Tim Fernholz

Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been a pugnacious critic of the Obama administration. He makes the reasonable argument that with the federal government doing so much, an equal amount of oversight is needed. Here’s a sample from a recent statement: The unparalleled encroachment of […]

On the Citizens United front, it appears that even if large public corporations fearing backlash haven’t put too much effort into influencing the elections, private corporations and other interests are more than filling the gap: Republican-favoring groups have paid for $23.6 million ads versus $4.8 million for independent groups supporting Democrats. Yet, in the aftermath […]

Last night I caught the midnight showing of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which opens today nationwide. Director/screenwriter Oliver Stone set out to place the sequel to his era-defining Wall Street against the backdrop of the financial crisis, but the new movie doesn’t begin to match the original — or really stand up on its […]

Today, White House adviser David Axelrod spoke with bloggers about the Republican Party’s wild new election platform, which has been critiqued pretty effectively by a number of people. But though Axelrod was hoping to focus on the GOP’s decision to show their hand, the topic was pushed to the back burner by news that neither […]

So I didn’t even know where to begin with the new Republican election platform [PDF] — Jamelle did — until I saw Alexander Hart’s post pointing out the disingenuity of one of the pledge’s graphs. Sure enough, there’s another doozy: The graph comes after a section noting that “taxpayers are literally funding programs from cradle […]

In response to all the crazy things people believe about President Barack Obama — including that he’s a secret cactus — Ta-Nehisi Coates notes that the president really is an open book; literally, two of them. Ezra Klein goes further: “I can’t think of a current politician we know better than Obama, save maybe [Hillary […]

(Cartoon via) In Jason Zengerle’s artful profile of Kentucky Senate Candidate Rand Paul, the big finish is a scene where Zengerle and a few other reporters manage to catch the press-averse candidate at a public rally and start a conversation; within minutes, it seems, he was observing that “in 1923, when they destroyed the currency, […]

Staff Writer Tim: Hey Ann. I know my “unofficial” target for the next issue of the magazine is one article, and that I haven’t exactly hit that yet, but since I do have like half an article, that should do fine. We can revisit this discussion at our next meeting in November. Deputy Editor Ann: […]

With the announcement that Larry Summers is leaving the Obama administration at the end of the year, speculation has begun about who will replace him, with reports indicating that the White House wants a “woman CEO.” Please, please, spare us this terrible idea. Sure, there could certainly be more diversity on the White House economic […]