Why is Mitt Romney alone among the Republican presidential candidates in refusing to release his tax returns? And why is the former Massachusetts Governor also the only major GOP contender not calling for the complete elimination of the capital gains tax? As it turns out, the answer - horrible political optics - is the same […]

Remember when conservatives raged after President George W. Bush issued messages marking the celebration of Kwanzaa each and every year he was in the White House? Neither do they. That's why the right-wing blogosphere is apoplectic that Barack Obama followed Bush's lead in recognizing a holiday many African-Americans celebrate each year. As he did in […]

In the election of 1928, the Republican Party of Herbert Hoover promised voters "a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard." (We all know how that turned out.) Now, Mitt Romney is pledging that "If I'm President" every college graduate will be guaranteed a job, Iran will have no nuclear weapons and […]

President Barack Obama took an oath to "promote the general Welfare." Venture capitalist Mitt Romney pledged to maximize shareholder value. Unfortunately, candidate Mitt Romney is pretending the two are the same thing. As Romney repeatedly insisted this month, President Obama's rescue of the U.S. auto industry and over one million jobs associated with it is […]

From almost the moment Barack Obama took the oath of office, Mitt Romney has attacked the President for showing a lack of leadership on foreign policy and "apologizing for America." Now more than ever, it's Mitt Romney who owes President Obama and the American people some apologies. Four years after declaring his full-throated support for […]

On Monday, Jeb Bush's Wall Street Journal op-ed raised conservative hopes that the former Florida Governor would jump and grab the wheel of the clown car that is the 2012 GOP presidential field. But if Republicans were disappointed when Jeb squelched the nascent "Draft Jeb" movement, the American people should be relieved. After all, the […]

"Judicial activism" is in the eye of the beholder. Threatening judges is not. That explains why even Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales, former Bush Attorneys General and ardent defenders of detainee torture and illicit domestic surveillance, denounced Newt Gingrich's assault on the federal bench as "dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall and would reduce the […]

This is the time of year for family and friends to gather around the fire and over good food and drink, celebrate the season with songs like this one. (Sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas") On the first day of Christmas Republicans told me Obama's born in another country. On the […]

As the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq back in 2003, General David Petraeus famously asked, "Tell me how this ends." Eight and a half years, 4,500 American servicemen and women killed, 30,000 wounded and over $1 trillion later, in many ways the answer is still unclear. Nevertheless, the same week President Obama declared the […]

After his disastrous $10,000 bet with Rick Perry comically backfired last week, multimillionaire Mitt Romney responded by trying to appear "human-like" with his tales of deprivation while serving as Mormon missionary in France in the 1960's. Now, his story about being forced to poop in a bucket is getting Romney in some deep merde. As […]