Over the last several weeks, John McCain's rapid descent into furious incoherence has spawned a cottage industry of McCainologists. But his open scorn and seething rage over Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the DREAM Act, the START Treaty and even aid to 9/11 responders is hardly McCain's first performance of King Lear. But after his humiliation […]

Like a broken clock, even Sarah Palin is occasionally right. So it is with her suggestion that the perpetually weepy incoming House Speaker John Boehner is getting a free pass for theatrical water works a woman could never survive politically. As it turns out, the half-term governor is speaking from experience when she claimed "that's […]

On Friday, the House approved the $801 billion "compromise" tax bill, sending it on to the White House for President Obama's signature. Over the next two years, that budget-busting, gilded class giveaway will cost the Treasury $70 billion in revenue lost from the top 2% of taxpayers and another $25 billion uncollected from the richest […]

Republican politics are now defined by necessary lies, untruths like "tax cuts pay for themselves" which GOP orthodoxy requires be true. So it should come as no surprise that the Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are dissenting from the panel's upcoming report to falsely claim that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were […]

Move over, welfare queens, IRS agents and trial lawyers. The Republican Party has a new bogeyman: the public employee. With a sluggish U.S. economy, cash-strapped states and under-funded pension programs, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and other leading lights of the GOP are scape-goating government workers and their unions for the nation's woes. Of course, there's […]

On Sunday, incoming House Speaker John Boehner had his prime time debut on CBS 60 Minutes. Proclaiming "I reject the word" compromise, Boehner made clear that past performance would be a guarantee of future results. But even more pathetic was his staggering hypocrisy. After all, Boehner claimed that President Obama, a man he accused of […]

Fresh off her pronouncements on the Fed's "quantitative easing" and federal aid to the states, Sarah Palin this week added the deficit and Medicare to her Potemkin façade of policy expertise. A year after she first endorsed converting Medicare into a voucher program, Palin took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to endorse […]

One day before the House Democratic caucus voiced its opposition to President Obama's tax cut deal with Senate Republicans, Speaker Nancy Pelosi focused on the estate tax as adding insult to injury. But Pelosi isn't alone in shining a spotlight on an estate tax proposal that would drain the U.S. Treasury of billions of dollars. […]

For years, American federalism has been characterized by "red state socialism," the one way flow of federal dollars from blue state taxpayers to red state recipients. For example, Sarah Palin's home state of Alaska ranked third in federal tax dollars received per dollar of taxes paid by state residents. But now that recession-ravaged states like […]

It is sadly ironic that President Obama held a Pearl Harbor Day press conference to defend his surrender to Republicans over the extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. At a time when the United States is fighting two still-unpaid-for wars, facing staggering budget deficits and struggling to emerge from its deepest economic crisis […]