During last week's first-of-many hearing into the IRS scandal, one subplot emerged: Conservatives presented anecdotes to argue that the IRS didn't just target Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status but a broader swath of conservative individuals and organizations. But the anecdotal evidence does not stand up to the data on tax audits.
In at least one demographic, there is unanimity on same-sex marriage: members of the Republican National Committee. As you might expect, they're opposed. Officially.
Human beings, being pattern-seekers, like to mush things together no matter how well or poorly they fit. Today, those things happen to be abortion and guns. It turns out to be a bit of a stretch.
Cohen explained to multiple outlets that calling the singer-activist Cyndi Lauper "hot" on Twitter and then deleting the tweet, was part of an elaborate ploy to prank the political media, thereby drawing attention to their taste for scandal.
Former Bush adviser Dana Perino made America cringe by rapping a response to Jay-Z's rapped defense of his trip to Cuba, following in the footsteps of many conservatives who have rapped before. They have never not made us cringe.
What would you call a person who spends days on end going from one senator's office to another to push for a piece of legislation? If he's paid it's one thing. If he's a family member of a crime victim, it apparently comes down to politics.
There's something about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that inspires hyperbole. Today, his policies are being compared with the terrorists behind 9/11, officially completing the trifecta of overwrought analogies.
After the defeat of Mitt Romney, the Republicans developed a lengthy plan aimed at modernizing its outreach. Apparently some in the party thought that meant dystopic, sci-fi-style advertising. On Twitter's six-second Vine platform, on repeat.
Ryan gave a speech Thursday night insisting that Republicans not cave on their opposition to abortion, but he ended up making the case for why abortion should remain legal.
Led by Facebook's Zuckerberg, a number of Silicon Valley executives today announced an initiative to facilitate immigration reform. Or, more likely, to ensure that reform includes the sorts of changes the tech industry wants to see.
Rupert Murdoch wanted Fox News to air The Bible, the hit miniseries on History with an Obama-esque Satan. But Murdoch and Survivor bigwig Mark Burnett couldn't come to an agreement on the money or the rights. This is an unsettling revelation.
Gay marriage is suddenly popular. But what our map GIF shows is that this wave of support for gay rights follows two large anti-gay rights wave, first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush.
Thursday's confirmation hearing for President Obama's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency became the latest forum for an ongoing argument over global warming, jobs, the future of the U.S. coal industry, and the role of the federal government.
Mitch McConnell appears to have been right about the source of the leaked tape of his staff disparaging Ashley Judd. According to a Kentucky Democratic official, staff of the liberal PAC Progress Kentucky recorded the meeting from a hallway.
Buried on page 51 of President Obama's budget proposal is a short section titled "Reform TVA" — where "reform" is likely to mean "privatize." It's the quiet beginning of a late chapter in the story of the New Deal, made necessary in part by Obama himself.
As it turns out, George H.W. Bush isn't the only former president named Bush with medical problems. Two sources close to the Bush family say that George W. Bush quietly underwent back surgery several months ago to deal with a nagging disc problem.
Senators have come up with compromises on immigration and gun control even though Washington was supposed to be paralyzed and President Obama's agenda was supposed to be pretty much dead, smothered by the fiscal cliff, the sequester, and the NRA.
Just shy of four months after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the full Senate voted for the first time in 19 years to consider major reforms to gun legislation. Here's what the data tells us about what might happen next.
On last night's Daily Show Jon Stewart explained how the Senate blocked the U.S. from signing on to a UN arms treaty — a treaty that is decidedly anti-Bond villain.
Let it never be said that American national politics lacks a flair for exaggeration. Mitch McConnell finds himself at the center of a storm of hyperbole, almost as though he and others were hoping to score political points off of relative non-events.
An analysis on the early details of the "gang of eight" proposal shows a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that is an intentionally arduous bureaucratic labyrinth that will take two decades years to crawl through.
After country star Brad Paisley kicked off a national conversation about white guys who don't want to be called racist just because they say or wear things with racist connotations, we find a fascinating case study in Salina, Kansas, where a county commissioner suggested the county should avoid "n— rigging" repairs to a local building.
Rand Paul's explanation for how Republicans lost the support of black voters, at a Howard University speech Wednesday, sounded a lot like Mitt Romney's explanation for why he lost the 2012 election — that Obama won because he offered "gifts." Rand Paul's explanation is wrong.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for an open spot on U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. — and it could open the door for the next Supreme Court nominee. Here's how.
If you thought Virginia was weird, it's easier to pass a law through Montana's state legislature that allows citizens to eat their own roadkill than it is to strike down a law that made gay sex a felony punishable with up to 10 years in jail and a $50,000 fine.
