Ben Jacobs

The Sunday morning talk shows were filled with chatter about Mitt Romney’s offshore bank accounts after a major article in Vanity Fair detailing Romney’s investments, including a Bermuda entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. Romney’s use of tax shelters is not a shock. They are legal and Romney is very rich. What is […]

The New York Times today examines why Iceland has weathered the financial crisis better than most other European countries. The article mentions many of Iceland’s strict currency controls, which it was able to impose because it’s not a member of the European Union, as well as its willingness to let its banks fail. However, the […]

Roll Call has a surprising story featuring John Boehner’s frank response to a voter who asked him “Can you make me love Mitt Romney?” Boehner responded negatively: “No. Listen, we’re just politicians. I wasn’t elected to play God. The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney. I’ll tell you this: […]

In 2008, Barack Obama was carried to overwhelming victory in both the Iowa Caucuses and the general election in the state with the support of many independents and Republicans. Those backers though don’t seem to be behind him this year. In a big front page story today, the Des Moines Register went back and tracked […]

If you’re obsessed with the details of how CNN blew its coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, SCOTUS Blog has a 7000 word minute by minute recap. It captures the frenzy of reporters trying speed-read the syllabus of the Court’s decision (the summary that the Supreme Court […]

In his weekly radio address, Maine’s Tea Party Governor, Paul LePage, compared the IRS to Adolf Hitler’s secret police in an attack on the Affordable Care Act. LePage railed against the Supreme Court’s decision ten days ago saying “You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo — the IRS.” Such loaded rhetoric is […]

Richard Posner, a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has long been considering a leading conservative legal thinker. However, in an interview with NPR yesterday, Posner said “There’s been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking.”I’ve become less conservative since the Republican […]

In the Democratic primary for a Brooklyn congressional district two weeks ago, assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries romped to victory against controversial New York city councilman Charles Barron, perhaps best known for stating “I want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, […]

For all the attention paid to the question of whether it’s wise for California to spend $68 billion on a high speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a bigger question is being ignored. That question is how come it costs so much money? In contrast, China just completed a high speed rail […]

Thaddeus McCotter, a five-term Michigan Republican with a personality as idiosyncratic as his first name, resigned from Congress yesterday. Of course, he did so on Facebook. By political standards, this was the most normal thing about his resignation. McCotter was a quirky but relatively successful Congressman from the Republican suburbs of Detroit. Then, last year, […]