From the beginning, the defining irony of the never-ending debate over Obamacare is this: health care is worst in those states where Republicans poll best. The map of the states with the worst health care systems largely mirrors GOP strongholds...
On Monday, Congressional investigators revealed that Apple has side-stepped billions of dollars in U.S taxes "through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen." Nevertheless, Tuesday's hearing before the Senate...
Throughout the tenure of George W. Bush, many of us to the left of center warned that unchecked presidential power was putting Americans' civil liberties in jeopardy. Now with the revelations that the Obama Justice Department seized AP phone records...
With Washington engulfed in scandals real and imagined over the Benghazi tragedy, the IRS' handling of applications by political groups for tax exempt status and the Justice Department's seizure of AP phone records, California Congressman Darrell Issa is enjoying his...
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that President Obama has narrowed his list of possible replacements for FBI Director Robert Mueller to two candidates. Senate Republicans probably won't be happy with either of the highly respected choices. Lisa Monaco, the...
Until Republicans captured their House majority in January 2011, no political party ever had both the intent and the votes to block an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling. While figures in both parties have cast symbolic votes against raising...
Revelations that the Justice Department authorized the seizure of Associated Press phone records have produced condemnation from Congressional Democrats and other Obama allies. But while Capitol Hill Democrats decried the tactics as "inexcusable" (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), "troubling" (Senator.
On January 7, 200--two weeks before Barack Obama took the oath of office--the Congressional Budget Office forecast the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 at $1.2 trillion. Now, the CBO is projecting the deficit will be only $624 for...
Revelations that IRS civil servants used biased criteria to target conservative groups seeking tax exempt status is rightly drawing bipartisan outrage. President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Investigations Subcommittee Chair...
For Republicans, Benghazi is the scandal that must not die. Despite the testimony by Obama administration officials including Hillary Clinton and the blistering findings of the State Department Accountability Review Board she endorsed, the GOP is determined to bludgeon the...
As his performance over the past week suggests, Rep. Darrell Issa's response to the tragic deaths of American citizens in the Middle East apparently depends on which party controls the White House. After all, in February 2007 Issa mocked the...
Over the past few days, news reports suggest that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad may be gaining the upper hand in the Syrian civil war. While Hezbollah fighters are apparently pouring in from Lebanon to counter Al Qaeda extremists...
Four years ago, some conservatives created an uproar when pro-choice President Barack Obama was invited to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame University. (That protest was more than a little hypocritical, given the school's tradition of featuring pro-choice speakers...
Two years ago, Congressional Republicans took the unprecedented step of holding the debt ceiling hostage in order to extract draconian spending cuts. Now, the GOP's willingness to sabotage the American (and global) economy may be about to take an even...
On Wednesday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) will hold new hearings into the Benghazi consulate attack which claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Hyping tomorrow's show, the Grand Inquisitor of...
As the chaos and carnage in Syria continues to escalate, some conservatives are very happy indeed with word of Israeli air strikes against weapons shipments reportedly destined for Hezbollah. While John McCain crowed that "the Israelis seem to be able...
"It's never been easy for House Republicans to raise the debt limit." With that opening sentence, Jake Sherman and Steven Sloan of Politico provided air cover for the GOP's unprecedented--and dangerously irresponsible--debt ceiling hostage-taking. After all, Republicans in both houses...
During his tenure as a South Carolina Senator, Republican Jim Demint was a big supporter of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In the fall of 2009, he cosponsored a bill requiring the budgetary impact of all legislation to be...
Like "whorehouse morals," the term "celebrity historian" is one of those oxymoronic expressions that should be viewed with instant distrust. So it is with Niall Ferguson, the Harvard professor and fellow at Oxford and Stanford's Hoover Institute. Long a fixture...
Almost everything you need to know about the self-destructive economic policy coming out of Congress was contained in two simple statements this week. While the Federal Reserve warned that "fiscal policy is restraining economic growth," the Republican National Committee released...
This week, the New England Journal of Medicine published a major study of Medicaid in Oregon which has rapidly emerged of a Rorschach test of sorts. That is, partisans on either side of the political divide tend to see what...
"Reality," Stephen Colbert famously lamented to President Bush in 2006, "has a well-known liberal bias." It is conservatives' perpetual fear that the truth will not set them free that is the driving force behind two House Republican proposals announced this...
If you had any doubts that Republicans believe in government stimulus spending to create jobs, look no further than the Pentagon budget. Two years after House Speaker John Boehner sought $450 million in funding for a second F-35 jet engine...
This week, the Republican Party asked Americans to join in the celebration marking the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. In addition to offering "Thanks W" stickers (fittingly available only in black and white), visitors to the GOP.com...
Friday's news that U.S. gross domestic product grew by only 2.5 percent came as a disappointment. After all, that performance not only fell short of the consensus expectation of three percent GDP growth, but was aided by a one-time bump...
In the run-up to today's celebration at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, America's 43rd President declared that "history will ultimately judge" his tenure in the White House. And that is precisely the problem for the custodians of Bush's legacy....
Thanks to graduate student Thomas Herndon, economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart are now the stuff of pop culture legend. (Even Stephen Colbert is getting in on the act.) But the epic failure of their Excel spreadsheets is no laughing...
The Attorney General of the United States branded him a "terrorist," and with good reason. His bombings killed two people and wounded over 150 others. "Radicalized" as a child, his acts of terror were motivated by his extremist religious ideology....
Two weeks ago, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his state would forego billions of dollars in expanded federal Medicaid funding that could help provide health insurance for 1.5 million of his lower-income residents. Rejecting an estimated $90 billion over the...
Just in time for Tax Day, President Obama released his 2012 return to the IRS. And right on cue, conservative commentators blasted the President for paying only 18.4 percent ($112,000) of his $609,000 in income to Uncle Sam. Predictably, while...