After his predictable experience with unified Republican obstructionism on the stimulus bill, President Obama must be high if he thinks there's a glimmer of hope for bipartisan cooperation on health care reform. Not because Sarah Palin is doubling-down on her "death panels" lie or Newt Gingrich is now fear-mongering over end-of-life care for the elderly […]

The Bush White House was notoriously famous for its purchases of positive press coverage. While columnists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher pocketed $240,000 and $41,500 to push the Bush line on education and marriage initiatives, paid-for Pentagon pundits took to the airwaves to back the administration on Iraq. But as new documents from the U.S. […]

Slowly but surely, the mainstream media and even some Republican politicians are starting to roll back the GOP's vicious lies and fear-mongering over what Sarah Palin deemed Obama's "death panels." Ironically, many of the same conservatives who demanded the federal government should make the end-of-life decision for Terri Schiavo are labeling optional Medicare-funded consultations "euthanasia." […]

As the ever more combustible health care debate rages across America, the state of Oklahoma has become the poster child for the conflict and its contradictions. A 2007 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked Oklahoma dead last in state health care performance. Yet in 2008, the Sooner State remained among the most Republican in the […]

Once in a rare while, a book captures the spirit of its age. So it is with Nixonland, Rick Perlstein's stunning chronicle of the rise and fall of Tricky Dick. But his story of the "fracturing of America" isn't simply the harrowing tale of how Nixon, "a serial collector of resentments," fanned the flames of […]

During the Democratic primaries last spring, Barack Obama almost derailed his campaign with his unfortunate remark about "bitter" people in small town Pennsylvania who "cling to guns." Now after the second Keystone State shooting rampage in four months, that clumsy comment is sounding eerily prophetic. On their face, the long-planned Pittsburgh area fitness club killings […]

As has been documented in detail, the anti-Obama birther movement is strongest in precisely those states where Republicans poll best and, ironically, health care is worst. But despite experiencing serial embarrassments akin to learning the sun does not rise in the West, a new Pew Research Center poll shows Republican want more - and not […]

If nothing else, Republican Senator John Cornyn is an irony producing machine. During the Terri Schiavo affair, the former Texas Supreme Court Justice was at the forefront of the GOP campaign to intimidate and threaten judges. Now after his fierce defense of President Bush's regime of illegal NSA domestic surveillance, Cornyn is comically warning that […]

Karl Marx famously said historical events occur twice, first as tragedy and then as farce. And so it is with the Republican "filibuster nation," the manufactured mob displays designed to disrupt, derail and destroy Democratic health care events. As I detailed yesterday, today's GOP astro-turfers are simply taking a page from the Republicans' 2000 playbook […]

Every football coach will tell you: if a play works, keep running it until the defense stops you. And so it is with the health care debate. Facing overwhelming public support for health care reform, right-wing groups have deployed mobs to disrupt events and "rattle" Democratic politicians in Austin, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and across the country. […]