While today's employment report showed the private sector added jobs for the ninth straight month, those gains were more than offset by the deep cuts by state and local governments. But those layoffs, the biggest in 30 years, didn't have to be this severe. After all, President Obama in June asked Congress for $50 billion […]

In his latest effort to rebrand both the Republican and Democratic parties, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has also rewritten history. Labeling his GOP "the party of paychecks" and Democrats "the party of food stamps" in advance of his upcoming campaign swing, Gingrich declared "we have historically since Ronald Reagan of 1980 been the party […]

Somewhere, Wall Street Journal columnist and What's the Matter with Kansas author Thomas Frank is shaking his head. In 2004, Frank detailed how the GOP successfully turned to divisive social issues and fear-mongering to persuade working class whites in his home state to consistently vote against their own economic self-interest. Now, a new AP-GfK poll […]

This spring, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Week and The Grio (among others) pointed to the new crop of African-American GOP candidates and pondered, "2010: The year of the black Republican?" And on Sunday, RealClearPolitics contributor Jack Kelly touted the candidacies of Tim Scott, Allen West and Ryan Frazier as proof of […]

This week, Delaware Republican Senate candidate and sworn enemy of masturbation Christine O'Donnell unveiled a new ad declaring, "I'm you." But if that formula to reposition herself as an average American sounds hauntingly familiar, it should. After all, it was Linda Tripp, opposed as she was to presidential oral sex, who said the exact same […]

By some estimates, the progressive One Nation Working Together march in Washington drew twice the audience of the Tea Party conclave on August 28th. But when it comes to media coverage, there's no comparison. While the massive gathering of 400 union, church and other progressive groups barely registered a blip on the mainstream media's radar […]

This week, Time magazine offered an inside look at "the Secret World of Extreme Militias," the increasingly dangerous ranks of anti-government extremists, white supremacists, tax deniers, gun rights activists and anti-abortion radicals. But even as Barton Gellman reported that "Obama's ascendancy unhinged the radical right, offering a unified target to competing camps of racial, nativist […]

Last week, would-be House Speaker John Boehner unveiled the GOP Pledge to America to dismal reviews from, among others, himself. "We can't have that serious conversation [about policy] until we lay out the size of the problem," Boehner said of the Pledge, adding, "Let's not get to the potential solutions." But on one point, Boehner […]

The Republican demand to make the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy permanent is like Jason from the Friday the 13th slasher movies. Incredibly dangerous but once presumed dead, the GOP's perpetual payday for the rich rises again to wreak havoc and ruin lives. And delivering the warning this time is the non-partisan Congressional […]

Addressing the United Negro College Fund back in 1991, Vice President Dan Quayle declared, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." Especially true, it turns out, of his son Ben. As he showed in discussing the economy in a […]