When Rick Perry says, “Running for the presidency is not an IQ test,” we laugh because he sounds like a big dummy. The Texas governor’s buffoonish stab at the 2012 GOP nomination was the rough draft of Dumb and Dumber To. In 2014, he’s wearing smart guy glasses and will probably have braces and a pocket protector by the time […]

Some on the right seemed ecstatic when Rolling Stone disavowed its story about a sexual assault on the campus of the University of Virginia because of discrepancies in the account of a gang rape from a woman named “Jackie.” The article clearly lacked the ethical rigor necessary for exposing a rape accusation to the world. Katie Klabusich called it a […]

Good thing that no own will ever ask Republicans to explain the best job growth of the last two centuries Cutting taxes for the rich and regulations for corporations are the foundations of conservative economics. But why does the American economy do best when the opposite happens? America’s recovery isn’t great — unless you compare it to the rest of […]

The decriminalization of marijuana has sped up dramatically over the last decade. But we all know that using pot has only generally been a crime for certain people. Last year, 52 percent of the more than 1.5 million drug arrests in the United States involved marijuana. Yet those who have to worry most about arrest for pot use are those […]

Chief Justice John Roberts has known he wanted to gut the crown jewel of the civil rights movement — the Voting Rights Act — since at least the 1980s, when he was a young lawyer in the Reagan Administration. And when he essentially ended the preclearance requirements in 2013 that ensured millions had the right to vote, he said that Congress […]

It’s disgraceful that it’s still more controversial to avoid a dumb war than it is to continue two of them endlessly. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, two massive stories were leaked into the newsosphere with hopes that they’d be completely ignored as we prepare for gullet stuffing season. First, an eighth investigation, this one led by House Republicans, debunked the […]

On Wednesday, we finally learned that two Democratic members of Congress from California will keep their jobs. This was remarkable for two reasons. First, Democrats in Congress got some good news for maybe the first time all year. And, secondly, these two victories mean that a Democratic incumbent in California hasn’t lost a House seat in 20 years. Hmm. I […]

It hasn’t happened since 1928. That’s the last time Republicans had a House majority this large. Since the drubbing of November 4, 2014, there’s been a lot of discussion about why the Democrats lost. This discussion takes for granted that Republicans don’t deserve to win. On the federal and state level, they’ve offered nothing but austerity and punishment for the […]

Republicans are having the time of their lives and they’ve never felt this way before, at least not since 2010. The GOP has taken the Senate and now they’re ready to stop historic climate deals, provoke war with Iran and demand maximum deportations. How’d they do it? They took advantage of massive crises (which have mostly disappeared from the headlines), […]

Republicans now have a solid formula for winning midterm elections. Hide your base yet keep them motivated by blindly attacking Obama and Obamacare for everything that’s wrong in the world. When John Kasich — a Republican governor who had fought for Medicaid expansion by invoking Reagan — pointed out the reality that Obamacare is improving lives, he was forced to […]

Now is the time to talk about how we can actually fix this economy I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong. I didn’t think there would be a GOP wave. I especially didn’t think there would be a wave here in Michigan. I knew the map and electorate would be against Democrats, but I always suspected — nay, […]