David Atkins

In case you haven’t heard by now, the latest conservative cool kid response to questions about climate change or evolution is “I’m not a scientist.” It displays a certain humility and folksy ignorance while avoiding tough questions about destructive GOP policy. It’s cute, but it only works because journalists are asking the wrong questions. As […]

It’s an old irony of politics that “bipartisan consensus” only counts when it comes to ideas backed by wealthy centrists between the two parties, but it doesn’t count when it unites both of the more populist elements on right and left. Thus, deficit reduction, corporate tax breaks and military interventions receive the “bipartisan” label if […]

Just another reminder that economic populism still works: Of all the negative campaign messages that Democrats have used this midterm election, the most effective one is a time-tested line of attack: hitting Republican businessmen for being exorbitantly wealthy while outsourcing jobs overseas and laying off employees. It was President Obama’s central argument in his reelection […]

Republicans in Texas have managed to finagle a world in which a gun permit counts as proof of voter eligibility, but a student ID does not. A divided Supreme Court handed a big defeat to the Obama administration and numerous civil rights groups early Saturday morning when it ruled that Texas can enforce its 2011 […]

Remember just a while back how the deficit was going to swallow the country whole and lead our children into indentured servitude? Remember the chorus of very serious people intoning that companies would hire more people if only had more certainty about the nation’s fiscal solvency, and that only by coming together for a Grand […]

United States Senator Kelly Ayotte: “I think we have a problem where the president’s foreign policy is being trapped by his campaign rhetoric,” Ayotte began during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “I’m very fearful as we look at the current military strategy that it is surrounding the November elections and he won’t have the […]

The news for Democrats in the latest round of Senate polling is sobering: Republicans have +4 point leads in enough states to give them a 50 Senate seats. That’s just one short of what they need to win control of the Senate. Four other seats are also up for grabs, placing Democrats in danger of […]

Remember the uproar and terrified hysterics over the invasion of “Africanized” honeybees coming up from Mexico? For a couple of years it seemed like the poor old average European honeybee was doomed by the hyper-aggressive foreign replacement. Never mind that the entire threat was far overwrought and overhyped by xenophobic politicians and news media. And […]

Antonin Scalia: “I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion,” Justice Scalia said. “That’s a possible way to run a political system. The Europeans run it […]

In yet another seemingly boring yet dramatic consequence of the midterm elections, Republicans and even some conservative Democrats are keen on adding “dynamic scoring” to the future budgeting process. Top Republicans, eyeing full control of Congress next year, are considering changing the rules of the budget process so as to make tax cuts appear less […]