If nothing else, Republicans over the past few weeks have delivered an important civics lesson to the American people in general--and Democrats in particular. Facing a growing mountain of irrefutable evidence that the incompetent, out-of-his-depth GOP president of the United States has been enmeshed in a network of ties to Russian business and government interests […]

The end is nigh for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. To be sure, ISIS affiliates in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere will remain dangerous. And its fighters and sympathizers will continue to launch terror attacks in Europe and the United States for years to come. But the writing is on the wall for […]

Economics, the textbooks say, is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. The economics of health care is certainly no exception. Given the competing and often contradictory demands across its ecosystem of patients, employers, physicians, drug stores, pharmaceutical firms, device manufacturers, clinics, hospitals, insurers, and government, the economics of health care might more accurately […]

ive days after the presidential election, I wrote a concession message to Trump voters congratulating them for what they had won. To those Trump promised would get "sick of winning," I predicted, "You've won his 'big and beautiful' Obamacare replacement plan that will take away health insurance from 22 million Americans." If the president-elect and […]

House Speaker Paul Ryan has just experienced two weeks from hell. On Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) led by his hand-picked director mauled Ryan's so-called "replacement" for the Affordable Care Act. CBO forecast that over the next decade the "American Health Care Act" will cost 24 million Americans their insurance. The bill, which […]

Over the past week, the White House has been completely overwhelmed by the Trump administration's mushrooming medley of Moscow outrages. But to what Vox labelled the "3 Trump-Russia Scandals"--potential Trump collusion with Russia against the Hillary Clinton campaign, possible Trump lies about Michael Flynn's outreach to the Putin government and purported kompromat Russian intelligence may […]

On Feb. 8, 2009, CNBC talking head Rick Santelli helped launched the tea party movement with an epic rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. But eight years later, as Republicans are now learning the hard way, the tea bag is on the other cheek. The signs of sizable, sustained, and seriously angry […]

If nothing else, during their eight years in the White House George W. Bush and company became experts at deflecting blame. After all, the likes of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush himself all chanted that "nobody could have predicted" the Sept. 11 attacks, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and so many other disasters that […]

As American presidents enter their final months in the White House, they invariably focus on their legacies. That effort to shape history's judgment invariably leads to comparisons to the greatest of them all: Abraham Lincoln. George W. Bush and his amen corner certainly tried. In September 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compared the three-year […]

The truth, it is said, will set you free. Unless, that is, you are a Republican and the issue is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Republicans are foaming at the mouth at the nonpartisan agency's conclusion that the repeal of Obamacare will no replacement in place for the Affordable Care Act will lead to 32 […]