Paul Ryan sped into action with his 2013 budget resolution. After releasing it on a Tuesday, he put it up for a vote in the Budget Committee on a Wednesday. This should have been immediately unacceptable to the other 37 members of the Budget Committee who allegedly have a function in crafting the budget. But [...]

A very big meeting will take place today between House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and conservative members of the House Budget Committee, over the budget for the next fiscal year. Republicans remained at odds Wednesday over whether to keep the discretionary spending levels set in the August debt-ceiling deal with the White House or to [...]

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative columnist and impresario, died in Los Angeles early this morning. The news was first reported at his Big Journalism website. Larry Solov writes that Breitbart died of natural causes. ABC News confirmed the report with the LA Coroner’s office. I met Breitbart twice, once at a train wreck of a panel [...]

After a series of long articles and books assessing the economic policy of Obama’s first term, we’re now getting the reviews of those articles and books. Rich Yeselson, for example, has a story in the American Prospect looking at Noam Scheiber’s The Escape Artists, about the without-a-net policymaking from the Administration during the financial crisis. [...]

The story from Evan McMorris-Santoro here, about conservatives turning up their nose and saying “Meh” to the upcoming Marianne Gingrich revelations, even the open marriage stuff, is completely anecdotal. But it fits with a general story about redemption that conservative Christians often tell themselves to allow for a candidate who fails them morally but still [...]

As part of the omnibus spending bill, which has not quite yet been made law due to the blowup of the payroll tax deal, the federal government will delay enforcement of new regulations for increased energy efficiency in light bulbs. Republicans claim that this delay, achieved through blocking Energy Department funding for enforcement through Fiscal [...]

Making an obstructionism exacta today, Senate Republicans defeated the motion to proceed on a second payroll tax cut bill by a 50-48 count. The roll call is here. Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders crossed the aisle to vote with all the Republicans. Sanders opposes the measure because another year of payroll tax cuts threatens Social [...]

The conservative bid to find the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional hit a serious snag yesterday when the women in the main lawsuit filed for bankruptcy on her business. The business was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against the federal government, and its dissolution has unclear implications for the suit, which will be heard before [...]

Whether Herman Cain is actually reassessing his campaign or not, the truth is that he’s done on the Presidential stage and will probably move into Michele Bachmann/Jon Huntsman territory forthwith. And the data show that the biggest beneficiary of this is Newt Gingrich, which makes sense, because the GOP race has always been a matter [...]

I see that fans of privatizing Social Security have moved away from touting the policy of murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile. The buzzword is now “Galveston.” In the late 1970s, county employees in Galveston, Tex., made an unusual and risky decision that they thought would help secure their financial future. They took advantage of [...]

It must have been the clip from The Town that did it. Republicans have an affinity for hurting people with baseball bats, apparently. Because that appears to be the touchstone to get John Boehner’s debt limit plan in a better position to pass the House. A number of House conservatives are now closing ranks on [...]