The short version of the news from the U.S. Postal Service today is that you're still going to get mail on Saturdays this fall. The long version is that federal budgets are far from set in stone, open to interpretation, and always up for dispute.
Nothing about the federal tax system is especially pleasant: it requires a lot of forms, expends precious mental energy, and of course involves parting ways with your money. But according to a new poll commissioned by The Washington Post, 53 percent of Democrats gave a favorable opinion of the federal tax system; 66 percent of Republicans didn't.
Many Republicans were unaware that Obama's been offering chained CPI for a while. It seems they were also unaware that Grover Norquist, conservatives' No. 1 anti-tax activist and an important GOP ally for decades, opposes chained CPI as a bad deal and a tax increase.
As budget negotiations heat up, you're probably going to hear a lot of talk about "correcting the measure of inflation" or "chaining the CPI." Don't let your eyes glaze over, though, because this might be one of the most important proposals in the whole budget.
In addition to admitting his run for mayor, Weiner admits he got caught up in the thrill of social media, which allows regular citizens to interact with politicians in a way that's never been possible before. It feels very democratic. But sometimes it also feels like you've seen a kind of desperation that you shouldn't have seen.
State lawmakers have it in their minds to regulate all kinds of things, which means last night Jon Stewart played a new Daily Show game he likes to call "Sodomy! Zygotes! Welfare!"
Disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner and his very supportive wife Huma Abedin get a splashy cover profile in this weekend's The New York Times Magazine that basically uses 8,300 words to say one brief thing: He's going to run for office again.
A treasury department letter shows the U.S. government fully, officially approved Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "educational exchange" trip to Cuba, but some politicians still aren't satisfied that they played by the government rules.
By offering to raise taxes and cut entitlement spending at the same time, the new formal budget proposal from the Obama administration should sufficiently upset just about everyone who will have to vote on it.
Robin Kelly, the gun hating former Illinois state rep who's friends with Obama and enjoyed over $2 million of Bloomberg's money for her campaign, has won the election to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. It wasn't even close.
The Senate will release a bipartisan immigration reform bill by the end of the week — maybe. The "gang of eight" can't even agree on whether they'll come to an agreement in time. But you wouldn't know that, watching the kook-free coverage of the immigration debate.
McConnell is blaming liberals for "bugging" his campaign office and leaking the embarrassing Ashley Judd critiques. According to an expert we spoke with that's possible — but it's almost certainly not the case.
Since the stabbing that wounded 14 people at a Houston-area college, one student has been taking some of the credit for apprehending his fellow student.
After President Obama got emotional in Connecticut but refused to name the most powerful arm of "the gun lobby" that is bending back the administration's legislative push, Biden spared no words in describing the political tactics of the National Rifle Association.
Why did country star Brad Paisley write the song "Accidental Racist"? Because he thinks it's time musicians step in to have a national conversation about race.
The planned GOP filibuster of gun-control legislation was losing steam on Tuesday, as more than half a dozen GOP lawmakers abandoned their conservative colleagues' effort to block consideration of the bill.
The two-time presidential candidate just launched a home schooling curriculum which promises to get your elementary school student up-to-speed on the hijacking of the Constitution in no time. Seriously. It promises that. And so much more.
With all due respect to Mother Jones's conversation-leaker-in-chief David Corn, the recordings published today of a conversation between Sen. Mitch McConnell and some consultants disparaging Ashley Judd is not that big a deal. It's the sausage being made.
It looks like 2014 will be a busy year for book readers hoping to learn more about the inner workings of the Obama administration. Financial crisis + foreign adventures + re-election = The Lord of Rings, White House Edition.
Let this be a reminder to register your domain names. Organizing For Action, the non-profit activism offshoot of the Obama campaign, doesn't own organizingforaction.com — and the owners of the domains certainly don't seem to agree with OFA's politics.
Glenn Greenwald on the mourning of Margaret Thatcher, Bret Stephens on the other kind of marriage, Judith Miller on Jana Winter's jail prospects, David Plotz on his abusive high school basketball coach, and Jeffrey Goldberg on the legacy of the Iraq War.
As the 2016 contender, GOP libertarian spokesman, and son of Ron prepares to give a speech at Howard University about the history of black voters and the Republican Party, it's impossible not to be curious about which story he decides to tell: the one in which the GOP just forgot to campaign for black votes, or the one in which the GOP made a bad bet on racism and is trying to fix it.
It's fun to think about a President Joe Biden, mostly because the guy is lovable. But entertainment value and New York Times speculation aside, he will never, ever be president — and he'd be ill-advised to run. Indeed, polls and other factors suggest that we may have reached Peak Biden — and that he has nowhere to go but down.
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