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The clock is ticking on tax cheat Charlie RangelBy: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent September 1, 2009 It hasn't gotten much attention amid news of Ted Kennedy, Obamacare and the worsening outlook in Afghanistan, but an extraordinary situation is developing in the House of Representatives. With each passing day, it's becoming more clear that the powerful committee chairman in charge of writing America's tax laws is a financial wheeler-dealer, a serial asset-hider, and a tax offender. Rep. Charles Rangel has been in the House since 1971. He's as old bull as you get in the Democratic hierarchy, and he waited...

In an appearance August 18 on WLS radio in Chicago, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson was asked about anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan's plans to travel to Martha's Vineyard next week, where she will protest the Iraq and Afghanistan wars while President Obama is vacationing there. Gibson, whose newscast and network featured Sheehan when she led anti-war protests outside President Bush's Texas ranch in 2005, answered, "Enough already." That's a remarkably different stance from the one Gibson took four years ago. On August 9, 2005, the ABC anchor conducted an extensive on-air interview with Sheehan. "Cindy Sheehan is her name," Gibson...

That was then. Now, even though the United States still has roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq, and is quickly escalating the war in Afghanistan -- 68,000 troops there by the end of this year, and possibly more in 2010 -- anti-war voices on the Left have fallen silent. No group was more angrily opposed to the war in Iraq than the netroots activists clustered around the left-wing Web site DailyKos. It's an influential site, one of the biggest on the Web, and in the Bush years many of its devotees took an active role in raising money and campaigning for...

I never thought I would agree with Cindy Sheehan but she actually said something that makes sense. The Washington Examiner's Byron York says the antiwar movement that stirred up trouble during the Bush administration wasn't really an antiwar movement at all: it was an anti-Bush movement. York shared his thesis with antiwar activist Sheehan that the antiwar movement has slipped into hibernation because President Bush left office, and she was honest enough to admit she agreed with him. She sent him the following email): I read your column about the "anti-war" movement and I can't believe I am saying this,...

After my column, "For the left, war without Bush is not war at all," appeared Tuesday, I got a note from Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who was the subject of so much press coverage when she led a protest against the Iraq war outside then-President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas. This is what the note said: "I read your column about the "anti-war" movement and I can't believe I am saying this, but I mostly agree with you. The "anti-war" "left" was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the "anti-Republican War" movement. While I...

What's truly striking in Greenberg's poll is the degree to which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen off the progressive radar. I attended the first YearlyKos convention, in 2006, and have kept up with later ones, and it's safe to say that while people who attended those gatherings couldn't stand George W. Bush in general, their feelings were particularly intense when it came to opposing the war in Iraq. It animated their activism; they hated the war, and they hated Bush for starting it. They weren't that fond of the fighting in Afghanistan, either. Now, with Obama in...

It's a possibility many Republicans speak of only in whispers and Democrats are just now beginning to face. After passionate and contentious fights over health care, the environment, and taxes, could Democrats lose big -- really big -- in next year's elections?

With a few hours' reflection, it's become clear that Barack Obama's reference to the U.S. Postal Service at yesterday's health care town hall was the most revealing, and damaging, thing the president has said in the entire health care debate. Explaining why he believes a public option would not crowd out and ultimately eliminate private insurance, Obama said, "My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining…then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you...

Will Obama pay the price for cutting Medicare? By: Byron York Chief Political CorrespondentAugust 11, 2009 In the health care debate, Barack Obama is getting away with the rhetorical equivalent of murder. To pay for the bulk of his proposed remake of the health care system, the president has a two-part plan. Half the money would come from tax increases, and the other half from reduced spending on Medicare.Obama proposes to come up with improvements in the vast Medicare system that will allow him to extend health care coverage to millions of currently uncovered people, make no cuts in...

