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$ 16.95
By Marybeth Hamilton
$23
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Cliff (CC-BY)
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Senate Democrats have noticed that the president is dealing directly with House Republicans to reach a debt ceiling deal, one that may include trillions in cuts to Social Security and Medicare without any tax increases, and they’re not happy.
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AP / Paul Beaty
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By Bill Boyarsky — There is a deep-rooted wrongheadedness about the Republicans as they drag the country toward fiscal disaster. Those afflicted with this harmful thinking range from tea party extremists like Michele Bachmann to pundits such as Peggy Noonan.
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By Joe Conason — Even the most extreme Republican partisans in the Senate seem to realize that their House colleagues, seized by some combination of ideology, madness and pig ignorance, are propelling the country and the world toward economic chaos.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The House Republican strategy to link a normally routine increase in the nation’s debt limit with a crusade to slash spending has already had a high cost, threatening the nation’s credit rating and making the United States look dysfunctional and incompetent to the rest of the world.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The wounded are especially dangerous fighters. President Obama now occupies the high ground in the debt ceiling debate, having called the Republicans’ bluff on the debt. He showed that deficit reduction is not now, and never has been, the GOP’s priority. He dare not get overconfident.
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Pablo Manriquez (CC-BY-ND)
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Every progressive’s favorite loudmouth is running to reclaim his seat in the House of Representatives, where he wants to fight Democratic “appeasement” of Republicans. Alan Grayson told Talking Points Memo, “It’s exactly like I said, the Republican health care plan: Don’t get sick. ... The Republican unemployment plan ... (more)
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By Joe Conason — Suddenly Republican leaders in Congress, after months of staring down the Democrats over a potentially disastrous debt default, began blinking so fast that they might have been signaling in Morse code.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Here’s why getting to a deal on the debt ceiling is so complicated.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Obama’s in-your-face attitude seems to have thrown Republicans off their stride. They thought all they had to do was convince everyone that they were crazy enough to force an unthinkable default on the nation’s financial obligations. Now they have to wonder whether Obama is crazy enough to let them.
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AP / Lauren Victoria Burke
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For good reason, there has been serious hand-wringing over what to do about the ethical lapses of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. There is clear precedent for how to deal with the justice. Thomas could be forced off the bench.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Michael Sparks
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By Eugene Robinson — Let’s be honest: President Obama’s claim that U.S. military action in Libya doesn’t constitute “hostilities” is nonsense, and Congress is right to call him on it.
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By Joe Conason — While the well-deserved departure of Anthony Weiner draws rapt attention in our tabloid nation, the depredations of less colorful but more powerful politicians go unnoticed, so long as no genitalia are involved.
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By Joe Conason — Congressional Democratic leaders are far less tolerant of corruption in their own ranks than their opponents, whose tacit acceptance of all brands of turpitude is boggling.
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By David Sirota — In the name of curtailing deficits, politicians across the country are hacking away at programs that aim to make children healthier.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While the United States remains utterly frozen in a debate about budget deficits and all the things that government shouldn’t do, other countries are marrying public and private resources to make themselves stronger and more competitive.
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By Joe Conason — Still spinning in the vortex of the May 24 tornado in New York’s 26th Congressional District, Republican leaders insist that Democrat Kathy Hochul’s upset victory on their party’s turf was meaningless.
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By Eugene Robinson — What concentrates the minds of GOP strategists and candidates—or ought to—is the spectacle unfolding in New York’s 26th Congressional District near Buffalo.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — When the headline is “Catholic Progressives Challenge Conservative Politician on Social Justice,” this is something new and complicated. It’s far easier to write the 10th story of the week about Newt Gingrich.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Republicans holding the increase of the debt ceiling hostage to their efforts to eviscerate programs know perfectly well that Congress will not risk a financial crisis.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — As if our political system was not having enough trouble already, we now confront the possibility that a highly partisan judiciary will undo a modest health care reform that is a first step toward resolving a slew of other difficulties.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Don’t expect to see a lot of newspapers and websites with this headline: “Big Government Bailout Worked.” But it would be entirely accurate.
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By Joe Conason — The performance of the president and those around him should permanently dispel the perennial right-wing slur against Democratic leaders as deficient in the strength and courage to defend our security.
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Flickr / wallyg
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With murmurs of a veto in the background, Republicans successfully pushed a measure through the U.S. House rejecting the FCC’s 2010 net neutrality rules for Internet service providers.
