In my piece yesterday about the rigged assumptions confining our health care debate, I might have added one more assumption that seems to be at work here: The assumption that "after this bill is passed, we will later come back and fix the things in the bill that are...

Without getting into the policy debate about whether this health care bill should be passed or rejected (my personal opinion is here for those interested), I think it's important to step back and just look at the false assumptions that are being made. Not about the bill's substance, mind...

NOTE: For background on this scandal, see this and this previous post.

TPM has a new story up about the now-thickening drug importation scandal - and the explanations are starting to get more and more convoluted and contradictory as the White House works to fight off the...

What are we willing to absolve politicians of? What are we willing to forgive them for doing, and what are we not willing to forgive them for doing? This is a question I ask in my newspaper column out today.

I look at it this way: As a voter,...

At OpenLeft, we've been aggressively covering the crazy story of the Obama administration crushing drug importation legislation that President Obama campaigned on as a presidential candidate and supported as a U.S. Senator. Now, days after the administration colluded with the pharmaceutical industry to kill the measure, one Democratic senator...

I want to take a moment just to recognize what has been recognized before, but needs to be recognized right here and now one more time: Howard Dean is a genuine hero.

In coming out against the Lieberman-gutted health insurance "reform" bill, Dean is leveraging every shred of power he...

It pains me to admit this, but I'll just admit it: Joe Lieberman is the single most powerful Senate force since Lyndon Johnson's Master of the Senate days. And his power teaches an important lesson to us all.

Here is a guy who campaigned for the Republican nominee for president...

Every now and then, rank-and-file writers, bloggers and radio hosts like myself (but by no means limited to myself) are accused of "self-promotion." This is not a charge usually leveled at very famous writers, bloggers and radio hosts, nor at television hosts (who are, almost by definition, famous) - it...

The New York Times this weekend profiled my old boss Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and his efforts to force the Obama administration to change course in Afghanistan. You can -- and should -- read it here.

I worked closely with Obey on a daily basis during the darkest of...

My newspaper column out today is about the concept of "moral hazard" - and how there's a difference between financial moral hazard and political moral hazard, the latter of which is even more pernicious than the former. You can see this most obviously in the renomination of Ben Bernanke...

In the world of traditional media, it's not all that common for movement progressives to get a platform, which is why I wanted to tell everyone the good news: Today, Clear Channel announced the launch of my new radio show on KKZN-AM760 - the statewide progressive radio station here...

The Associated Press is insisting that Americans don't give a shit about President Obama's Afghanistan War escalation. An outlier poll from CNN goes even father, asserting that Americans actually love the idea of intensifying the war. So maybe it's true -- maybe President Obama and Democrats won't face...

NOTE: If you want to add your voice to the grassroots campaign to stop Ben Bernanke's reappointment to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve, go here.

Thanks to a transpartisan effort to stop the reappointment of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, there's a slim - but distinct -...

During the Vietnam War, it became clear that America could not afford to simultaneously wage war on poverty and wage war in Vietnam. We could not have guns and butter at the same time, as Martin Luther King so eloquently noted in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church:

I don't like to try to read the minds of politicians - mostly because with the automatons we have in office today, if you actually could read their minds, my guess is you'd find almost nothing actually going on in there. However, there are ways to ferret out the actual...

I know what you are thinking - you are thinking that the headline of this post is a joke. But it's not. It's not at all. Watch my CNN debate over Afghanistan and health care yesterday morning with former Bush speechwriter David Frum - specifically check out around 4...

Just a few quick questions to ponder after President Obama's speech announcing a massive escalation in Afghanistan:

- What percentage of those kids in the audience will die because of this decision?

- Why do so many pundits and pro-Obama activists continue to focus on how "hard" and "difficult" and...

"Of the billions poured out in bailouts and stimulus, a substantial share has gone to privileged insiders and liberal interest groups -- Wall Street bankers, auto unions, public-sector employees." -- New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, 11/29/09

Last week, I wrote about the various zombie lies surrounding budgetary...

A few weeks back, I wrote a column looking at how the media and political establishment spends an inordinate amount of time pretending to be outraged at the cost of priorities like health care while simultaneously ignoring the ballooning cost of permanent war-making. I was met with a wave...

Well-known fringe freak show Rammesh Ponnuru published a childish screed in 2006 attacking Democrats as "The Party of Death." It was a (deliberately) provocative title -- and we should thank him, because it's a perfect moniker for these troubling times. Only not for Democrats, but for Republicans.

Indeed, in...