Americans of all political stripes should be outraged at the recent revelation that the Tea Party was unfairly targeted by the IRS before last year's election. The IRS should never base its decisions on political preferences or ideological code words, regardless of what bureaucratic challenges it may face....

"I am one imperfect man saved by God's grace," Mark Sanford proclaimed yesterday as he declared victory in a special election for South Carolina's open House seat. "Until you experience human grace as a reflection of God's grace, I don't think you really get it," he said. "And...

The state of New York has become an embarrassing example of what can happen when money is allowed to rule politics. Earlier this month, for instance, two state lawmakers were arrested on corruption charges. It's a story that has become all too familiar in Albany, where a

The 41 Republican and four Democratic senators who voted to filibuster a bipartisan gun sale background check bill yesterday are rightfully losing friends quickly. After all, the bill they blocked was supported by over 90 percent of voters and 90 percent of gun owners....

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

-- Mark Sanford, June 30, 2009

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark...

There is a school of thought that a broad victory for marriage equality at the Supreme Court would galvanize the opposition and end up being a setback for the gay rights movement. I disagree with that. The side that can't afford to win or to lose at the...

It can sometimes be hard to tell our elected officials apart from petulant schoolchildren, but this week Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss made it nearly impossible.

Asked about his fellow Republican Senator Rob Portman's newly announced support for marriage equality, Chambliss responded, "I'm not gay. So...

A prominent senator announcing that he has broken with his party to take a position of basic decency and empathy should not be so unusual that it becomes front-page news.

But that is exactly what happened when Ohio Sen. Rob Portman announced that, inspired by...

It's getting very hard to keep track of who is and is not allowed in the conservative movement these days. The issue of how much smaller the tent is getting always comes to a head at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, at which warring factions fight to...

I don't know what Sen. Marco Rubio is going to say in his official Republican response to the State of the Union tonight. But I think I can guess what he'll not be saying: anything new.

Rubio's address is the GOP's latest attempt to put a new,...

The GOP's bold and brash plan to rig the 2016 presidential election seems to be collapsing under its own weight, at least for now. But that doesn't mean they've stopped trying to game the system.

Unable to convince the majority of Americans to vote for their candidate last year, Republican...

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham says Republicans won't support any immigration reform that allows same-sex couples to keep their families intact. "Why don't we just put legalized abortion in there and round it all out," he joked.

Good one, Lindsey. If there are two things...

After Republicans took a drubbing in the 2012 elections, failing to win the presidency, losing seats in the Senate, and only hanging on to the House because of extreme gerrymandering, we heard a lot about the party's renewed "soul searching." This journey of self-exploration, we hoped,...

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when Republicans started complaining that President Obama's second inaugural address was too "partisan" and lacked "outreach" across the aisle. But who was left out? What did they find "partisan"? The acknowledgement of climate science? The idea that women...

The Tea Party ain't over. Case in point: last week, former presidential candidate and unflagging conspiracy theorist Michele Bachmann announced that, despite the understandable outcry, she has been assigned yet again to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the new congressional term.

...

"Supreme Court Justice Robert Bork Dies"

What if that were the headline in newspapers this week? What if Robert Bork's 1987 nomination to our highest court had not been rejected by the biggest bipartisan majority in history? If Bork had died after spending the last 25 years...

Call it an occupational hazard for someone who pays close attention to the right wing in America. On Friday, even while my mind and heart were struggling with how to take in, much less make sense of, the news about the killings at a Connecticut elementary school, another part of...

On Nov. 6, Americans turned out in massive numbers to reelect President Obama, take away seats from Republicans in the House and the Senate and pass progressive ballot measures throughout the country. But it seems that Republicans in Washington and in states across the country just didn't get the hint....

Dear Fellow White Men:

C'mon guys, I keep thinking that you're going to get it. You can't still be holding on to that nostalgia for the 1950s when separate was equal, everyone was heterosexual and nice girls didn't work. I'm not talking to all of you. Just...

One of the few things that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agreed on during the campaign for the presidency was that this election was a choice between two very different visions of America, two very different directions for our country's future. The American people have made their choice -- a...