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Quinn Dombrowski (CC-BY-SA)
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With the prospect of a government shutdown so real the White House has ordered government agencies to batten down the hatches, it’s hard to believe all this is over a few billion dollars. House Republicans are insisting on more cuts than President Obama has agreed to, and if both sides can’t get together by Friday ... (more)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Put the two parts of Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget together—tax cuts for the rich, program cuts for the poor—and its radically redistributionist purposes become clear. Timid Democrats would never dare embark on class warfare on this scale the other way around.
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The president made an effort Monday evening to explain, and perhaps to sell, his Libya strategy, saying “when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.”
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By Joe Conason — The paradoxes of Libya merely underline the broader problem that we face in the sudden democratic turmoil of the Mideast.
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By Eugene Robinson — The most urgent focus of Japan’s worsening nuclear crisis is the threat from radioactive fuel that has already been used in the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and awaits disposal. In the United States, the nuclear industry has amassed about 70,000 tons of such potentially deadly waste material—and we have nowhere to put it.
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npr.org
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Because this is the most pressing matter to capture their collective attention, House Republicans moved swiftly to bring the issue of government funding for National Public Radio (or lack thereof, if they’d have it their way) to a vote Thursday. Updated
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By Eugene Robinson — Rep. Peter King is about to convene hearings whose premise offends our nation’s founding ideals and whose targets are law-abiding members of a religious minority. King has decided to investigate Islam.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Richard Nixon espoused what he called “the madman theory.” It’s a negotiating approach that induces the other side to believe you are capable of dangerously irrational actions and leads it to back down to avoid the wreckage your rage might let loose.
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Illustration from Mr. T in DC
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By Derek Lazzaro — Apparently having learned nothing from its failure to rein in Enron, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and the rest, Congress is pushing to deregulate Internet service providers.
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By Ruth Marcus — House Republicans voted to increase the number of abortions, raise federal health care costs and swell the welfare rolls.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — We are acting as if the only real problem the United States confronts is the budget deficit, the only test of leadership is whether a president is willing to make big cuts in programs that protect the elderly, and the largest threat to our prosperity comes from public employees.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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The Republican-controlled House, taking aim at everything from health care to the environment, has voted to cut more than $60 billion from the federal budget.
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By Ruth Marcus — Failure of political leadership knows no party. The past few days have offered an unfortunate demonstration of this sad maxim.
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Fake news by Andy Borowitz —
The lawmakers, who call themselves the Shirtless Republicans and are led by Rep. Christopher Lee, R-N.Y., appeared in the Capitol rotunda this morning naked from the waist up.
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Given the outsourcing, the massive bailout, the abandoned houses and the rest of the city’s emotional baggage, it was sort of inevitable that Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” ad, featuring Eminem and spanning roughly $12 million worth of airtime, would elicit cheers and jeers from Congress.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Be ready for the paradoxical phase of Barack Obama’s presidency. Many things will not be exactly as they appear.
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By Eugene Robinson — Republicans who feign attacks of the vapors and fainting spells over the big, scary deficit would be more convincing if they didn’t begin with the insane premise that defense spending should be sacrosanct.
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By Eugene Robinson — This whole health care thing isn’t quite working out the way Republicans planned. My guess is that they’ll soon try to change the subject—but I’m afraid they’re already in too deep.
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By Joe Conason — Data sets and out-year projections may make everybody’s eyes glaze over, but without accurate information, the end result of legislation is disaster.
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Flickr / House GOP Leader (CC-BY)
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House Republicans, joined by three Democrats, finally got around to passing their repeal of President Obama’s health care law. Were the measure to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate and be signed by President Obama, it would be a development as miraculous and inexplicable as John Boehner’s tan.
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Flickr / john amato (CC-BY)
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A new study by the Department of Health and Human Services has found that 129 million Americans under the age of 65—roughly half of that demographic—have medical conditions that could keep them from getting insurance, reports say.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama’s call for “a more civil and honest public discourse” will get its first test much sooner than we expected.
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AP / Petros Giannakouris
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By Chris Hedges — All polite appeals to the formal systems of power will not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must physically obstruct the war machine or accept a role as its accomplice.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Rule One of politics: When you have the advantage, don’t allow your opponents to turn the tables. House Republicans violated this rule, a mistake that will haunt them for years.
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By David Sirota — In a Washington circus that features as many morons as oxymorons, we have self-described deficit hawks who promote tax cuts, alleged war opponents who back war escalations and supposed anti-government conservatives who press to expand the National Security State.
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