Think Progress

Cantor Opens The Door To GOP Rejecting Obama’s Bipartisan Health Care Meeting - Monday, February 8th, 2010

In an interview with CBS News’ Katie Couric that aired before the Super Bowl yesterday, President Obama announced “that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month.” “I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically [...]

Rep. John Murtha passes away. - Monday, February 8th, 2010

Democratic Rep. John Murtha (PA), who served in Congress since 1974, passed away today. Murtha had been in intensive care after complications arose from his gall bladder surgery a couple of weeks ago. The statement from his office:
Congressman John P. Murtha (PA-12) passed away peacefully this afternoon at 1:18 p.m. at Virginia Hospital Center [...]

ThinkFast: February 3, 2010 - Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Senate Democrats are planning to unveil an $80 billion jobs package this week intended to tackle the country’s unemployment problem. The Senate’s leadership is “proposing that part of the money come from funds originally allocated to the financial-sector bailout effort.”
President Obama said for the first time Tuesday that cap-and-trade legislation “may need to be separated [...]

Joe Klein Tells O’Reilly: ‘Glenn Beck Is Peddling A Lot Of Hateful Crap’ - Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Last night on Fox News’ The Factor, host Bill O’Reilly asked Time Magazine’s Joe Klein to comment on a recent poll showing that Americans trust Fox News more than all other television news networks. “I don’t place all that much faith in many polls,” Klein said. After O’Reilly boasted about Fox’s ratings, Klein noted that [...]

Boehner Agrees With Progressives: Obama’s Spending Freeze Should Not Exclude Defense Spending - Monday, February 1st, 2010

Since President Obama announced his intention to enact a “spending freeze” on non-security domestic discretionary spending in the federal budget, progressives have been calling on him to include the massive budgets of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. As CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence J. Korb has noted, these agencies “are responsible for a large [...]

Deficit Peacock Evan Bayh Hits ‘Far Left-Wing Blogs’ For Criticizing Obama’s Spending Freeze As Too ‘Austere’ - Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), appearing on Fox News Sunday, attacked “far left-wing blogs” for criticizing President Obama’s proposed non-security discretionary spending freeze. Bayh burnished his anti-spending credentials by noting his opposition to recent omnibus spending bills, although he supported the much larger American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and has repeatedly promoted the federal spending [...]

Axelrod Struggles To Explain Why Obama’s Spending Freeze Doesn’t Include Defense Funding - Friday, January 29th, 2010

Yesterday, ThinkProgress joined a handful of journalists for a wide-ranging discussion with David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to President Obama. In his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, Obama announced a discretionary spending freeze that excluded the massive budgets of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
“Can you tell the American people that there [...]

Rep. King Offers Conspiracy To Support O’Keefe: ‘Seems Really Convenient That This Would Happen Now’ - Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

On Monday, conservative activist James O’Keefe and three others were arrested by the FBI and “charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.” The gang was caught in what appeared to be an attempt to wiretap Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) office in New Orleans. O’Keefe, who had [...]

Democrats Need To Pass A Comprehensive Health Care Bill - Friday, January 22nd, 2010

In the Battle of Waterloo, Democrats are prepared to surrender. After Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) issued his battle cry to the Democrats in August, President Obama aptly responded by noting “this isn’t about me,” but rather, it’s about “a health care system that is breaking America’s families.” “We can’t afford the politics of delay and [...]

Huckabee: Obama will win re-election. - Friday, January 22nd, 2010

During an interview with Mike Huckabee last night on Fox News, host Greta Van Susteren said that Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate special election this week “has awakened people there might be some discontent.” But Huckabee warned the GOP to not “get too giddy” because now Obama will probably be re-elected:
HUCKABEE: [...]

Brown’s Victory Wasn’t A Referendum On National Health Reform Legislation - Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is insisting that Democrats “don’t (think) a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should,” several prominent Democrats are misinterpreting Senator-elect Scott Brown’s (R-MA) surprise victory in Massachusetts as a referendum on national health care reform and are urging Congressional leaders to [...]

ThinkFast: January 19, 2010 - Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said health care reform will succeed, regardless of the outcome in today’s special senate election in Massachusetts. “Let’s remove all doubt, we will have health care — one way or another,” Pelosi said. “Back to the drawing board means a great big zero for the American people.”
Contrary to an intelligence [...]

Tea Party Darling Marco Rubio And 35 Other Candidates Sign Pledge To Repeal Health Care Reform - Friday, January 15th, 2010

As part of the GOP’s all-out-effort to repeal health care reform, the Club For Growth is asking lawmakers and candidates in the 2010 elections to “pledge to the people of my district/state to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that [...]

ThinkFast: January 14, 2010 - Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Officials in Haiti are fearing that “thousands — perhaps more than 100,000 — may have perished” in the deadly earthquake that hit this week. “Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” President Rene Preval said. “There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people [...]

REPORT: Challenges To Constitutionality Of Health Reform Funded By Health Industry Money - Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Since Democrats secured 60 votes to pass health care reform legislation — and passage became inevitable — prominent conservatives relaunched an under-the-radar campaign to invalidate reform through the legal system. On the eve of the final health care vote in the Senate, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV) invoked a “constitutional point of [...]

GOP House candidate says defeating liberals is more important than defeating terrorists. - Monday, January 4th, 2010

Former state legislator Allan Quist is a Republican running to replace Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN) in 2010. As the Minnesota Independent reports, Quist told an audience at the Wabasha County Republicans Christmas party that the “big battle” he thinks conservatives should be fighting is not against terrorists, but liberals in Washington, D.C.:
Allen Quist, a Republican [...]

Hoekstra tries to raise money off failed terrorist attack. - Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee and a candidate for governor of Michigan, is continuing his efforts to score political points off the attempted Christmas day airline bombing. In a fundraising letter acquired by the Grand Rapids Press, Hoekstra writes, “Barack Obama’s policies may impress the ‘Blame America First’ [...]

Palin rehashes ‘metaphor’ excuse to dodge accountability for the Lie of the Year. - Sunday, December 27th, 2009

Sarah Palin must be running out of excuses for her gaffes. As ThinkProgress noted earlier this week, the former governor was forced to address her “death panel” lie in the wake of PolitiFact’s designation of her claim as “Lie of the Year.” In an attempt to spin the lie, Palin is now calling the “death [...]

Conservatives Attack Health Bill Passage As A ‘Gift That Keeps On Taking,’ Threaten To Take Down X-Mas Tree - Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Early this morning, the Senate passed comprehensive health care reform legislation by a vote of 60-39 — with Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) not voting — ending more than four weeks of acrimonious floor debate. “This morning is not the end of the process,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) reminded progressives dissatisfied with the Senate [...]

DeMint And Ensign Look To Right-Wing Think Tanks Rather Than Judges To Interpret The Constitution - Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV) announced yesterday that they would invoke an unusual Senate procedure — a “constitutional point of order” — to allow the Senate to rule by majority vote on whether the “Democrat health care takeover bill” is unconstitutional.
Significantly, neither DeMint nor Ensign cite a single judge, justice or [...]