First, if you haven’t read Kate Pickert’s excellent coverage of Tuesday’s supreme court arguments about the Affordable Care Act, you should. Right now. Reading Kate, I find the performance of the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. appalling. After all the energy expended over 60 years in bringing universal health insurance to fruition, the man couldn’t [...]
The President begins the week with a gaffe that may not rival last week’s Romney Etch-A-Sketch disaster as a defining moment, but is sure to be used against him repeatedly by Republicans until we’ve voted in November. In a ‘hot mic’ conversation with the Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, Obama asked for ‘space’–that is, that Russian [...]
Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against the Netanyahu government and order an unsanctioned Israeli settler outpost on the West Bank to be shut down by August. Netanyahu had wanted the outpost to remain open for business in perpetuity–or close to perpetuity, 2015, by which time the government would have argued the permanence of the settlement. [...]
Two interesting columns this morning on the Supreme Court’s upcoming consideration of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. Jonathan Cohn, one of the very best writers on this subject, cuts to the chase: If the individual mandate — the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance — is unconstitutional, then Medicare and Social Security must be [...]
I’ve been thinking about this all night: Eric Fehrnstrom’s Etch A Sketch gaffe yesterday may go well beyond a momentary embarrassment and become a campaign-defining disaster, much as John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted against it” gaffe — which came at almost exactly the same point in that campaign, as Kerry locked [...]
For my print column this week, which TIME subscribers can find here, I decided to check in with some of the military veterans I wrote about last summer my “New Greatest Generation” cover story–especially the sergeants–to see how they were reacting to the news of the alleged massacre perpetrated by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. Not [...]
It’s going to take a while to sift through the entrails of Paul Ryan’s latest budget, but it seems obvious that his Medicare proposal, jointly made with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, is going to get most of the attention. I’m a big fan of Wyden’s when it comes to health care policy. He’s proven [...]
He can lie. As Bryan Walsh discusses and the New York Times amplifies today, Romney has been selling whoppers about the President’s position on gasoline prices. This continues a disturbing trend that has existed from the very start of his campaign: Romney and his handlers have been all too willing to tell blatant untruths about [...]
Rush Limbaugh is having a bad day. His radio sponsors are jumping ship. Sandra Fluke refused to accept his apology. Republicans are finally piping up with more fulsome condemnations. Jim Poniewozik raises the most important question here: Has Limbaugh reached an Imus-like tipping point, where his power and audience will be severely curtailed?
