Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto is not a rape apologist. He's not a woman hater. He only attacks sexual assault victims to help other women.
The New York Times columnist is wrong about sequestration, and he's somewhat admitted as much. But we can diagnose his wrongness as a compulsive desire to Arbitrarily Capitalize Things. Here are 34 examples from the past 365 days.
We're one week away from the sequester, and Republicans and Democrats are panicking about it actually hitting and over their side having to cave. But fear is a good sign, right? The fiscal cliff proved it can force a deal. Here's the current state of panic.
There are enough votes in the Senate to confirm Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary, the Associated Press' Donna Cassata reports, signaling an end to a loud fight that that always seemed a little fake.
The National Rifle Association has no patience for gun-grabbers' anecdotes — yes, one crazy person with a gun can kill a lot of people, but most gun owners are not murderous sociopaths. Instead, what the NRA likes is cold, hard hypotheticals.
Rick Scott is not alone: Of the seven Republican governors who've betrayed the anti-Obamacare cause, four are in states with very large Latino populations. And watch out — some of these bleeding hearts could be "the future of the GOP."
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey mentioned Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court case allowing unlimited political ad spending, in the same breath as the Dred Scott decision, the 1858 Supreme Court keeping slavery legal by saying it was OK for white people to keep black people as their private property. Cue unthinking outrage!
Donald Trump's Twitter account might have been hacked Thursday, or he might have been sincerely quoting Lil' Wayne when he tweeted, "These hoes think they classy, well that's the class I'm skippen." It's so hard to tell with The Donald.
Both House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama agree that the sequester will be a disaster for the economy. But Republicans and Democrats aren't allowed to agree on anything, so, with eight days before $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts kick in, a chorus of conservatives have emerged to ask, what's so bad about sequestration?
The governor announced he will accept federal funds to expand Medicaid, in a major about-face for yet another major opponent of President Obama's plan. "I cannot in good conscience deny Floridians to healthcare," Scott said late Wednesday.
President Obama is giving interviews to eight local TV news reporters to highlight the effect of the sequester on their cities, again snubbing the poor White House correspondents who are routinely denied access to the president, as Politico vividly chronicled earlier this week. And what are these lucky local news reporters doing with their precious access? Tweeting about Bo, the dog.
Mitt Romney will give a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, his first public speaking appearance since conceding defeat on election night, the National Review's Robert Costa reports.
Pundit and lobbyist Michelle Laxalt gave an impassioned defense of then-Sen. Pete Domenici on CNN in 2007, saying he was a man of "integrity" who was "supporting no fewer than eight children." That curiously inexact reference makes sense now that Domenici has admitted to fathering a son with her.
The massive amount of outside political spending unleashed by Citizens United did not, as feared, make it easier for rich people to buy an election. Instead, it showed that rich people are pretty dumb about politics.
A lot of people are noticing that Marco Rubio's immigration reform plan has a lot in common with President Obama's immigration reform plan, which Rubio denounced as "half-baked." This is not good for Rubio.
President Obama accepted the general's request to retire from the military, instead of going forward with his nomination to be supreme commander of NATO, and now the scandal has ended the careers of two very high-ranking national security officials.
It is starting to look less likely that Congress will reach a deal that prevents automatic spending cuts from taking effect March 1, so politicians are finding the strength to accept the things they cannot change, and change the things they cannot accept. That means accepting the sequester but changing who gets blamed for it.
Although Sen. Marco Rubio trashed President Obama's immigration plan, it is not clear what the major differences are between the two proposals, especially for one of Rubio's most important audiences, conservatives.
During the 2012 Republican primary, several candidates were criticized as unserious hustlers who cared less about America's problems than getting more famous into order to sell books — or get a Fox News contract like the one Herman Cain landed on Friday. Well, it's a year later. How did everyone do?
Yesterday The Atlantic Wire published a post titled "Hillary Clinton Is Running for President, OK?" suggesting that the traditional campaign kabuki, in which we all pretend there is reasonable doubt that someone is running for president right up until the moment the words "I'm running" leave a candidate's mouth, is needless.
When President Obama played with pre-school children in Decatur, Georgia on Valentine's Day, one "brave" little girl was not impressed by the president, or so Daily Intel's Dan Amira would have you believe.
Marijuana could be the next gay marriage -- a contentious social issue that suddenly picks up broad, bipartisan support for change.
Less than six weeks into his term, a remarkable number of both Republicans and Democrats have come forward to say that they think Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, is kind of a jerk.
Republican senators filibustered Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel on Thursday (though they'd rather you didn't call it that) for one reason, but they're hoping the delay gives them enough time to find another reason to block his nomination.
In a speech to promote his State of the Union education plan, President Obama framed it in a way to appeal to Republicans: It saves money. But the question is not whether it's a good idea so much as whether it can pass the Republican-controlled House.
