On Tuesday, the New York Times detailed the extraordinary lengths Nevada Republican Sharron Angle will travel to avoid the press. Almost on cue, Angle again showed why she has gone to ground. In a recent radio interview, Angle announced she opposed abortion even in cases of rape or incest because "God has a plan." Of […]

Refusing to extend unemployment benefits to 1.2 million Americans by adding to the deficit, Senate Republicans by a 41 to 57 margin on Thursday again filibustered the Democratic $112 billion jobs bill. As it turns out, most of the roughly $35 billion still needed to pay for it could largely come from a single source: […]

In one of the most disingenuous claims yet by the Republican born-again deficit virgins, House Minority Leader John Boehner claimed two weeks ago that the Bush tax cuts were not to blame for the massive deficits now plaguing the federal government. On Wednesday, Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse set the record straight. The U.S. […]

Over just the past few months, Republicans on Capitol Hill have defended predatory health insurers, corrupt Wall Street bankers and criminal coal mining companies. Now with word that President Obama has secured a $20 billion, independently administered escrow fund from BP to help pay for its devastating oil spill in the Gulf, leading lights of […]

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Meg Whitman and John McCain have quite the mutual admiration society. During the 2008 campaign, McCain parroted her claim that "1.3 million people in the world make a living off eBay" as the basis for his recession-fighting strategy. And now with the revelation that Whitman paid […]

"Reagan," Dick Cheney famously said in 2002, "proved deficits don't matter." Until, that is, a Democrat is in the White House. And it so was on Friday, when House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) insisted the Bush tax cuts did not help produce a hemorrhage of red ink from the U.S. Treasury. Of course, the […]

Just a day after winning the Republican nomination for Senate in California, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina lost a contest with an open microphone. She inadvertently told the world that fellow Republican Meg Whitman's appearance on the Sean Hannity show was "bizarre" and that Democratic opponent Barbara Boxer's hair style is "so yesterday." But as […]

Thanks to obstructionist Republicans in Congress and their perpetual campaign to kill the estate tax, the United States Treasury stands to lose billions in revenue in 2010. And as the New York Times reported this week, a large chunk of it won't be coming from a single family. The heirs of Texas pipeline billionaire Dan […]

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 […]

Just weeks after suggesting that slavery "didn't matter for diddly," Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour similarly tried and failed to whitewash the massive BP oil spill threatening the entire Gulf Coast. After telling an audience a week ago that "A bunch of liberal elites were hoping this would be the Three Mile Island of offshore drilling," […]