Republicans desperate to halt health care reform at all costs are turning to a new gambit. To Democrats intent on passing a Senate bill with a 51 vote simple majority via the reconciliation process, Republicans for months have warned the move would trigger a "holy war" (Hatch), a "nuclear war" (Kyl) or even "end the […]

Canada may have eked out a thrilling 3-2 overtime win over the United States in the Olympic hockey final on Sunday, but when it comes to political obstructionism, it's no contest. The AP is just the latest to document the Republicans' runaway gold medal in the filibuster. On track to easily shatter their previous record, […]

In May 1996, a sheepish businessman admitted to a hotel bellhop, "There's a guy in the lobby who was running for president two months ago, and now I've forgotten his name." When the bellhop told him the man was the former Tennessee Governor, the businessman quickly remembered, "that's right, Lamar Alexander." Now, 14 years after […]

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," Reagan Revolutionary Grover Norquist boasted, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Now, a generation after Norquist launched his crusade, Republican White House hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty are leading a new charge to "starve […]

For years, Republican leaders including President George W. Bush, former House Minority Leader Tom Delay and current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have insisted that "no American is denied health care in America" because "you just go to an emergency room." Apparently, Minnesota Governor and 2012 White House Republican hopeful Tim Pawlenty didn't read the […]

At Thursday's White House health care summit, President Obama pleaded with the participants for "a discussion, and not just us trading talking points." Alas, as Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander made clear from the get-go, the President was destined for disappointment. In his opening remarks, Alexander insisted Democrats should abandon the bills they've already passed and […]

In the run-up to Thursday's White House health care summit, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein documented "the six Republican ideas already in the health-care reform bill." Among these is the GOP's favorite whipping boy, tort reform. But the Senate provision which "encourages states to develop new malpractice systems and suggests that Congress fund the most […]

As the Scooter Libby affair showed, no one circles the wagons like the Republican Party and its conservative allies. Now that Bush torture architects John Yoo and Jay Bybee barely escaped disbarment in the final version of the report from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, the right-wing counterattack and near orgasmic celebration is […]

With its estimate Tuesday that the $787 billion Obama stimulus package created up to 2.1 million jobs in the last quarter of 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) joined in the near-unanimous chorus of voices proclaiming the package's success. Of course, it wasn't just the overwhelming consensus of economists which concurred that the stimulus saved […]