Moments after the House passed a $2 billion extension to the wildly popular "cash for clunkers" program, John McCain in a double-irony announced he would oppose the bill in the Senate. Ironic, it turns out, not merely because the Arizona Senator has 13 cars and so could benefit even as he personally stimulates the economy […]
Category: Congress
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned to Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias to mediate the crisis in Honduras. But even as President Obama from Moscow announced, "America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies," Republicans in Washington […]
That House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has badly bungled the imbroglio over what she knew and when about the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture is hard to dispute. Seemingly snatching PR defeat from the jaws of victory, Pelosi should have instead simply called the Republicans' bluff and insisted on investigations of torture architects, perpetrators and […]
Long before Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter announced he was switching parties, his conservative colleagues began targeting him over his blasphemous support of the Obama stimulus package. Republican Chairman Michael Steele, who in February said he was "open" to punishing Specter, today called the new Democrat's about-face "not only disrespectful, but it's just downright rude." As […]
The Washington Post and AP are reporting that Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter will officially change parties. But while Specter's gambit to escape both his reactionary party and an uphill battle in the 2010 GOP primary could provide Democrats with a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, President Obama's allies shouldn't be so sure. After […]
In 2001, President Bush waged a largely successful campaign to curb the estate tax. But eight years after denouncing that scourge of the ultra-rich, Republicans have resurrected their "death tax" talking point, complete with its repeatedly debunked claims about the impact of estate levies on small businesses and family farms. Even as they decry the […]
"Reagan," Dick Cheney once famously declared, "proved that deficits don't matter." Not, that is, when a Republican is sitting in the Oval Office, as the tripling of the U.S. national debt under Ronald Reagan and doubling under George W. Bush confirmed. Now with the mystery budget unveiled to great fanfare - and even greater laughter […]
The blogosphere is buzzing with the news that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is pushing for new requirements in federal law to mandate First Lady Michelle Obama open her policy work to the public. But what Issa first started in 2008 as a campaign to rein in a future President Hilary Clinton and first spouse Bill […]
As the New York Times revealed Monday, President Obama has instructed administration officials not to rely on the hundreds of signing statements issued by his predecessor. That move should please John McCain. After all, the Republican presidential candidate not only pledged "never to issue a signing statement." Back in 2005, McCain was doubled-crossed when President […]
On Wednesday, federal authorities reported they did not know the whereabouts of Texas banker and scammer Allen Stanford. But what we do know for certain about the financier whose frauds may yet rival the $50 billion Madoff Ponzi scheme is that he donated generously to both political parties in Washington. Of course, that would be […]