Obama wants to address Congress on Sept. 7; Boehner says do it the next day. The disagreement suggests a summer recess hasn't eased tensions between Democrats and Republicans.

In a back-and-forth that raised familiar doubts about whether Democrats and Republicans can work together when Congress reconvenes next week, President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner tangled anew Wednesday. But the issue wasn't budgets or debt. It was a date.

An Education News Colorado analysis of spending by Denver school board members shows that four of the seven blew their annual $5,000 budgets for the fiscal year ending June 30, including one member who spent well over twice the amount each is allocated.

Board member Andrea Merida spent more than $12,000, an overspending of $7,000 in a single year, or 153 percent of her annual permitted limit. Thousands of dollars were charged to the district in restaurants and coffee shops, with her credit card statements noting their purpose as “constituent meetings.”

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If you've ever thought, "One day, I'm going to put in a solar energy system," today might be the day.

Dealing with the marital home is complicated in our tough economic times. Ten or fifteen years ago when I was doing divorce settlements, one of the most valuable assets was the marital home. Almost every home had equity, along with pensions and 401(k)s. In many cases, especially if primary custody of the children was with the wife, there would be a settlement reached which would include a provision regarding the marital home. Often the wife and children could remain there as long as there was no remarriage or until the youngest child reached the age of 18, or some other key age. If the wife was paying the mortgage payments, she would get credit for reduction in principal on the mortgage, and at the time of sale or a buyout, after payment of closing costs, real estate commissions, and any other expenses for repairs necessary for sale, the net proceeds would be equally divided.

What about now? I rarely see a home with equity. Most homes are upside-down, often having a first mortgage and a second mortgage or a home equity loan with the value of the house being much less than what is owed. What do we do in this situation? I have told clients in the past and I emphasize this again and again, even if the house does have some equity, it is important not to become emotionally attached to a house. People don't want to move or be uprooted, but if there is a divorce, often it makes sense to move on. Can either party afford to continue the payments? If the house has a negative equity, in Michigan where I practice often that is not considered though there are some recent cases considering that, and often it will be part of the equation in adding up assets and liabilities in a property settlement.

What are the options? The first option is to sell the house and take a loss, which means often coming up with money from savings or 401(k)s which have been sadly diminished in our economy as well. A second option is if the parties can afford it, for one to stay there and in some cases, both parties where there is not enough money, and hope for the market to come back. In this day and age, that is usually totally unrealistic. A third option, if either party can afford to keep the house, is for that one party to do so, and make the payments going forward.

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A widening scandal involving two longtime expert witnesses may become an issue in Mississippi's race for attorney general this fall. Incumbent Attorney General Jim Hood has long defended two prolific but controversial forensic specialists who have come under fire in recent years: medical examiner Steven Hayne and forensic dentist Michael West.

West has testified in about a hundred cases over the years, and Hayne has testified in thousands. Critics have alleged for years that the two are guns for hire, willing to say on the witness stand whatever prosecutors need in order to win a conviction.

In 2008, two men -- Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks -- were exonerated by DNA testing in the rapes and murders of two little girls in the early 1990s. Combined, the two served more than 30 years in prison and Brewer was nearly executed. In both cases, Hayne and West claimed to have found bite marks on the victims' skin that no other medical personnel saw. In both cases, West then claimed to have used his now-discredited bite mark expertise to match those bite marks to the prosecution's chief suspect. A third man, Albert Johnson, was later arrested and confessed to both crimes.

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Even as Washington was preoccupied with the debt ceiling standoff this summer, Americans repeatedly told pollsters that the job market, not the federal deficit, was their main concern. Now, with President Obama reportedly reaching out to a prominent labor economist for a key administration position, it seems as though the White House is coming around to that point of view.

Obama has nominated Alan Krueger, a labor economist at Princeton, to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers, filling the position most recently held by the economist Austan Goolsbee. Obama is expected to announce Krueger's nomination to head the CEA Monday, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The news comes at the end of a summer of sluggish growth, high prices for consumers, swollen unemployment rates and weakened sentiments among Americans who see no immediate prospect of an economic turnaround. A series of underwhelming economic-performance reports have led a growing number of economists to conclude that the country still faces many months of anemic growth and high joblessness.

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There are two facts about our current economic situation that can no longer be denied: Our economy is in desperate need of government stimulus, and our political system won’t abide any increase in our national deficit.

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There is every indication that the bursting of the student debt bubble, like the housing bubble before it, is imminent. And when it happens, it will send shockwaves throughout the financial markets. People of color will be especially vulnerable.
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Like many thousands of former volunteers, I am forever indebted to President Kennedy and his vision of a "peace corps of talented men and women" -- a vision to which I owe my family and my career. Even so, is fifty years of Peace Corps enough?
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The Silicon Valley pioneer has been stumbling for more than a decade now. Call it another case of a corporate giant laid low by the future.

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter is usually credited with using the term "creative destruction" to describe how capitalism evolves by supplanting the old with the new. But it's a fair bet that Schumpeter never could have imagined how creatively Hewlett-Packard Co. has managed its own destruction.