Congress

President Obama and GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan want to expand it. Tax preparation companies and illegal immigrants are cashing in on it. Fraudsters have found bottomless ways to exploit it. The earned income tax credit, a bipartisan-supported "anti-poverty" benefit, is robbing honest, law-abiding Americans blind.   

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's New Day on CNN, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman defended his most recent column arguing that the various "fibs" told by Hillary Clinton are not as bad as "giant whoppers" told by Donald Trump as he suggested the Democratic nominee is the preferable choice for President.

On Tuesday night, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews played the role of charmer in creepily professing how attractive he found new author, friend, guest, and Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer (Calif.) that Matthews repeatedly told the audience she “look great” and expressed concern about the physical toll of traveling between California and Washington for work.

Angry, embarrassed Republicans went looking for a scapegoat and settled on a man who’s more than a decade past the normal retirement age. That’s essentially the explanation The Week’s Paul Waldman gives for House GOPers’ move to impeach 76-year-old Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen. That effort, asserted Waldman in a Tuesday column, stems from Republicans’ “frustration over the…

Three offensive elements pervaded the Associated Press's Monday coverage of Hillary Clinton's statement that she will put her husband "in charge of revitalizing the economy." The first was how AP reporters Lisa Lerer and Catherin Lucey decided to resurrect the infamous "2-for-1 offer" then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton campaigned on in 1992 — an especially weak move, given its real-world…

In an analysis for the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times business section, Eduardo Porter trumpeted that the real issue ailing the American economy and impeding on its improvement is the lack of mass government jobs programs similar to its “large and underappreciated role in reshaping” the country during the 19th and 20th centuries. 

During a discussion of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump indicating that he was willing to negotiate over both taxes and the minimum wage, and possibly end up raising taxes on the wealthy, CNN's Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room praised the GOP candidate for having a willingness to compromise, unlike "some very conservative Republican hardliners."

New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer issued a subtle sneak attack on conservative senators in her “Congressional Memo” pinned to Ted Cruz returning to the Senate: Republicans politicians even conservatives like Marco Rubio, can become “thoughtful” and “senatorial” in Steinhauer’s eyes, but only by calling for more government spending or regulations like gun control.

On Wednesday's Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield on CNN, after host Banfield suggested that it might be a disadvantage for presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump to choose Newt Gingrich as his running mate because "He's not a woman, and he's not black or a minority," far-left CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill jumped in to crack that "He's perfect! He's perfect for Republicans," inspiring…

Several decades ago, there were plenty of right-of-center Democrats and left-of-center Republicans. These days, however, almost everyone agrees that the Democrats have become a distinctly liberal party and the GOP a distinctly conservative party. One who disagrees in part is writer Conor Lynch, who in a Saturday article claimed that Republicans have transitioned out of true conservatism and now…

Whenever a Republican lawmaker either leaves office, passes away, or trashes a conservative, you can bet that someone in the liberal media will be there to suddenly heap praise on them and MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews was there Thursday night to compared former Speaker of the House John Boehner to “Michael the Archangel” “with wings and sword” versus Ted Cruz as “one in the tail and…

The Washington Post's Philip Bump followed the Huffington Post's example on Thursday in semi-seriously pursuing whether Ted Cruz is, in fact, "Lucifer in the flesh," as former House Speaker John Boehner recently put it. But instead of turning to a Satanist, the journalist consulted with a pastor/exorcist, even though he admitted that "of course there was no truth" to the Republican's jab at the…

Last month, I celebrated the beginning of my 81st year of life. For nearly half that time, I have been writing a nationally syndicated column on many topics generating reader responses that go from supportive to quite ugly. So I thought a column making my vision, values and views explicit might settle some of the controversy.