From taxes and the First Amendment to Reagan's Iran/Contra scandal, how much energy her home state of Alaska produces and so much more, Sarah Palin doesn't know what she doesn't know. Regardless, the language comedian Bill Maher recently used to describe her shocking ignorance and incessant demagoguery is beyond the pale. His right-wing critics are […]

Facing dire budget crises, governors nationwide are waging an economic race to the bottom. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Idaho, the new GOP leadership is pursuing draconian curbs on public employee unions supposedly to rein in compensation and pensions of government workers. Meanwhile, in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere, Republican governors have slashed corporate […]

As was proven once again this weekend, for Republicans nothing succeeds like failure. Across the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages, a legion of GOP luminaries spoke authoritatively on subjects they had frequently - and often catastrophically - bungled in the past. Apparently, no transgression is too serious, no series of mistakes too disastrous and […]

At an event hosted by Rep. Steve King in Iowa yesterday, the clown car of would-be Republican White House hopefuls quickly put to rest quickly any notion of a "truce" on social issues. And while Newt Gingrich seemed to question whether Islam was a "true religion," former pizza mogul Herman Cain declared that as president […]

The national debt of the United States tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under George W. Bush. Bush and the GOP Congress cut taxes during wartime, a first in modern American history. During his presidency, Republicans voted seven times to increase the debt ceiling. As Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2009 described Republican orthodoxy […]

In October 2001, President Bush's Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed 35 years of White House practice regarding Freedom of Information Act requests. For the first time since the passage of the Act, disclosure became the exception to the rule. As Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, 22 million "missing" Bush administration emails and Karl Rove's […]

On Wednesday, Sarah Palin made what history will soon record as the shortest-lived promise in American political history. Last night, Palin pledged to Fox News colleague Greta Van Susteren, "I'm through whining about a liberal press." Of course, when the half-term governor claimed, "it doesn't do any good to whine about it," she knows what […]

A year after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, comically dire Republican predictions of an "Armageddon" which will "ruin our country" and mean "a lot of people are going to die" have not come to pass. Of course, that didn't stop Mitt Romney from marking the anniversary by pretending he never supported […]

And now for today's quiz. You are a member of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells you that as a percentage of American gross domestic product, total taxes in the U.S. are at their lowest level since 1950. The nation is fighting two wars (and now, arguably a third), conflicts which were not only […]

With her visit to Israel, Sarah Palin is going for a Republican twofer. Hoping to burnish her non-existent foreign policy credentials, Palin is simultaneously making what after going to Iowa and New Hampshire may be the most important pilgrimage for any aspiring GOP White House hopeful. But while her trip may win her some new […]