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Outspoken former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean apparently isn't planning to celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday February 6, around which there are coast-to-coast events planned. Instead, the former Vermont governor is shrugging his shoulders, asking what all the fuss is about? At a media roundtable today, Dean suggested that Reagan had little impact other than stopping the social progression begun under FDR and seemed to dismiss the Gipper's efforts to crush communism, giving the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev credit for ending the Cold War, a statement sure to draw sneers from Reagan fans and even historians. While Reagan is...

Well. We've just seen, the fruits of our corrupt, lame, spineless and wimpy "Republicans" idea of how to deal with democrats: Surrender. Abject surrender. How deeply disappointing this month has been.

<p>If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on December 6, the day of the Great Tax-Cut Deal of 2010.</p> <p>Obama had a bad November. Admittedly shellacked in the midterm election, he fled the scene to Asia and various unsuccessful meetings, only to return to a sad-sack, lame-duck Congress with ghostly dozens of defeated Democrats wandering the halls.</p>

For two years we watched Barack Obama undercut the left wing of his party at every turn, with a disdain so palpable his minions could not resist insulting leftists in the most juvenile terms. For two years we watched the First Black President facilitate the greatest transfer of wealth in human history – $12 to $14 trillion – to Wall Street, and we watched as he put the U.S. war machine back on the offensive in the world. For two years we heard Obama say over and over again that he had no intention of taking targeted action to help...

Nancy Pelosi is getting the first test of her might under the new Democratic reality as she scrambles to extinguish a rebellion against her power to appoint lieutenants to top party posts. Realizing they don’t have the votes to knock the defeated speaker from the top perch in party leadership, moderate Blue Dog Democrats have set their sights a little lower, targeting liberal Pelosi enforcers George Miller (D-Calif.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), all of whom hold influential jobs because Pelosi has installed them. Pelosi has already faced down challenges to her authority from a diverse set of...

The steep challenge confronting Republicans as they try to restrain entitlement spending came into focus on Sunday’s Meet the Press. As Sen. Jim DeMint made clear in his guest appearance, merely cutting the growth of future entitlements is going to be a long-term challenge, requiring a long-term strategy. DeMint was asked by host David Gregory about Republican pledges to cut spending. Would those pledges include reductions in entitlement spending? DeMint began his answer by praising Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future,” which outlines massive changes — and massive reductions — in entitlement spending over the coming decades. But then,...

Imagine if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were a Republican. Imagine that the Republicans, including many moderates, just lost more than 60 House seats in the worst rout a party has experienced since 1938. Yet the hard-core conservative speaker - of whom, polls show, a majority of voters have a decidedly unfavorable opinion - decides to run for the step-down position of minority leader. You know that folks in San Francisco would deride that Republican leader and her minions as self-destructive ideologues (also known as nut-jobs). But then, your average San Francisco Democrat sees Pelosi not as a liberal, but as...

Good stuff. Say, I wonder where his new show will end up in the MSNBC schedule. Primetime is locked up, so I’m thinking they’ll either dump Schultz and plug Teacups in at 6 p.m. or else get rid of the 7 p.m. re-run of “Hardball” and give him an hour there. Imagine it: Schultz, Grayson, and Olby, back to back to back. Imagine it. In other news, MSNBC actually re-runs “Hardball.” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said Democratic leaders should have been more aggressive and shut Republicans out of the negotiating process, arguing it would have helped them in Tuesday’s midterm...

An angry electorate… More divided than during the Bush years… Marked by nasty ads and commentary, over-the-top rhetoric, and even violence. These are just some of the ways that political observers have described American voters and the 2010 mid-term elections. Without a doubt, many election contests were bitterly fought and divisive. Now comes the hard work of legislating and governing. It won’t be easy for either side, but if there is one thing the new Congress and President Obama ought to agree on, it’s that gun violence victims deserve their support, their leadership, and their determination. And that should be...

Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is in the lead in the California race. This comes as even FoxNews has projected the race for incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. Fiorina appears to have a solid chance of winning this race, as she is leading in heavily Republican areas with many precincts yet to be counted. Boxer is winning in San Francisco and Los Angeles, as can be expected but they appear to not be as wide as could be expected. According to Politico Fiorina has opened a .7% lead statewide over Boxer.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is having a heck of a time trying to get re-elected, in part, he says, because people don't want to know that he prevented a worldwide depression.