John Boehner can't stop making jokes that show how he earned his high school nickname, and his sexual innuendo campaign went there today — on sweet and innocent Valentine's Day, no less.
Bill Clinton confirmed Hillary Clinton is running for president in 2016, according to Angelo Tsakopoulos, a "real-estate honcho" who's a major donor to Clinton campaigns, the New York Post reports. No kidding?
"GOP grassroots" can mean thousands of activists, drawn from Christian conservatives and Tea Partiers, gathering because they feel the the country and culture is drifting dangerously off course, or it can mean the paid consultants, like FreedomWorks, who think a video in which two female interns, one dressed as a panda and the other as Hillary Clinton, simulated oral sex, is hilarious.
Americans don't just need guns to fight criminals anymore, says the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre, Americans need more guns to fight the weather.
Rubio defended the Republicans against charges "they only care about rich people" in his State of the Union response Tuesday night by pointing to his residency: "Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in." What he did not mention is that he'd like to move out of that neighborhood as soon as possible.
Insisting that raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour would cost jobs, House Speaker John Boehner has already rejected President Obama's State of the Union call to bring it up from $7.25. Here's research that says otherwise.
The president's gun request in the State of the Union was memorable, but it was also just that — a very, very modest request for Congress to vote, amidst a wish list that otherwise called for an ambitious agenda. Why just a vote? Because the deeper conversation has changed.
This was a very consequential sip of water, given that Rubio's lines about "big government" were quite familiar, as was his biography. Let's break down the one moment America may remember about Tuesday night more than Obama's gun refrain.
The most powerful moment of the State of the Union on Tuesday night came when President Obama said the victims of gun violence — people like Gabby Giffords and the family of Hadiya Pendleton — deserve a vote on gun control measures. But there were many more moments and issues than that. Re-live them all here.
You can bet on two things from President Obama's State of the Union: post-speech hype about how he's making an aggressive case for liberal policies, followed by liberal disappointment at Obama's policies.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will give the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union speech tonight, and while it will give Rubio a chance to be seen by millions of Americans, recent history says it will be no help to his 2016 presidential candidacy.
The Navy SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden "IS SCREWED" blares Esquire's new cover. But he's not quite as screwed as the much discussed story makes him out to be.
We already know how President Obama will describe the state of our union in his State of the Union address Tuesday: strong. Here's how the traditional line became a cliché.
"Nobody has bought me, No. 1. Nobody. Never," New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez told Univision last week. But if you survey the kind of things Menedez has done for opthamologist Salomon E. Melgen in the last 20 years, Menedez sure is a great friend.
President Obama will unveil a set of concrete proposals in his State of the Union speech Tuesday, and as in his inaugural address last month, he's expected to sound pretty liberal.
The Washington Free Beacon gives a glowing review to George W. Bush's hacked-and-leaked self-portraits, declaring, "Greatest Living President is Also Fantastic Painter." Sadly, it appears to be a joke.
There is broad agreement that allowing the sequester -- automatic spending cuts set to go into effect March 1 -- to go into effect would be disastrous. And yet, like fresh growth after a forest fire, both parties see a way to benefit from all the economic destruction.
If only Chris Christie were a woman, his weight, and his ability to make jokes about his weight, would make him a folk hero. But the New Jersey governor is s dude, so his fat is a liability.
In the week before John Brennan's confirmation hearing, the conversation about the nominee to be CIA director was almost entirely about drones. The hearing itself mostly wasn't.
Early into the John Brennan's confirmation hearing to be CIA director, his most difficult to believe statement is his claim, "I never believed it's better to kill a terrorist than to detain them." The Obama administration's drone program has, since 2008, incinerated not-even-high-ranking Al Qaeda members in thousands of drone strikes.
President Obama previewed the disappointment that members of his party are almost destined to eventually feel in a speech at the House Democratic Issues Conference on Thursday in Leesburg, Virginia.
Fox News and the Republican Party, while still technically distinct entities, are moving to purge figures who are so controversial they're damaging the conservative brand. Even Dick Morris says he was wrong.
The CIA drone program sure feels like a war, and if you look at the reach of the targeted killing — now that everyone seems to be looking at the reach of the targeted killing — well, it's nearly worldwide. Here's a map to catch you up before Brennan's hearing.
Yes, it is possible for a pundit to lose his job for being very, very wrong. Dick Morris, one of the most spectacularly wrong pundits of the 2012 election, has been fired by Fox News.
At a hearing on immigration Tuesday, Republican Rep. Robert Goodlatte tried to define a proposal to eventually grant illegal immigrants citizenship as extreme. If that's true, then some of his most conservative fellow Republicans are liberal extremists.
Karl Rove said on Fox News Tuesday night, "This is not Tea Party versus the establishment... I don’t want a fight." It looks like he's too late.
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