Señor Ugarte: "You despise me, don't you?"

Monsieur Rick: "If I gave you any thought, I probably would."*

(Casablanca, 1942)

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is himself a scandal. Desperate to be taken seriously, desperate for someone, anyone, to give him any thought, Issa has abused his power...

Justice Scalia's comments during the oral argument on the challenge to Section 5 (Shelby v Holder) of the Voting Rights Act signaled that he would decide the case under German, not American, jurisprudence.

Under the U.S. Constitution and precedent, constitutional issues presented to the Court fall into...

Conspiracy theories are the special province of the right-wing, raised to new levels of sophistication and then brought to our shores from, as FDR called them, the "European dictatorships."

Take American right-wing propaganda from the '30s, substitute "Muslim" for "Jew," and you pretty much have today's rhetoric, even down to...

Scratch a Republican and one will find that they truly believe that they embody the real America and thus are entitled to govern. Election losses are, therefore, the result of poor candidates, non-existent organizations such as ACORN, mistakes in campaign strategy and/or execution, misperceptions by the American people and, now,...

There is a silver (and gold) lining in the IRS flap.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has pointed out that the law under which the flap arose has been misinterpreted by the IRS since 1959.

The 1954 law provides special tax treatment for organizations exclusively engaged in social-welfare. In...

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is adamant that spending offsets need to be found to pay for disaster relief, even for his home state.

If that is what he wants, perhaps we should give it to him. Other senators from other states may view their own states differently,...

Well, well, well, well... lookie here. Republicans are (feigning) apoplexy over what still appears to be a fairly reasonable set of computer search terms the IRS established to determine if purported "social welfare" organizations deserved donor secrecy and tax-exempt status, aka 501(c)4 in tax code lingo.

The right-wing is panicked. They have spent the better part of the last five years extolling the virtues of both Bill and Hillary Clinton in their attempts to belittle President Obama by comparison.

It did not work. President Obama won a resounding reelection victory, adding seats in both...

On the face of it, the IRS "targeting" tea party, or other political, groups seems chilling. It reminds one of the Nixon "enemies list" and Karl Rove firing U.S. attorneys because they would not play along with his phony "voter fraud" schemes and Karl Rove presenting slide shows of key...

When a former member of the Executive calls for Congress to subpoena another former member of the Executive, it is a game-changer. No longer can he rely on "Executive Privilege" to block his own testimony.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has suggested that the GOP subpoena former Secretary...

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra? (How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience.) -- Cicero

Donating to Democrats enables the filibuster.

Ending the filibuster is easy. Democratic donors need only withhold any further contribution from the DNC, the DSCC and the DCCC, until the filibuster is ended or...

Senator Ted Cruz (R/TP-TX), along with Governor Rick "I-will-make-Washington-DC-inconsequential-in-your- lives" Perry, has reportedly requested federal aid for West, a town that suffered a devastating industrial accident this past week.

I suspect West's citizens voted for Ted Cruz and support Rick Perry, but I do not really care....

It so happens that two man-made controversies have burst onto the national stage at about the same time. Republican-controlled state legislatures are doing whatever they can to restrict the right to vote, while at the same time right-wing politicians, in state and national government, are resisting background checks and limitations...

"Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse." -- Adlai Stevenson

Oh, the horror. There are, according to Jim DeMint, "69.5 million Americans are dependent" on government. DeMint is nothing if not an old advertising guy, and big numbers are...

If she remains healthy, Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. This observation has nothing to do with polls or policies. It has everything to do with the last four years in which: a) she attained independent (of Bill) accolades for an extraordinary tenure as Secretary...

Now that the sequester is upon us, perhaps we have everyone's attention. To save Bob Woodward a year of investigative reporting, I admit upfront that this is my proposal by indelibly putting my name on it. If Gene Sperling says otherwise, he will come to regret it.

The Abrams plan...

Senator Ted Cruz (R/TP-TX) launched a blistering attack on Defense Secretary nominee Hagel, asserting a direct link to Karl Marx:

"History shows that Marx not only read Hagel, but took his inspiration from him," said the Princeton-educated Harvard Law School graduate. "I should know. I was taught by

For the avoidance of doubt, I oppose the sequester, and I oppose budget cuts at this time in our economic recovery. I am a "wet" who believes -- with good empirical evidence to support it -- that we should be increasing public investment to jump-start the economy to...

Although Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) asserted that he got "98 percent of what he wanted" in the budget control act, apparently that extra 2 percent was the sequester, because Republicans are trying to run away from it faster than stink on you-know-what.

Note also the delicious irony....

A necessitous man is not a free man--Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

Approximately $85 billion in budget cuts are due to begin in March. Although the Budget Control Act specifies that the cuts are to be equal percentages across-the-board, it does not dictate that the actual cuts need to...