Obama: Republicans Will Have to Learn to Get Along With Me Published October 13, 2010 | FoxNews.com President Obama reveals in a magazine article that he is weighing what to do if Republicans win the House majority next month, and has come up with a novel approach: Make the GOP work with him. In a seeming twist on the post-1994 midterm calculation made by President Bill Clinton -- when Republicans pummeled Democrats in the congressional election -- Obama said he thinks Republicans will have to move in his direction no matter the outcome of the Nov. 2 vote. "It may...

The momentum is with us. We are out there to dispel many of the misrepresentations that have been going out there for nearly two years by the Republicans and the special interests, the oil industry, the health insurance industry, the banks and their allies. We're out there. Our members are great articulate spokespersons for their point of view into their districts. And district by district we feel very confident about the election. And we believe that six weeks from today, six weeks from Wednesday of this week we will have no regrets but instead we will have a great Democratic...

What is it called when someone has paranoid delusions that someone with paranoid delusions is out to get him? Whatever it is, Bill Maher has it in spades. This guy is seriously paranoid about paranoid Christians – or as he calls them, “nativist bedwetters” who wave signs on Tax Day and offer burnt sacrifices, I gather, to the most “Evil Dingbat,” Sarah Palin. On Monday’s Tonight Show, Maher snarked about the dreaded Sunday School teachers, organists, moms in jumpers, and little girls in patent leather shoes who “control the national dialogue” and “perpetuate mass delusion” – through electromagnetic microwaves, I...

WASHINGTON - The Democratic left still smarts over President Obama's failure to deliver on some of its key issues, but has made no serious move to challenge him in 2012. Even the loudest critics among them think putting up a primary candidate would just split the party and strengthen the Republican who runs against him or her. "There is beginning to be some chatter about running a candidate from the left, but nobody wants to think that way," said Peter Daou, a liberal blogger and ex-digital media adviser to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The left's grievance list is long. They believe...

I really like Glenn Beck. Though I have never met him in person, I have often watched his television programs and thought it would be so nice to have that kind of a guy as a friend. I imagine that he is far too busy and way too inaccessible for that to become a reality, but I do genuinely like the man. He is insightful, articulate, funny, and seems to want some great things for his family and our nation. I do think that sometimes he has one or two conspiracy theories that may not be fully justified - we...

Have you ever known people who pass the time of day by arguing with themselves? Barbara Boxer almost gets to that level in this video clip from the San Francisco Chronicle and Debra Saunders, who can’t quite believe that Boxer’s delusion is so detailed. Boxer talks at length about how then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice failed to provide an answer to her during a Senate hearing on how many troops had been killed in action in Iraq. Boxer took a lot of heat from her remarking on Rice’s childless status as a way to criticize the Bush administration for going...

This is a radical break from journalistic convention, I realize, but today I'd like to give credit where it's due — specifically, to President Obama. Quiet as it's kept, he's on a genuine winning streak. It's hard to remember that the inauguration was just 19 months ago. Expectations of the new president were absurdly high. If Obama had done backflips across the Potomac River, when he reached the other side he'd have faced probing questions about why it was taking him so long to cure cancer, solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and usher in an age of universal peace and prosperity....

VP Biden brushed aside suggestions that Dems will suffer big midterm losses, vowing that the party will "shock the heck out of everybody." On ABC News' "This Week," Biden dismissed prevailing wisdom that Democrats, 17 months into Obama's transformative presidency, would suffer at the hands of salivating Republicans. Biden said he was "confident when people look at what has happened since we've taken office we're going to be in great shape." Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium.

President Obama ranks 15th out of 44 in a poll of the best and worst presidents while former President George W. Bush earns a place in the bottom five, according to the Siena College Research Institute's recent survey of 238 presidential scholars released Thursday. Obama secured a top ten place in two skill set categories, communication ability (7th) and ability to compromise (10th), and in two personality trait categories, imagination (6th) and intelligence (8th). Background, described as family, education, and experience, proved his lowest score at 32nd. This is the 5th time the institute has conducted the survey of U.S....