WASHINGTON - For much of America, it still feels like we are in a recession. We have recession levels of unemployment, with the headline rate at 7.7 percent. And that jumps to 14.4 percent if we count the underemployed and those who have given up hope.

WASHINGTON - Three years after our worst recession since the Great Depression officially ended, the U.S. economy is still very weak. The people most hurt by this weakness are the unemployed and the poor, and of course the two problems are related.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is confronting mostly Republican opponents over whether to extend the Bush tax-cuts to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers.

WASHINGTON - The Republicans' gamble that they could ride a backlash against the Obama administration's efforts to increase the availability of contraception has gone terribly bad.

WASHINGTON - The recent release of documents showing that the Federal Reserve lent tens and possibly hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks in 2008 and 2009 has raised more questions about Ben Bernanke's chairmanship of the Fed.

WASHINGTON - The Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread to scores of cities claims to represent "the 99 percent." Does it? Ninety-nine percent is perhaps too high a bar for public opinion.

WASHINGTON - Although most Americans have not heard about it, a historic step toward changing this hemisphere was taken three weeks ago. A new organization for the region was formed, and everyone was invited except the United States and Canada.

WASHINGTON - The United States has a terribly dysfunctional health-care system, unique among the rich countries in the word in its waste and abuse of its citizens.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. recession officially ended in June 2009, but most Americans don't feel like we are in a recovery.

WASHINGTON - A recent report by McKinsey and Company was seized upon by opponents of health care reform to create a new myth: that President Barack Obama's health insurance reform - the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA - will cause huge numbers of employers to drop health insurance coverage that they currently provide for employees.