One sure sign of the success of Barack Obama's second inaugural address on Monday is that right and left shared a common assessment of its impact. Conservatives decried the "amazing" speech (Charles Krauthammer) as "among the best of the past half-century" (David Brooks) precisely because liberals found Obama's "expansive case for progressive governance, grounded in […]

Rice may be out as Secretary of State, but soon she'll be on your television screen. Not, that is, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, but former Bush National Security Adviser, Secretary of State and rumored 2016 GOP presidential candidate Condoleezza Rice. Joining her former Bush administration counter-terrorism colleague Juan Zarate, Rice will be a regular contributor […]

Just days after the chairman of Gun Appreciation Day tried to misappropriate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., the always execrable Rush Limbaugh pointed both barrels at the civil rights movement. Just in time for the weekend jointly marking King's birthday and President Obama's second inauguration, Limbaugh asked: "If a lot of African-Americans back […]

While Congressional Republicans are threatening to trigger a U.S. default if their debt ceiling blackmail is not paid, their allies in the conservative blogosphere are deploying the same chart to attack President Obama's supposedly out-of-control spending. But their horrifying picture of the yawning gap between in federal receipts and outlays between 1999 and 2012 isn't […]

If the broad sweep of President Obama's gun control proposals wasn't enough, conservatives on Wednesday found another reason for their blood vessel-bursting apoplexy. The President was joined at the White House by several children who had written letters to him pleading for action on gun violence, some of which were released to the press. In […]

For each of the last 38 years, Lake Superior State University has published its "List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness." But missing from the dozen terms and phrases including "double down" and "spoiler alert" sentenced to the school's rhetorical death row for 2013 is one […]

The Boston Globe this weekend offered a fascinating analysis of why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election. But for all the impact of ground games, turnout models and campaign strategies, Mitt Romney lost not because he failed to define himself to the American people, but because he succeeded. At the end of the day, […]

Among the very worst practices of American broadcast news is the "focus group of one." That is, reporters casually substitute the tale of a single person, company or community for actual analysis of a complex issue. And so it was Sunday, when CBS Evening News profiled Rod Hudson of Quicksilver Analytics to warn that small […]

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney like many of his GOP colleagues insisted that Americans without health insurance can always go to an emergency room. But for some with health coverage--especially Medicare--that ER is the "front door" to an unnecessary hospital admission. And as it turns out, while those filled beds and needless tests […]

Reports this week that UN Ambassador Susan Rice and her Canadian husband Ian Cameron have investments in firms involved with the Keystone XL pipeline project and past energy deals in Iran are drawing scrutiny across the political spectrum. But conservatives eager to link Rice to Tehran might want to think twice. For starters, Rice's holdings […]