John Boehner being hung out to dry by Matt Taibbi. There's an unusual amount of vitriol in this gossipy diatribe about Boehner which seems to really get personal, but then,I suspect Boehner merits much of the invective. Boehner's relationship with Littleton and the Teapartiers is of particular interest.

Wow! My kind of opinion piece! When I got to the part about Boehner being “...a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him....” I figured this wasn’t going to be a puff piece about selfless public service. Indeed, it’s a must-read to find out what we’re really getting for our tax dollars. But read it if for nothing more than to see how the author skewers Boehner. Describing Boehner’s plan for deficit reduction by cutting House budgets by 5% ($30 million) the author states: “...paying for trillion-dollar bailouts and $900 billion tax breaks by cutting $30 million at a time is a little like ... More »

Not good journalism 1. It starts with ad hominem attacks: "self-serving skill at political survival", "the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich", "glad-handing, double-talking, K Street toady" 2. It presents generalizations without details or citations to back the claims up: "In this age of greed-enabling bailouts and rampaging Tea Parties", "the leadership inevitably borrows like dice addicts on the Vegas strip and uses the money to pay for huge Frankensteinian initiatives that bloat the size and power of the federal government", "No Child Left Behind Act, a grotesque and grotesquely expensive expansion of federal power that helped jack up the federal education budget by an astounding 80 percent in the first ... More »