"The doctor-patient relationship." For two decades, Republicans have wielded that four-word talking point as a cudgel to bludgeon health care reform. In 1994, GOP strategist Bill Kristol warned that "the Clinton Plan is damaging to the quality of American medicine and to the relationship between the patient and the doctor." (Future "death panels" fabulist Betsy […]

Republican Senator Rand Paul's 13 hour filibuster this week produced no shortage of spectacle--and irony. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, one of the few Democratic voices questioning the secrecy and legal basis surrounding President Obama's policy of drone strikes against U.S. citizens engaged in terrorist efforts abroad, joined his colleague from across the aisle. But Paul's […]

Now that the March 1 sequester deadline has come and gone, some Republicans are getting squeamish about the $43 billion in cuts to the Pentagon budget this fiscal year. In the House, GOP leaders have proposed a new spending plan restoring some of the defense spending. Meanwhile in the Senate, Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey […]

As the deadline for the March 1 budget sequester approached, John Boehner made a surprising admission. Asked if he had "a sense of how many jobs will be lost as a result of the sequester," the Speaker of the House said, "I do not." On Sunday, Boehner once again proclaimed his ignorance in an interview […]

History will record that Mitt Romney was a pimple on the ass of American politics: painful while here and forgotten once gone. Now the pustule has resurfaced. As part of his brief "Thank You Tour," Romney is using appearance on Fox News Sunday to attack President Obama for "berating Republicans and blaming and pointing" over […]

Among the ideas most thoroughly discredited by the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the notion of "preventive war" to avert supposed future threats. Now, as the nation approaches the 10th anniversary of that disaster, a bipartisan group of legislators isn't just seeking to commit the United States to another preventive war, this time against Iran. […]

Back in 2010, Ohio Rep. John Boehner defied recent history and basic math when he comically denied that the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 played any role in producing federal budget deficits ever since. Now in his refusal to countenance any new tax revenue in a last minute compromise to avoid the […]

By all indications, conservatives on the United States Supreme Court are preparing give the Voting Rights Act (VRA) thumbs down. Echoing his question four years ago in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder, lifelong VRA foe turned Chief Justice John Roberts asked again on Wednesday whether people in the South are more racist than […]

Nothing focuses the mind, Oscar Wilde famously said, like the sight of the gallows. And so it is with Republican Governors on the brink of losing $6 billion in federal aid thanks to automatic budget cuts currently set to kick in on March 1. But it shouldn't have taken the specter of the sequester's body […]