Last month, Republican House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) introduced his proposal for a major overhaul of the U.S. tax code. But among Republican leaders in Congress, its arrival was about as welcome as an ill-timed fart. Hoping to focus the 2014 midterm elections on Obamacare instead of controversial new tax provisions, […]

Bloomberg News this week offered the state of Washington as a powerful rebuttal to those who claim hiking the minimum wage would kill jobs. Washington, it turns out, has had the nation's highest minimum wage since 1998 and over the past 15 years enjoyed annual job growth well above the national average. New Jersey, too, […]

In the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the conservative echo chamber chants in unison, President Obama has been "weak" and "feckless" and is wearing "mom jeans," which "invites aggression." For the likes of Lindsey Graham, Sarah Palin and most of all John McCain, those are pretty shameless statements to make. After all, when […]

Proving once again that politics no longer ends at the water's edge, Republican leaders and many in the media have been lambasting President Obama's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While the Washington Post editorial board charged that Obama's foreign policy is "based on fantasy," Senator John McCain and his Mini-Me Lindsey Graham (R-SC) […]

This week brought news of a vitally important medical development for millions of future parents. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that a new fetal DNA test is far more accurate and much less risky than current methods at identifying--and ruling out--serious genetic disorders including Down syndrome and Trisomy 18. […]

With Russian troops poised to sever Crimea from Ukraine, tough-talking conservatives are claiming they were right about the threat from Vladimir Putin all along. The Wall Street Journal interviewed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who offered the West his lessons learned from losing the 2008 clash with the Russians. Meanwhile to the delight of the […]

In the upside-down world of Republican anti-abortion extremists, accepted medical standards constitute malpractice while lying to patients does not. That's inescapable conclusion from the latest torrent of draconian abortion restrictions now pouring out of GOP-controlled state legislatures. While Kansas has banned lawsuits by parents against physicians who refused to inform them of catastrophic fetal disorders, […]

For three straight years, 95 percent of Republicans in Congress voted for the Paul Ryan budget and its overhaul of the tax code to just two rates of 10 and 25 percent. But while Ryan refused to identify a single tax break he would end in order to make those lower rates possible, on Wednesday […]

A funny thing happened on the way to the demise of Medicare Advantage. The program under which 16 million seniors purchase federally subsidized coverage through private health insurers, the carriers and Republicans warned, would be jeopardized by the $150 billion in cuts to providers over 10 years used to help fund the Affordable Care Act. […]

The New York Times reported Monday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is has proposed cutting the U.S. Army from its wartime peak of 570,000 troops to as few as 440,000. Under pressure from the 2011 sequester and the recently inked Murray-Ryan budget plan, Hagel's blueprint would shrink the active duty Army to its lowest strength […]