If nothing else, Sarah Palin is an irony producing machine. Just last week, the propagator-in-chief of the 2009 death panels "Lie of the Year" endorsed Medicare rationing. Now, the ironies are double in her new get-tough-on-Iran op-ed. After all, she not only cites leaked diplomatic cables published by the "treasonous" Australian, Julian Assange. Worse still, […]

This week's release of the 2010 U.S. Census produced gloating from conservatives ecstatic about new Congressional seats in Republican, low-tax states. But as even as they celebrate their added political clout, GOP cheerleaders remain predictably silent about another recent study. The UnitedHealth Foundation's "America's Health Rankings" became just the latest analysis to show that health […]

Writing in Salon today, Rick Perlstein examines "what Haley Barbour's amnesia tells us" about Southern conservatives' historical revisionism. But largely lost in the imbroglio over Barbour's literal white-washing of the Jim Crow era is that the Mississippi Governor and would-have-been 2012 White House hopeful has plenty of company among the leading lights of the Republican […]

Over the last several weeks, John McCain's rapid descent into furious incoherence has spawned a cottage industry of McCainologists. But his open scorn and seething rage over Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the DREAM Act, the START Treaty and even aid to 9/11 responders is hardly McCain's first performance of King Lear. But after his humiliation […]

Like a broken clock, even Sarah Palin is occasionally right. So it is with her suggestion that the perpetually weepy incoming House Speaker John Boehner is getting a free pass for theatrical water works a woman could never survive politically. As it turns out, the half-term governor is speaking from experience when she claimed "that's […]

Republican politics are now defined by necessary lies, untruths like "tax cuts pay for themselves" which GOP orthodoxy requires be true. So it should come as no surprise that the Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are dissenting from the panel's upcoming report to falsely claim that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were […]

Move over, welfare queens, IRS agents and trial lawyers. The Republican Party has a new bogeyman: the public employee. With a sluggish U.S. economy, cash-strapped states and under-funded pension programs, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and other leading lights of the GOP are scape-goating government workers and their unions for the nation's woes. Of course, there's […]

On Sunday, incoming House Speaker John Boehner had his prime time debut on CBS 60 Minutes. Proclaiming "I reject the word" compromise, Boehner made clear that past performance would be a guarantee of future results. But even more pathetic was his staggering hypocrisy. After all, Boehner claimed that President Obama, a man he accused of […]

Fresh off her pronouncements on the Fed's "quantitative easing" and federal aid to the states, Sarah Palin this week added the deficit and Medicare to her Potemkin façade of policy expertise. A year after she first endorsed converting Medicare into a voucher program, Palin took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to endorse […]

For years, American federalism has been characterized by "red state socialism," the one way flow of federal dollars from blue state taxpayers to red state recipients. For example, Sarah Palin's home state of Alaska ranked third in federal tax dollars received per dollar of taxes paid by state residents. But now that recession-ravaged states like […]