It's been less than three weeks since the Ames Straw Poll, and the narrative of this still-young campaign season is flush with Rick Perry triumphalism. He's blown up the field, established early beachheads and kept his high numbers consistent and persistent. Perry has started stealing Mitt...

In the three weeks since Texas Gov. Rick Perry stormed into the 2012 presidential race, bigfooting past the Ames Straw Poll and surging to frontrunner status, the media have flocked to the new entrant like flies to cow manure. Along the way, they've asked questions of seeming pertinence. Is Rick...

Cursory examinations of "the polls" lead us to conclude that Rick Perry is very popular, at the moment, with "the people who participate in polls." Which is good news for Rick Perry! But bad news for Mitt Romney, who used to be popular with "the people who participate in polls,"...

One thing we've harped on a bit on these pages is that many of the GOP candidates who haven't been granted access to the debates are basically caught in a catch-22. The debate organizers typically require their participants to have a certain standing in "the polls." But in order for...

Most reporters within the Beltway Bubble regard August as a thirty-one day period of "dog days" downtime, in which not a lot of Stuff Happens. "Slow news month," they quip. Well this August turns out to have been different. "Yeah, we're going to happen in August this year," said Stuff....

Americans have endured a lot of hardships of late -- a terrible economy, massive devastation from the recent hurricanes, whatever it was that Lady Gaga was doing at the VMAs the other night -- so much so that one wonders how they can possibly take on any further burdens. So...

After yesterday's charlie-foxtrot fall-out over the possibility that Congress might have to endure a Presidential address and a GOP candidate debate on the same night, which ended with the White House agreeing to move their address to the Joint Session of Congress to Thursday, September 8, you might be wondering...

Good morning everyone, and welcome to your Sunday Morning Liveblog of the political chat shows, Hurricane Irene edition. I hope all of you who are or were in the path of the hurricane are safe and dry. The last hurricane I disrespected was Hurricane Isabel, and she dropped a 250-year-old...

For many, many weeks, we've been told the same old story: no matter who joins the GOP field, no matter how many different varieties of candidate there are on offer, it's never been good enough for anyone.

This was the story in April, in May, in...

Hey, everybody! Time now to check what's going on with that giant portfolio of foreclosed-upon homes that we, as taxpayers, own. Did you forget that we owned a giant portfolio of foreclosed-upon homes? Because we do. Anyway, the good news is that we may not have this portfolio for much...

Emily Schultheis points us to Thursday morning's First Read column, which outlines in four paragraphs what is happening with the 2012 primary calendar. As you probably already know, Iowa and New Hampshire are, by divine fiat, the "first-in-the-nation" contests, and everyone who's not "first-in-the-nation" resents this,...

I'm tardy to the party, but via Balloon Juice, this is something Thomas Friedman actually wrote and managed to get published:

Meanwhile, Mr. President, on a rainy day, rent the movie "Tin Cup." There is a great scene where Dr. Molly Griswold is trying to help Roy "Tin...

Sweet sassy molassey, this latest Gallup poll hews so closely to the media narrative that preceded it that I fully expect it to be under glass at the Newseum within the hour! Let's see, Rick Perry is fully ascended into the frontrunner spot, twelve fancy points ahead of...

Everyone who is anyone can tell you that the GOP base doesn't care for the current slate of candidates on offer. Or, at the very least, they can tell you that elite GOP pundits and thought-havers who like to project their imaginings onto the electorate don't care for the current...

Why can't America have some jobs? Lawmakers tell a story, which your Beltway media regurgitate, and it goes a little something like this.

We can't have jobs until banks start lending money to support the productive side of the American economy. Why won't they start lending? Oh, you know ......

It seems that some hardcore ninny took to the Google+ platform disguised as Paul Krugman and used that venue to disseminate some controversial statements about yesterday's earthquake.

Those statements included this: "People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending...

Back in March of this year, Kurt Bardella, then a spokesman for Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), was sacked after it came to light that he had shared email correspondences from Beltway reporters with Mark Leibovich, a New York Times reporter who's hard at work on a book that details...

If you've not yet read the recent piece by Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz of Bloomberg News, "Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed’s Secret Loans," please go read the whole thing. The report hits many of my favorite sweet-spots. By far the most important is the fact...

Vice President Joe Biden has bought himself a controversy boomlet after briefly commenting on China's draconian one-child-per-family policy without strenuously condemning it, or single-handedly putting an end to it, or something. Here's your latest, greatest "Biden gaffe," which occurred on Sunday when he was trying to explain, to...

Good morning, one and all and welcome once again to your Sunday Morning liveblog. My name is Jason and things look to be shinier than ever now that Rick Perry's jumped into the race, splashed around a little bit, threatened Ben Bernanke with corporal harm, and got everyone watching from...