You need to know this. House Republicans won't give up on their efforts to voucher-ize Medicare – and now Representative Paul Ryan wants even more people approaching retirement, to be forced into his voucher scam. In a change from Ryan's prior budgets, which set the Medicare cutoff to age 55, the GOP's newest budget proposal will only allow those 56 and older, to stay in the current Medicare system.

After almost 13 hours of a real-live talking filibuster, at 1am Senator Rand Paul yielded the floor to Senator Dick Durbin. Senator Paul started speaking before noon on Wednesday, blocking the confirmation of John Brennan to CIA Director. The filibuster was a response to Attorney General Eric Holder's statement, that the President is authorized under the Constitution to use drones against Americans within our borders.

In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act to regulate the banksters on Wall Street, who crashed our economy in 2008, and many people believe the law doesn't go far enough. But Republican lawmakers have spent the past two years working to undercut and water-down the legislation, and Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama thinks the banksters shouldn't be burdened with those pesky regulations at all.

Only 4 days after the March 1st Sequester deadline, people around our nation are already starting to feel the pinch of austerity. Customs and Border Protection reduced overtime for TSA agents over the weekend, and delays at some airports were up 200%.

President Obama is negotiating with economic terrorists. And a new Reuters report shows he's giving in to their demands by offering cuts to our social safety net. In calls with lawmakers over the weekend, Obama said he will cut programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in exchange for a so-called compromise to replace the sequester, as long as Republicans agree to more tax increases.

After two failed attempts to prevent the sequester on Thursday, Congress gave up efforts to stop the austerity measures, and head out of town for the weekend. Yesterday, one day before the deadline, two rival bills to prevent the $85 billion in spending cuts failed to get Senate approval.

Yesterday, one shocking statement spurred audible gasps in the Supreme Court.

Today in our nation's capital, President Obama helped unveil a new statue dedicated to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the fight to ensure African Americans in our nation were no longer denied the right to vote.

That's what Justice Department Attorney Mike Underhill argued yesterday, in the first phase of the trial that could force the oil giant to pay tens of billions more in damages for the 2010 Gulf oil disaster.

The sequester deadline is March 1st, and there's only four days until Republican austerity measures start to kick in. President Obama released new reports Sunday, which detail how spending cuts will harm each state, and he continues to call on Congress to find a way to avoid the sequester. The Republicans were hard at work too.

With the sequester deadline only a week away and Congress no closer to reaching a deal to prevent austerity, Republicans are changing tactics. They've spent the last month blaming President Obama for the looming cuts, but Americans didn't buy it, so now they're saying the sequester is really no big deal.

Extreme wealth inequality. And according to a new paper from Thomas Hungerford at the Congressional Research Service, capital gains and dividend tax loopholes are responsible for our nation's unequal income divide. Capital gains and investments used to be taxed like regular income, but they were lowered once in 1996, and again by the Bush tax cuts.

At least, 26 Republican-leaning states sure do. Despite over 30 attempts to repeal Obamacare, and Tenth-er arguments for social programs to be run by the states, 26 states haven't set up their insurance exchanges – leaving it up to the federal government.

Today, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles will put out a new deficit-reduction plan. The pair served on President Obama's fiscal commission in 2010, and presented a plan to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff – a plan that was so focused on austerity, that 350 economists co-wrote and published a letter rejecting it. And Simpson-Bowles are at it again.

Trying to accomplish the long list of goals he set for his second term. Just since his State of the Union speech, less than a week ago, he's already put forward a plan for universal preschool, called on Congress to vote on gun regulations, and now he's tackling immigration.