All along, the real danger of the so-called "fiscal cliff" wasn't that U.S. national debt would increase, but instead that it would drop too quickly. Now, the surprise news that the American economy contracted by 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2012 is providing a case in point. Along with the impact of super […]

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 […]

When John Boehner picked up the Speaker's gavel in January 2011, he also laid down some new rules regarding the U.S. national debt. Despite the near-doubling of the red ink and the seven debt limit increases under President Bush (all of which Boehner supported), the first Boehner Rule demands "cuts and reforms greater than the […]

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 […]

President Obama on Wednesday will unveil the recommendations of the gun violence task force led by Joe Biden. Despite the popularity of many of the measures among the American people and even its own membership, the National Rifle Association is almost certain to oppose each and every bill and executive order. But that doesn't mean […]

One day after New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described Republican brinksmanship on the debt ceiling as "hostage-taking," President Obama used his Monday press conference declared, "They will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy." But you don't have to take their word for it that […]

This weekend, Republicans led by Senator John McCain stepped up their withering criticism of President Obama's nominee for Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel. In a new line of attack, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker questioned Hagel's "overall temperament." As it turns out, Corker's choice of words was more than a little ironic. After all, back in 2008 […]

As McClatchy and the New York Times among others have documented, Senators and Representatives in the minority party have often voted against debt ceiling increases. Whether motivated by opposition to larger spending or tax legislation, or as a symbolic vote to embarrass the president and his Congressional majority (as Senators Obama and Reid did in […]

The Republican opposed the Iraq surge and favored regional negotiations with Iran and Syria. The GOP luminary has cautioned against pre-emptive strikes on Tehran's nuclear facilities. He publicly criticized Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. He advised the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and Mitt Romney on national security policy, and in 2000 […]