The similarities between failed airplane bombers Richard Reid and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are striking. Each Al Qaeda convert was radicalized in London. Reid and Abdulmutallab were each subdued by fellow passengers after their explosive devices failed to detonate. The two men struck just as the President of the United States was starting his vacation for […]

The civil war over health care reform is rapidly becoming a war between the states. To great fanfare, seven state attorneys general - all of them Republicans - have promised legal action to block the Senate health care bill's Medicaid exception for Ben Nelson's Nebraska. But while the media have focused on the right-wing furor […]

That Republicans would try to politicize the failed Christmas terror attack was about as predictable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Even less surprising is the utter falsehood and sheer hypocrisy of their ham-handed charges. For example, on Sunday Senator Jim Demint (R-SC) blasted the administration for not "connecting […]

Only after both chambers of Congress had already voted on the health care reform bills which will cut the deficit, AP on Saturday belatedly looked back at the deeply flawed and unfunded Medicare prescription drug program Republicans jammed through Congress in 2003. 24 hours later, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on ABC's This Week to […]

Judging by two articles which appeared in their publications this holiday week, Time and the New York Times won't be getting a visit from Santa. Time's Amy Sullivan predictably stirred up right-wing rage with her just-in-time for the holidays, "No Churchgoing Christmas for the First Family." Meanwhile, David Herszenhorn described the Senate's "new partisan vitriol" […]

Word that Senator John Kerry has suggested to the White House that he undertake a mission to Iran predictably has the conservative commentariat apoplectic. But while many worry that such a high-level U.S. visit could undermine the opposition at a time of growing unrest with - and unease for - the regime, the right-wing doth […]

Senate passage of the health care bill this morning naturally brought fond remembrances of reform's long time champion, Ted Kennedy. While his successor Paul Kirk announced, "He's having a merry Christmas in heaven," Kennedy's long-time Massachusetts colleague John Kerry concurred, "Ted Kennedy is up there smiling." But back here on earth, it's worth remembering why […]

Score one for working Americans. After enduring both the worst economic downtown and steepest income inequality since the Great Depression, new data from the Internal Revenue Service revealed that lower and middle class taxpayers are being audited at lower rates than the wealthy. And that may finally signal a roll back of the kid gloves […]

Republicans win, even when they lose. That appears to be the conventional wisdom after the Democrats' crucial victory in the Senate health care vote this weekend. In its wake, media outlets gave credence to John McCain's assertion that thanks to President Obama, Washington is "more partisan" and "more bitterly divided than it's been." That followed […]

The first Republican Abraham Lincoln famously proclaimed, "My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side." And as Matthew 4:23-24 tells us, Jesus never refused treatment to those with preexisting conditions, instead "healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." […]