As 2013 draws to close, the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program have entered a delicate stage. But in 2014, the tensions will escalate dramatically as a bipartisan group of Senators brings a new Iran sanctions bill to the floor for a vote. As many others have warned, that promise of new measures against Tehran […]

With another government shutdown averted by this week's two-year budget compromise, Republican leaders are once again threatening to hold the debt ceiling hostage if their demands aren't met. So what if they don't know yet what those demands will be? House budget chief Paul Ryan insisted, "We as a caucus -- along with our Senate […]

With the deadlines looming for Americans to enroll in health insurance plans for 2014, conservatives are shocked--shocked!--that the Obama administration is "strongly urging" insurance companies to start coverage on January 1 even in advance of receiving new subscribers' premium payments. For the Wall Street Journal and Forbes' Avik Roy, these and other HHS contingency measures […]

It would be fair to say the Ryan-Murray compromise budget announced Tuesday hasn't exactly produced rejoicing in the nation's capital. Democrats generally lament the entrenchment of austerity spending levels for discretionary outlays, including $8 billion in cuts to food stamps and the exclusion of $23 billion in funding to extend long-term unemployment insurance next year […]

Despite their decades-long record of shaking hands with tyrants whose nations posed an existential threat to the United States, when President Obama shook the hand of one who did not Republicans nevertheless took to the fainting couch. The image of Obama's brief handshake with Cuba's Raul Castro prior to his address at the memorial service […]

On Monday, the federal government announced it had sold off the remaining shares from its $49.5 billion bailout of General Motors in 2009. But the $10.5 billion loss on paper obscures the massive total return on investment for the U.S. economy overall and American taxpayers in particular. As a new analysis from the Center for […]

Over the past couple of days, Jonathan Chait's "12 Years a Slave and the Obama Era" seems to have struck a nerve among the conservative commentariat. In it, Chait responded to the Obama caricature of the National Review's Quin HIllyer depicting the President with "chin jutting out, countenance haughty, voice dripping with disdain for conservatives... […]

As he tries to right the course with the troubled launch of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama finds himself at the mercy to the American insurance industry. And that's not a good place for him--or the American people--to be. After all, while Obama now needs the insurers to work overtime to manually enroll […]

While Republicans and their media echo chamber have been quick to pronounce the Affordable Care Act "dead on arrival" and its troubled launch "Obama's Katrina," polling suggests the American people have reached no such conclusion. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted last weekend found that 41 percent of respondents approve of the ACA, little changed from a […]

This week's target in the never-ending Republican crusade to sabotage the Affordable Care Act is the Obamacare navigators, the dozens of community groups, hospitals and other non-profit organizations who have received federal grants to help Americans enroll in new health insurance plans. After launching a House probe of the groups and enacting draconian state restrictions […]