Attorney General Eric Holder today called for shorter sentences to be handed down for non-violent drug offenses, which would reduce prison time for many people caught with drugs. By doing so, he has taken another step in the right direction: away from the worst aspects of the "War On Drugs," and towards a more sane federal policy. The Obama administration -- Holder in particular -- has been charting a new path for the past year or so on this subject, and it is a welcome change. The new changes won't go far enough, though. Much more work needs to be done. How much of that will happen in the next year is open to speculation.

The biggest question is probably how long Holder will continue in his position. He seemed to indicate in a recent interview that he will probably step down sometime this year, after he's accomplished the work he's set out for himself. Since that interview, the subject of Holder stepping down has been walked back by the Justice Department, though, so it's anyone's guess when Holder might be thinking of leaving.

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Over a decade ago, the federal government did something which made people's lives better. A law was passed by a Republican House and a Republican Senate and signed by a Republican president, and it has demonstrably made people's lives better. It was called the "Do-Not-Call Implementation Act" and it created a government database where private individuals could voluntarily add their phone number to block its use by telemarketers. So far, it's been a smashing success, and the law was improved by making the list permanent (so people don't have to keep signing up for it) in 2007. Also in that year, a survey showed that 72 percent of Americans had registered for the list. The time has now come to build upon this landmark legislation and create a "Do Not Track" list, to further protect consumers' privacy.

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Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Central Intelligence Agency are having an increasingly-public spat, it seems. Feinstein has now accused the C.I.A. of spying on her congressional committee (which is charged with oversight of the C.I.A.) and the C.I.A. has accused Feinstein's committee of taking documents they weren't supposed to have. They are both trying to convince Eric Holder's Justice Department that the other is at fault.

Of course, the irony of Dianne Feinstein (of all people) complaining about government spying is rich indeed, since she herself has been such a big fan -- or champion, even -- of the concept of government surveillance. It's as if Dick Cheney suddenly started complaining about warmongering, or perhaps Darrell Issa complaining about conspiracy theories. The disconnect is startling, to say the least, and it's hard to muster up much sympathy. Feinstein has been a staunch supporter not just of the National Security Agency, but also the concept of the telephone and internet monitoring programs themselves. So she's standing on some very shaky ground when she complains that her staffers' computers were monitored by the C.I.A. It's not like she's used to taking this high road on surveillance when it comes to American citizens who don't work for her committee, in other words.

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Is the gay marriage issue beginning to disappear from the Republican Party's playbook? Are Republicans on the verge of admitting defeat and deciding to move on? The answer is likely "not quite yet" to both of those questions, but the fact that they can even now be seriously asked seems like progress of a sort. It'll likely be years before we see Republicans (at least on the national stage) boldly taking pro-marriage-equality stands, and it'll likely take at least one more groundbreaking Supreme Court decision before the issue loses all of its political weight in the party. But glimmers of such a future can at least now be seen, which wasn't true even as recently as one year ago (the first two landmark Supreme Court gay marriage case decisions were announced only at the end of last June). Previously unimaginable, these questions are now in the realm of the possible, to put it another way. Because (to borrow President Obama's term) the Republican Party has finally started to "evolve" on the subject.

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It's been a busy week in politics -- even without all the CPAC follies -- so let's get right to it.

In the House, Republican Darrell Issa, who chairs the Investigate Obama Until We Find Something To Impeach Him Over Committee (I think that's what it's called, at any rate...) held a hearing over the alleged abuses at the Internal Revenue Service.

Reportedly, he was recalling Lois Lerner to testify because she was going to answer questions. How do I know this? Because Issa himself told me, on one of last Sunday's political talk shows. But when she did appear, she took the Fifth again. Behind the scenes, her lawyer had been working on a deal with Issa in exchange for testimony, but the deal fell apart. This annoyed Issa no end, and after asking her question after question, he abruptly gaveled the hearing to a close and tried to walk out.

Representative Elijah Cummings tried to speak, but Issa continually cut off his microphone and tried to beat a hasty retreat from the room. Cummings kept on speaking, getting visibly more annoyed at being silenced in such a fashion. Watch the video, it's pretty cringe-worthy.

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The 2014 election season is officially underway.

When I first wrote that opening sentence, I considered adding "[pause for groans]" at the end of it. For many, America's seemingly-unending electoral cycle is a source of cynicism (or worse), while for others it keeps the partisan edges sharp. Your mileage may vary, as they say online.

The biggest race of the week was the Texas primaries, but this firecracker turned into a fizzle, as the major candidates didn't have much problem defeating any of their upstart challengers. The general election race for governor will indeed be one to watch this fall, with Democrat Wendy Davis attempting to turn Texas at least slightly less red, but the primaries themselves didn't provide much in the way of surprises.

Next week, however, there will be a special election for a House seat in Florida, which the winning party (whichever it turns out to be) is going to proclaim as a bellwether for the upcoming 2014 midterms. No matter which side wins, the significance of the victory is likely to be wildly overstated, but that's not going to stop anyone from drawing their conclusions.

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Another good month

For the second month in a row, President Obama had an all-around positive month in the public polls. His job approval average was up, his job disapproval was down, and he has almost completely recovered from the dip his numbers took after the Obamacare website rollout fiasco. This is clear when you take a look at the chart for February:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

February, 2014

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Headlines can be deceptive, so allow me to state up front that I don't mean "oh, those poor poor politicians," or even literally, as in "politicians who don't have millions." I mean it instead in the sense of "the politics of the poor," which could shape up to be a major issue in the upcoming elections. Why this is happening in this election cycle, I cannot really say. Poverty isn't some sort of new thing, after all. But both Republicans and Democrats seem to be showcasing their ideas in a way we haven't really seen since John Edwards trod the hustings.

For whatever reason, the poor may be front and center in the politics of 2014. Even Republicans seem to be worried about how they are perceived on the issue, which is unusual (to say the least). Paul Ryan is set to introduce the Republican answer to President Obama's budget (just released today), and Ryan's been touting it as a new Republican direction on poverty for a while now. The Republican Party famously conducted a "post mortem" of their whole platform after the 2012 election, which advised drastic changes in their approach to (and how they talk about) some major issues. Almost all of this advice was then completely ignored by the party as a whole. Republicans have not noticeably changed the way they either talk about or create policies for a wide range of people (women, minorities, gays, immigrants, young people, etc.), so it is somewhat odd that the poor are actually being addressed by Ryan's new budget.

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Alexis de Tocqueville, at the very end of the first volume of Democracy In America, took a look into his crystal ball and made a prediction for how global politics and power would change in the future. Tocqueville was a Frenchman, of course, and he had also studied English society as well, but he dismissed the biggest European powers of his day and instead concentrated on two newer players on the world stage:

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President Obama is giving an address on the situation in the Ukraine as this is being written, so we're going to wait until next week to draw any conclusions for American domestic politics, just to warn everyone up front.

Instead, we're mostly going to focus on what appears to be an astonishing amount of Republican self-inflicted political wounds from the past week. It's as if someone somewhere gave Republicans an order: "Stick your foot way out, now... ready... aim... fire!" Even when Republicans weren't shooting at their own feet this week, it appears they were conducting a circular firing squad instead. The 2014 campaign, in other words, is off to a raucous start... and it's only February.

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