but equal” ruled our nation. Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned only 55 years ago.