Barack and Michelle Obama released their tax returns this afternoon, proving what we all already knew: Obama’s books sell well. The first couple made about $2.7 million in 2008 from all sources, almost all of which came from the books. They paid $855,323 in federal taxes. But here’s what you (and all the tea drinkers) [...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today she’d like to form a Pecora-style commission to investigate what happened on Wall Street that perpetrated the financial crisis. Ferdinand Pecora was appointed chief counsel to the Senate Banking and Currency Committee by Herbert Hoover in 1929 but it was his work under FDR ferreting out bankers whose insider [...]

As it happens, I’m headed back to my home state this weekend. Maybe I should pack my passport. This from the Governor today: Perry called his supporters patriots. Later, answering news reporters’ questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said [...]

Bill Galston has the answer: The Wyden-Bennett Healthy Americans Act, which has bipartisan support in the Senate and would have strong backing from corporate America–and, according to the Congressional Budget Office circa Peter Orzag, would save $1.5 trillion over ten years while insuring 99% of Americans with the same menu of private options that members [...]

Bush flunkies trying to argue that Obama is more polarizing than Bush was. Given the fact that Obama had to take dramatic action, at home and abroad, to start lifting the country from the mess Bush made almost everywhere–and also begin to turn the country away from the myopia and greed of the Reagan era–it’s [...]

Here’s a story from me about the advent of TMZ in DC. One of the folks I spoke with was Mary Matalin, who peered down her nose a bit at the idea of DC reality shows (of course, she was in K Street, but that was in a different league of shows that blurred the [...]

We’ve seen this act before. North Korea feels dissed, or neglected, or badly in need of more oil or food, and it stages a massive diplomatic hissy fit. In the past, the rest of the world either (a) responded with empty anger or (b) capitulated, granting new concessions to the NoKos. In most cases, the [...]

This being Tax Day and all, it seems a good pick is this story from the metro section of the Washington Post: D.C. police Detective Michael C. Irving was looking for a way to keep more money in his pocket when he settled on a little-known “program” that he claimed exempted him from income taxes. [...]

See, Michael? Inflammatory headlines drive traffic and they’re fun! Following up on Rick Warren’s cancellation of an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Dan Gilgoff learns that while the pastor was indeed exhausted from the marathon schedule of services Saddleback Church runs during Holy Week, there was something else that left him feeling under the weather this [...]