On April 7, 2009--less than three months after Barack Obama first took the oath of office--the Daily Show's Jon Stewart perfectly summed up the red-hot, right-wing rage that hasn't cooled since. "I think," Stewart explained to frothing at the mouth Tea Party supporters, "you might be confusing tyranny with losing." Nevertheless, just days later thousands […]

In recent weeks, pollsters and pundits have been wrestling with a seeming contradiction at the heart of the country's abortion debate. On the one hand, the United States is a pro-choice nation, with consistent majorities of Americans voicing the belief for two decades that abortion should be legal in some or all cases. On the […]

You can't make this stuff up. One day after being instructed "stop talking about rape," House Republicans attending their caucus' secret conclave will listen to a panel on Friday titled, "Discussion on Successful Communication with Minorities and Women." Unfortunately, that session will be held in the Kingsmill Resort's "Burwell Plantation" room, named after a prominent […]

If for nothing else, you have to give the 2008 and 2012 GOP tickets for getting their lines straight. On Thursday, John McCain rejoined Mitt Romney in support of embattled Indiana Republican Senate hopeful Richard Mourdock. That McCain would come around after accepting Mourdock's "apology" for proclaiming rape-induced pregnancies gifts from God should come as […]

There's an old saying that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. But when it comes to Paul Ryan and his radical GOP budget, Republicans would prefer to campaign in silence and then govern with an axe. While the Grand Old Party would love to enact Ryan's massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy, […]

Even as Mitt Romney was introducing Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, his campaign was preparing a defense of the House Budget Chairman's draconian Medicare proposals. With good reason. After all, in April 2011 the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast that Ryan's scheme to convert today's guaranteed Medicare insurance program into an underfunded […]

Back in 2010, Republicans swept to power in no small part by scaring the bejesus out of elderly voters over supposed Democratic cuts to Medicare. But now that the Supreme Court has preserved the Affordable Care Act, Mitt Romney and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill are once again darkly warning that "Obamacare cuts Medicare […]

In the wake of the debt ceiling crisis he helped manufacture last summer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell boasted it was "a hostage that's worth ransoming" which "also is a new template" for the future. As it turns out, those threats were among the few true words McConnell has uttered. Because while he's promising once […]

While the Occupy Wall Street movement and a shocking report from the Congressional Budget Office have shone a bright spotlight on America's record income inequality, the GOP's 2012 presidential field is proposing massive new tax cuts certain to expand that Grand Canyon-sized gap between the fabulously rich and everyone else. Of course, the gilded-class giveaways […]

Here's a handy cheat sheet for those trying to make sense of the protest movements of the past three years. Tea Party followers were mad about losing the 2008 election; Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are angry about losing the American Dream. But for defenders of the Tea Party, that unhappy band of especially ardent Republicans, […]