Even as President Obama prepared to meet with the CEO's of the nation's largest banks and financial institutions, his detractors' hysteria about his plans to rescue the economy reached a fever pitch. In Washington, GOP leaders decried Obama's "banana republic" budget, only to unveil warmed-over tax cuts certain enrich the wealthiest Americans while accelerating the […]

Nothing, it would seem, defines the modern Republican Party more than belief in free markets and God. So it is only natural that leading lights of the GOP would find rapture at the intersection of the two. Following in the footsteps of John McCain, Sam Brownback and Bobby Jindal, with his looming conversion to Catholicism […]

During President Obama's press conference Tuesday, NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd demonstrated once again why he ought to return to his previous role as a political analyst. Even as Americans are losing their jobs, homes and retirement savings, Todd asked the President "why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be […]

Timing, they say, is everything. On the very night President Obama suggested Republican critics of his $3.6 trillion budget plan have a "short memory" when it comes to the sea of red ink he inherited, PBS' Frontline offered a stinging reminder in a documentary titled "Ten Trillion and Counting." Featured prominently among the Republican amnesiacs […]

Unlike John Kerry four years earlier, Barack Obama comfortably carried Catholic voters by 9% in the 2008 election. But judging from the howls and catcalls from hard line conservatives and anti-abortion activists over the invitation to President Obama to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame, you'd never know he was the choice of Catholic […]

Last week, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin joined the parade of 2012 Republican White House hopefuls posturing for GOP primary voters by refusing their states some of the $787 billion recovery package. Now facing a bipartisan firestorm at home from communities desperate for the stimulus spending, Palin is backtracking from her rejection of funds she mocked […]

If Politico has emerged as the ESPN of politics, covering the game but not the content of government, the Associated Press in recent weeks has delivered another media innovation. Time and again, the AP has delivered opinion pieces to its readers using the headline, "Analysis." But if a rose by any other name would smell […]

Ever since 9/11, analysts of all stripes have created a cottage industry in studying comparative fundamentalism across Islam, Christianity and Judaism. (In 2007, for example, CNN featured Christiane Amanpour's special report on "God's Warriors.") Now with the revelations from Israeli soldiers of atrocities committed during their assault on Gaza, new questions are being raised about […]

In just their latest posturing for the 2012 Republican presidential race, governors Sarah Palin (R-AK) and Mark Sanford (R-SC) joined Texas' Rick Perry, Mississippi's Haley Barbour and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal in announcing they would reject some of the federal stimulus funds allocated to their states. But as the steady one-way flow of tax dollars and […]

Facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees over her myriad ethics woes, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced she may launch a legal defense fund. Decrying "the political blood sport" including the "the politically motivated Troopergate probe" which have engulfed her over the past year, Palin may turn to supporters to pay off the […]