With the premiere of the documentary Mitt this week, the Mitt Romney rehabilitation project will be projected on screens around America. But the conservative effort to reinvent the flip-flopping, formerly pro-choice, health care reforming Massachusetts vulture capitalist as a paragon of faith, fatherhood and family values is doomed to failure. Not because Willard Mitt Romney […]

In an exquisite performance of political choreography, Republican talking heads took to the Sunday talk shows to defend New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie, the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Karl Rove suggested, was being victimized while President Obama was left unscathed by the non-scandals surrounding the Benghazi tragedy and the IRS probes of political […]

With the Affordable Care Act now in full effect, the conservative propaganda factory is working overtime to produce and publicize Obamacare horror stories, real or imagined. So with the federal government, the states, private insurers, hospitals, doctors and pharmacies scrambling to assist the six million newly insured so far, the GOP's media water carriers are […]

For years, the defining truth of health care in America has been this: health care is worst in those states where Republicans poll best. In general, the states with the greatest percentage of uninsured, the unhealthiest residents and the most dismal health care systems give the GOP its strongest support. (With the "coverage gap" in […]

One man is the star of reality television show with 12 million viewers. With over 1.2 billion followers worldwide, the other may now be the hosting the greatest show on earth. Yet for American conservatives, Phil Robertson of the Duck Dynasty clan is being silenced for "a point of view that is traditional, that holds […]

After watching Americans engage in a week of national self-flagellation over Duck Dynasty and its controversial patriarch Phil Robertson, I decided to watch something else. Passing up ersatz conflict for the real thing, I put on Ken Burns' unforgettable documentary, The Civil War. But my escape from the Daily Mail's latest "exclusive" from the Robertson […]

Former Arkansas Governor and Baptism Minister turned Fox News regular Mike Huckabee has had a very big week. On Monday, his son David announced his father would be launching his own news and culture web site--Huckabee Post--in January. That same day, Governor Huckabee announced he was "keeping the door open" to a run for the […]

On January 24th, Netflix will air Mitt, a documentary about Governor Romney's quixotic quest for the presidency. But that hagiography, lovingly compiled by a close friend, covers only the campaign that led to Romney being immortalized as Mr. 47 Percent. But the years before--when Mitt became Mitt--seemed destined to remain a mystery. A mystery, that […]

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 […]

If any American public figure has completely disqualified himself from weighing in on President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, it is former Vice President Dick Cheney. After all, as a quick look back at his statements about the Iraq war shows ("Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass […]