During the heated debate over health care reform, President Obama repeatedly insisted that under his proposal, "you can keep your doctor." But the President was also careful to add the important caveat, "what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform." Which is exactly right. But by […]

Long before he became what Politico deemed "Barack Obama's biggest critic," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer was a Democrat. Dr. Krauthammer left his psychiatric practice to work for Jimmy Carter and write speeches for Walter Mondale. But that was before he fell - hard - for Ronald Reagan. And now in his latest assault on […]

In 2009, Politifact declared Sarah Palin's "death panels" fraud its "Lie of the Year." As it turns out, the Republican Party is the Home of the Whopper. Its followers, especially those most deeply steeped in the Tea Party's toxic brew, continue to believe claims about Barack Obama's faith, national origin, and tax cuts (just to […]

The resignation of Washington Post blogger David Weigel is as ironic as it is sad. On Saturday, the Post's ombudsman wrote a piece titled "Blogger loses job; Post loses standing among conservatives" for a paper which regularly features not one but two former Bush speechwriters (Michael Gerson and Marc Thiessen) among its columnists. More ironic […]

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and so it is with the foul stench emanating from Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. After years of proclaiming "I am not a journalist," Beck told USA Today he is in fact a journalist, albeit one without "formal training." And after grappling with whether to […]

On May 7, 2001, press secretary Ari Fleischer uttered the four words that came to define the Bush administration's approach to the U.S. addiction to oil. Asked if Americans needed to "correct their lifestyles" to address the nation's energy vulnerability, Fleischer snapped, "That's a big no." And so, a government of the oil men, by […]

California Republican Darrell Issa appeared on Fox News Sunday to continue his crusade against President Obama over the Sestak no-pay-for-no-play non-scandal, this time calling for an FBI investigation. But over the past several weeks, Issa has also been the GOP's chief messenger in criticizing Obama's response to the BP catastrophe in the Gulf. Which is […]

While Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has deemed the Sestak no-pay-for-no-play non-scandal an "illegal quid pro quo" and "Obama's Watergate," the overwhelming consensus of legal opinion had concluded otherwise. While Bush White House ethics officer Richard Painter told his fellow Republicans to "move on," Steve Bunnell of the firm O'Melveny & Myers announced, "There is nothing […]

Desperate to change their miserable present, Republicans are traveling back in time to rewrite the past. And so it is with President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Hoping to block President Obama's stimulus program designed to prevent the next Great Depression, right-wing authors, pundits, and politicians insisted FDR failed to cure the first one. […]

With President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan, some conservatives are lamenting the prospect of a United States Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice. But for Pat Buchanan, the corollary is that one religious group is being dangerously overrepresented on the nation's highest court. Given Buchanan's checkered past, including as it does periodic defenses of […]