n journalist Robert Draper’s new book on the 112th Congress, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” he describes a dinner meeting among top Republicans on the day of Pres. Obama’s Inauguration, Jan. 21, 2009. The purpose of the meeting that day — the same day George Bush, whose policy failures they had been [...]

Darrell Issa Calls Current Government ‘The Most Corrupt In History’

History will likely record that one of House Speaker John Boehner’s worst mistakes was his decision to allow California Rep. Darrell Issa to head the government oversight committee. It was Chairman Issa, after all, who called an all-male panel to discuss contraceptives earlier this year. The [...]

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On MSNBC’s “The Last Word” last night, host Lawrence O’Donnell opened a segment of the show by calling on his viewers to decapitate four members of the Republican Party’s leadership:
O’DONNELL: I’ll tell you this right now. If Mitt Romney becomes the president in November, [...]

Pres. Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1985:
We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent [...]

Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic:
Congress has no constitutional authority to punish people who don’t want to have health insurance, Paul Clement argued last week before the United States Supreme Court. This week? The heralded attorney is arguing, to another panel of federal judges, that Congress has plenty of constitutional authority to punish people who don’t [...]

One of the Republican Party’s propaganda narratives being driven on Fox News these days is that it is Pres. Obama’s fault that gas prices are rising. Actually, it’s even worse — Fox is pushing the idea that the president wants gas prices to rise.
This issue came up during the president’s news conference yesterday in [...]

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ABC News:
Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven.
A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the [...]

In a letter this week to an Iowa anti-gay hate group, Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich pledged that, “[as] President, I will vigorously enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, which was enacted under my leadership as speaker of the House, and ensure compliance with its provisions, especially in the military. I will also aggressively defend the [...]

Steve Benen sums it up:
The political world has come to accept a basic truism: the Republican Party is, above all else, an anti-tax party. GOP officials always want to cut taxes, regardless of merit or circumstances.
The maxim is incomplete — Republicans love tax cuts, but their affection is limited to cuts for the very wealthy. [...]

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Before the debate this week on extending the payroll tax holiday, Republicans used to insist that tax cuts paid for themselves:
CARLY FIORINA (R-CA), FORMER U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: Let me just propose something that may seem crazy to you. You don`t need to pay [...]