During the 2012 presidential election, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin cemented her reputation as a willing stenographer for Mitt Romney. Now in a new piece for the Post ("Ten reasons why Liz Cheney should run"), Rubin has transferred her affections to Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz. As it turns out, that is altogether fitting. By manipulating […]

Last week, former Bush Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt offered a very instructive look back at the rollout of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. In what the Washington Post's health care reporter Sarah Kliff praised as a "great piece," Leavitt recounted the technical troubles, process pitfalls, rapid responses and lessons learned […]

The Senate Tuesday reached agreement on a deal paving the way for seven Obama nominees to be confirmed without Democrats resorting to the so-called "nuclear option" ending the 60 vote supermajority required by a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave credit where he thought it was due. "John McCain is the reason we're at […]

This fall, CNN will exhume the rotting corpse of its Crossfire program originally killed by Jon Stewart. Three weeks ago, the network offered Piers Morgan's viewers a sneak peak of Crossfire's new four-person panel with Newt Gingrich--a man who believes marriage is an institution between one man and three women in rapid, overlapping succession--blasting the […]

For most Americans now living, those long-ago events were as unthinkable as they were forgotten. In Little Rock, Arkansas (1957), Oxford, Mississippi (1962), and Tuscaloosa, Alabama (1963), Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy dispatched federal troops to enforce the law of the land in the face of local segregationist officials proclaiming "states' rights" as their rallying cry. […]

A quick glance at their travel schedules tells you all you need to know about which Republicans are already reading running hard to win the White House in 2016. Having already visited South Carolina, Texas Senator Ted Cruz will headline an August 23 GOP fundraiser in New Hampshire as part of a summer tour including […]

When the dust-up over the IRS' treatment of non-profit "social welfare organizations" first erupted in early May, I predicted that whatever the findings of looming Internal Revenue Service probes, "the GOP will play politics with the IRS budget regardless. And the certain result will be tens of billions in less revenue annually for Uncle Sam--and […]

Back in 1991, Democrat Edwin Edwards defeated former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard turned Republican gubernatorial candidate David Duke for governor of Louisiana. Edwards famously joked that "the only similarity between me and Duke is that we're both wizards under the sheets." Two decades later, the sheets and hoods may be optional, but for many […]

Among the many disturbing arguments in John Roberts' Voting Rights Act (VRA) decision, the most pernicious may be his invention of the "equal sovereignty" doctrine. In his Shelby County majority opinion, the Chief Justice struck down the VRA's Section 4 formula for determining which jurisdictions must be subject to "preclearance" in part because the VRA […]

As the carnage and chaos grow in Cairo, there are no easy answers for the United States in Egypt. But once upon a time, Republican leaders and their allies in the conservative commentariat had a simple answer indeed for the Middle East. Waiving their purple fingers in early 2005, the likes of David Brooks, Charles […]