Congressional Republicans on Thursday dispatched some of their best and brightest to the Supreme Court in heady anticipation of the GOP triumph that never came. But when Chief Justice Roberts announced the decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch "folded his arms across his chest, his mouth slightly agape." His slack-jawed response […]

In February 2009, President Obama delivered what Steve Benen rightly described as the largest two-year tax cut in American history. Nevertheless, the New York Times asked in the run-up to the 2010 midterms, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" What happened, of course, was the Democrats' drubbing […]

Within days of the passage of President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act in March 2010, Senate Minority Mitch McConnell declared, "I think [our] slogan will be 'repeal and replace', 'repeal and replace.'" But now that the Supreme Court has largely upheld the dreaded Obamacare, Republicans have yet to decide what to replace it with. While […]

Despite the overwhelming consensus of legal scholars regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the United States Supreme Court seems poised to strike down all or part of President Obama's signature health care reform law. If so, that would be the culmination of a decades-long conservative campaign to stop universal coverage at all costs. […]

If nothing else, you have to admire Mitt Romney's persistence. After he formally announced his candidacy a year ago by declaring when President Obama "took office, the economy was in recession, and he made it worse, and he made it last longer," fact checkers quickly demolished Romney's obvious falsehood. But despite his subsequent denial just […]

During a highly charged Senate hearing on Tuesday, Texas Republican John Cornyn demanded the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder. That Cornyn would emerge from GOP central casting to lead the right-wing witch hunt against Holder comes as no surprise (and not just because of his staunch opposition to man-box turtle marriage). After all, back […]

On Friday, President Obama denounced as "offensive" and "wrong" allegations that he was behind the leaks of U.S. cyber attacks on Iran and the terrorist "kill list," Attorney General Eric Holder announced he was assigning two U.S. attorneys to investigate the classified security breach. Nevertheless, the usual suspect on right are continuing their drumbeat about […]

"Politics," Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg declared during Harry Truman's presidency decades ago, "stops at the water's edge." Not, it turns out, for Mitt Romney. Three years ago, Romney blasted Obama's "apology tour" even as the President was visiting Cairo, Ankara and other capitals. (For that slander, the Washington Post fact-checker gave Romney a "Four Pinocchio" […]

For months, Mitt Romney and his Republican allies have been falsely claiming that President Obama "made the economy worse." This week, Romney preposterously declared Obama "knowingly slowed down our recovery." And today in Missouri, the Republican nominee doubled-down, charging that the President "slowed the recovery and harmed our economy," a result Romney insisted constituted "a […]

For months, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has falsely claimed that President Obama "did not cause this recession, but he made it worse." This week, Romney charged that Obama "started off by blaming George Bush, and that worked for a while but, you know, after three and a half years that wears kind of thin." […]