Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King was jailed for campaigning against racial segregation in Birmingham, in violation of an injunction against anyone “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing.” His letter was written on the margins of a newspaper, scraps of paper that another prisoner [...]

If you have received my e-mails for a while, you know that I sometimes refer to you all, affectionately, as “Alan’s Army.” You are passionate, smart and dedicated. But last week you were something else: Amazing. I told you about a proposed partnership between multinational corporations and their sellout tools in government (a/k/a the Transatlantic [...]

One of the nice things about being a Member of Congress is that I have security clearance, and you don’t. (Sorry!) So I know about the threat that the looming sequester poses to a crucial top-secret military research project. Since we’re friends, I’ll tell you about it. The U.S. Army has discovered that a small [...]

Aaron Swartz was an internet leader and free-speech advocate. He helped organize the worldwide movement to keep the internet free from censorship and corporate control. After Aaron downloaded a large number of scholarly articles from the JSTOR website without JSTOR’s permission, he was indicted for violating JSTOR’s terms of service. Facing long years in prison, Aaron [...]

As we approach the self-immolation known as “The Sequester,” I find myself thinking about a woman in West Africa, asking people, “Would you like to buy a pen?” She was a middle-aged woman, wearing a bright-colored dress. Judging by wear and tear, it may have been the only dress she owned. She was standing on [...]

A few days ago, I pointed out that the House Republicans’ five-page bill to raise the debt ceiling offends two different provisions in the Constitution.  I wish this were an isolated instance.  It’s not. Most House Republicans are Tea Partiers, and Tea Partiers are in love with three things: those three-sided felt hats; those overly snug vests [...]

This week, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives did something that you wouldn’t think is even possible: they introduced (and then the House passed) a five-page bill that, despite its brevity, may violate two separate provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The bill increases the debt limit by some unspecified amount, but only [...]

When I was elected to Congress in 2008, I asked to join the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). Why? Because I was a government employee. The AFGE negotiates benefits for government employees, including me. If I were going to benefit from that, I felt that I should pay my dues. I’m not the “free [...]

Here are what I modestly and humbly refer to as “Grayson’s Laws of Legislating”: (1) Vote for what you’re in favor of. (2) Vote for what you can live with, if you must do that to get what you need. What we’ve been seeing in the House of Representatives lately have been massive and pervasive [...]

Let me get right to the point. I’m against the proposed “chained CPI” cut in Social Security because it substantially undermines the protection against inflation that Social Security recipients enjoy under current law. The existing cost of living adjustment (“COLA”) already understates actual increases in the “cost of living”; the chained CPI would exacerbate the [...]

I did not spend Thanksgiving evening with my wife and my five children. I spent it, instead, handing out turkey sandwiches to workers in WalMart. And showing my support for one brave soul who walked off the job in protest against exploitation. WalMart “associates” make an average of just more than $10 an hour. That [...]

Yesterday, I mentioned that my opponent Todd Long has concocted a bizarre End-of-Days scenario if I win, which has me removing the Bible from people’s homes, and “kicking Christianity out of the country.” Long may be a liar, but he’s not an outlier. Because right-wing nuts like him have been flooding the media with paranoid [...]

As we lurch uncontrollably toward Election Day, choosing our next set of lawmakers, I’ve been looking for a way to cast some light on what is at stake. I think that I’ve found it in the oldest legal code, the Code of Hammurabi, from 1772 B.C. In general, the Code of Hammurabi established the law [...]

Good news and bad news. The good news is that President Obama won last night’s debate. The bad news is that the entire debate, questions and answers, seemed premised on the false assumption that virtually everyone else on this planet wants to kill us. Here is a list of the topics last night: (1) Libya [...]

I watched the Presidential Debate last night. There was a general absence of NASCAR moments, although Romney’s insistence that the President actually didn’t say what the President actually did say about the Benghazi attack came close. Leaving that aside, the impression that I was left with is that Romney is running a giant con game, [...]

Yesterday, I wrote that all the crocodile tears that the Right Wing sheds for the supposed insolvency of Social Security are just a cover story for what they really want to do, i.e., destroy Social Security. My Tea Party opponent is a perfect example of this: he calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”; he calls Social [...]

So I was in a debate against my Republican opponent Todd Long a few days ago, and the subject of Social Security came up. He spat out the usual buzzwords about how Social Security is broke, how the Democrats stole all the money from it, etc., etc. I said that he sounded like Chicken Little, [...]

The local CBS affiliate in Orlando, WKMG, has reported that my opponent, Todd Long, was “very abusive” to his ex-wife. Given Long’s history of severe alcoholism, this should surprise no one. Long passed out drunk outside a schoolyard, 200 miles from home. He was convicted of driving under the influence. He is barred for life from the [...]

No one in classical times knew about the existence of other worlds; the planets simply were wandering points of light in the night sky. So you won’t find any mention of aliens from space in biblical literature, or Greek mythology. The invention of the telescope changed that. When Galileo trained that newfangled device on Jupiter [...]

In all of the speeches that I heard in Charlotte last week, I didn’t hear anyone praise President Obama for what might be his greatest accomplishment – getting us through almost four years, without some terrible national tragedy. Consider some of the things that happened during the previous Administration: (1) The 9/11 attacks. (2) The destruction [...]