Each week the Gallup organization publishes an analysis of job approval for President Barack Obama, broken down by all sorts of demographic groups. You want to know the president's approval rating among voters 65 years or older? It's 48 percent. Voters with a high-school diploma or less? Fifty-six percent. Voters who call themselves liberal Democrats? Ninety-one percent. As far as income is concerned, Gallup reports its results for people who make less than $24,000 a year, those who make between $24,000 and $60,000 a year, those who make between $60,000 and $90,000 a year, and those who make more than...

I just have to wonder what kind of uproar and front page news stories would be coming out daily if the Walpin/Johnson IG Firing Story had happened during Bush's watch. You know the answer to that question. We would be blasted by the story daily, for weeks on end. But under the Obama administration the MSM doesn't utter a peep. Except for Byron York reporting in The Washington Examiner that is. Before I get to his story let's do a recap of the scandal, since it's been weeks and weeks since the story came out. There are four players in...

After seven weeks of trying, investigators looking into President Barack Obama’s abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin are still unable to answer the most basic question of the whole affair: Why did the president do it?

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing. The results are found in the answers to the Journal's questions about whether respondents believe the Democratic or Republican party would do a better job of handling a particular issue. In the past, Democrats have usually led in areas like health...

Obamacare haunted by unkept promises of stimulus By: Byron York Chief Political CorrespondentJuly 24, 2009 President Barack Obama greets spectators after arriving at Cleveland Hopkins Airport, Thursday, July 23, 2009. Obama will visit the Cleveland Clinic and hold a town hall style meeting on health care reform at a local high school. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan) (AP) If Barack Obama fails to enact national health care, it will be because he sowed the seeds of his own demise last Feb. 17 -- the day the president, surrounded by Democratic leaders, signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill. In the legislative campaign...

With one word Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele helped the GOP get back in the fight over health care and the entire Obama agenda. The word was “experiment.” “Candidate Obama promised change,” Steele said in a speech at the National Press Club. “President Obama is conducting an experiment.” Steele went on to accuse Barack Obama of carrying out dangerous experiments with the nation’s health care, with the economy, with taxpayers’ dollars. “Experiment” didn’t come from nowhere. “The term bubbled up from a set of focus groups we did with swing voters, independents, soft Republicans and soft Democrats,” says...

GOP Gave Up in Sotomayor Fight Byron York. Lindsey Graham asked Sotomayor about the left-wing positions she'd taken -- the advocacy positions she'd endorsed -- as head of the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sotomayor, shockingly, claimed she couldn't remember such piffles. Graham suggested she review the memos bearing her signature he'd mentioned so that she could be asked about them intelligently, without the claim of "I don't recall" halting inquiry. I expected later questioners to pick up this line of questioning later. They didn't. To make matters worse, Sotomayor was sometimes unresponsive, and even...

AmeriCorps Feared Bad Press If IG Investigation Continued

One of the mysteries surrounding President Obama's firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin is what prompted the White House, supported by the board of directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, to try to get rid of Walpin so quickly and quietly? On the evening of Wednesday, June 10, an official of the White House counsel's office called Walpin to tell him he had one hour to resign or be fired. The action flew in the face of a law (sponsored by Barack Obama when he was a senator) that requires the president to...

What's next in the budding scandal over President Obama's abrupt firing of Gerald Walpin, the inspector general of AmeriCorps? Republican investigators on Capitol Hill know one thing very well. As minorities in both House and Senate, they have no power to compel the White House to disclose anything. And majority Democrats, at least for now, are not inclined to help the opposition uncover embarrassing facts about one of President Obama's favorite federal programs. So Republicans are brainstorming things they can do by themselves to shake loose information from an administration that has no obligation to cooperate with them. And indeed,...

Norman Eisen, the White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, met with investigators on the staff of Republican Sen. Charles Grassley at Grassley's offices this morning. The investigators wanted to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. According to Grassley, Eisen revealed very, very little, refusing to answer many questions of fact put to him. And now Grassley has written a letter to the White House counsel asking for answers. The questions relate to a letter Eisen sent to some senators Tuesday night attributing Walpin's dismissal, in...