Congress

William Saletan has done a deep dive into Ted Cruz’s statements regarding the Senate’s 2013 debate on immigration reform. Saletan’s conclusion, to adapt a line from Seinfeld, is that Cruz’s shadiness is real, and it’s “spectacular.” He calls Cruz “a passionate, indefatigable liar” and alleges, “For him, truth isn’t a matter of plain meaning. It’s a matter of technicalities.” In a 3,600-word…

In the Tuesday evening newscasts before President Obama’s final State of the Union address, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News failed to mention any of the poor polling numbers for President Obama on a variety of issues but instead hailed the President’s “big themes” in a speech “trying to recapture the hope and change of when he first took office, despite the setbacks and gridlock…

On Monday, CNN Politics's Chris Moody and Alexander Rosen promoted/paid tribute to President Obama's final State of the Union address by producing an online video in the style of movie director Wes Anderson. Moody narrated the video, which spotlighted a pro-ObamaCare moment from the President's 2015 speech to Congress, where Senator Marco Rubio and other Republicans refused to stand and applaud.

In the present, liberals vehemently oppose what conservatives stand for (and vice versa, of course). But do liberals believe there was a time when conservatism was somewhat reasonable, or at least not appalling? Martin Longman offered an answer in a Friday post: It was “the reaction to FDR’s New Deal” that crystallized the suspicious, radical conservatism of today. “Conservatism is supposed to…

On Friday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN correspondent Drew Griffin filed a report painting conservative opponents of President Barack Obama's gun control initiatives as conspiracy theorists, following up on the previous report finding that a number of gun owners in Florida are suspicious that Obama wants to go further with gun control that he is letting on.

Don Lemon acted less as an anchor and more like a liberal activist during two segments on Wednesday's CNN Tonight — tag-teaming with Igor Volsky of Think Progress to repeatedly interrupt and shout down conservative radio host Ben Ferguson over his support for gun rights. Lemon dismissed Ferguson's concern over President Obama's executive orders: "Does anybody in their right mind out there in…

Tuesday’s editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News aired nowhere near the exhaustive coverage of President Obama’s executive actions on gun control that the CBS Evening News did, but they were not short on fawning language for Obama’s “rallying cry...after years of anger and frustration” in what ABC hyped as “[t]he showdown after the President breaks down.”

24 hours after heralding President Obama revealing specifics on his executive actions concerning gun control, the CBS Evening News offered a full-court press for the President on Tuesday following the announcement that saw the President shed tears that anchor Scott Pelley deemed were “more powerful than words” as “the most powerful man in the world” took “action to stop” gun violence.

Moments after the White House revealed to reporters on Monday details of President Obama’s executive orders on gun control, the network evening newscasts could barely contain their approval for the President “picking a major fight with Republicans” as his “new gun checks” seek “to restrict gun sales.” CBS anchor Scott Pelley: "The President, frustrated by mass murders that seem to come every…

The rich are "horrible people" -- at least those who lean to the right -- declares economist turned pompous New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in Friday’s “Privilege, Pathology and Power.” The text box: “Can we survive rule by self-centered billionaires?” (Liberal billionaire activist George Soros had no comment.) Krugman channeled opportunistic moralism, citing “science” to confirm his…

Appearing exclusively on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd repeatedly pressed Speaker Paul Ryan to denounce conservative radio talk show hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin over their criticism of the recently-passed omnibus bill and Todd demanded to know how he’ll work with President Obama to “lay the groundwork” to end political polarization. Todd asked, of the talk show hosts, whether their…

The lead story in Saturday's New York Times heaped praise upon the passage of a package of spending increases: “Avoiding Rancor, Congress Passes A Fiscal Package -- $1.8 Trillion Measure – Spending Rise and New Tax Breaks Suggest End of Austerity." This big-spending budget earned Ryan some strange new respect, with reporter David Herszenhorn praising his “deftness in pacifying rebellious…

Starting with the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, several mass shootings have brought about considerable debate regarding restrictions on access to firearms for the mentally ill. D.R. Tucker argued last Sunday that denying guns to “deranged individuals” should have been a special cause for conservatives long before -- specifically, since March 1981, when John Hinckley tried to assassinate…

When it comes to global warming, Esquire’s Charles Pierce implies, it’s now conservative Republicans and a few hidebound Democrats versus pretty much everyone and everything else, including the world’s non-human animals and its plant life. Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait opined that the Paris climate deal was “probably the [Obama] administration’s most important accomplishment."