It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That is, according the U.S. media, July 2012 was an excellent opportunity for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to showcase his human side at his $8 million lakeside estate in New Hampshire. But when then-Senator Barack Obama took time from the campaign in […]

Few battle cries rally Republicans more than the demand for "states' rights." But for today's Party of Lincoln, that ideological bludgeon once used to deny millions of Americans their freedom for the first century of the Republic and ignore their rights in the second has a new purpose. When it comes to helping Americans realize […]

In recent weeks, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has tried to redefine the calendar by inserting the new milestone "AB"--or "After Bain"-- into the timeline of human history. Defending its man from damaging reports that he profited when Bain Capital invested in companies that shipped jobs overseas, extracted massive dividends and fees from firms that later […]

Congressional Republicans on Thursday dispatched some of their best and brightest to the Supreme Court in heady anticipation of the GOP triumph that never came. But when Chief Justice Roberts announced the decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch "folded his arms across his chest, his mouth slightly agape." His slack-jawed response […]

In the wake of this week's Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, Republican governors are talking tough about turning down expanded federal Medicaid spending that would enable insurance coverage for millions of their residents. Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, who warned the "frightening" Court decision could lead to penalties for those who "refuse to eat […]

In February 2009, President Obama delivered what Steve Benen rightly described as the largest two-year tax cut in American history. Nevertheless, the New York Times asked in the run-up to the 2010 midterms, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" What happened, of course, was the Democrats' drubbing […]

Within days of the passage of President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act in March 2010, Senate Minority Mitch McConnell declared, "I think [our] slogan will be 'repeal and replace', 'repeal and replace.'" But now that the Supreme Court has largely upheld the dreaded Obamacare, Republicans have yet to decide what to replace it with. While […]

Among the myriad Republican myths about taxes, the most pernicious and demonstrably false - that "tax cuts pay for themselves" - is the mostly deeply held by the GOP faithful. As President George W. Bush famously (and erroneously) put it, "You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." Now, a survey of leading economists conducted […]

Despite the overwhelming consensus of legal scholars regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the United States Supreme Court seems poised to strike down all or part of President Obama's signature health care reform law. If so, that would be the culmination of a decades-long conservative campaign to stop universal coverage at all costs. […]

Admittedly, the young Barack Obama was a pothead and tried cocaine. Apparently, the young Mitt Romney was a bully who liked to pretend to be a cop, a firefighter and a gangster. But whether or not early Obama dabbled in dope or Romney was, well, a douchebag, doesn't really matter. Or, at least, doesn't matter […]