On Sunday, Americans will mark the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan. But for the conservative movement, the now-decades long hagiography project is reaching a crescendo. While the Gipper's former speechwriter Peggy Noonan today lauded his goodness in the Wall Street Journal Friday, Sarah Palin will kick-off the Young Americans for Freedom three day extravaganza at […]

In his new role as grand inquisitor of the Obama administration, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is performing his own freedom of information act. That is, after eight years during which President Bush as a matter of policy by default rejected Freedom Information of Act (FOIA) requests, Issa now wants the names of every person making […]

As TPM and others reported last week, Planned Parenthood had alerted the FBI that some of its clinics had likely been targeted by right-wing activists claiming to run an interstate sex trafficking ring that involves minors and illegal immigrants. So that the anti-abortion group Live Action and its Andrew Breitbart megaphone Big Government are trumpeting […]

While the Obama administration is grappling to find the right path forward in Egypt, Republicans are deeply divided. Fearful of the Muslim Brotherhood and fearful for Israel, some like John Bolton and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter have urged support for the authoritarian "devil we know." Others, like Bill Kristol and Max Boot, called for the President […]

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, House Speaker John Boehner insisted, "What we have to understand is cutting spending will in fact help create jobs in America." But across the pond in the UK, Boehner's conservative allies are learning a different lesson. While U.S. gross domestic product jumped by 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2010, […]

This week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) became the latest Republican to give his party credit for the improving U.S. economy. After the Commerce Department reported American gross domestic product (GDP) jumped by 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2010, Cantor attributed the gains to the December tax cut deal and supposed Republican fiscal […]

In a 1999 episode of "The Simpsons," theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking says to Homer, "Your theory of a donut shaped universe intrigues me." Sadly, the same can't be said of Sarah Palin's call for a donut-based economy for the United States. Palin's boost for the American breakfast snack sector came in her jaw-dropping […]

They say it's better to be lucky than good. But on Thursday, Fox News host Glenn Beck may have been both. The night before, his pay-for Insider Extreme web site premiered "Rumors of War," an incendiary pseudo-documentary designed to drum up support for conflict with Tehran by claiming, among other things, "now the Iranians are […]

From war 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. As her response to President Obama's State of the Union address showed, that long and growing list now includes the history of the […]

As the Washington Post and the New York Times reported, the rapidly developing unrest in Egypt is just as quickly posing a major challenge to U.S. foreign policy in the region. On Tuesday, Secretary of State declared "the Egyptian government is stable" even as tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Cairo. […]