The speculation on Keith Olbermann’s abrupt departure from MSNBC’s top-rated show continues. Was he fired? Did he quit? Did the Comcast overlords push?

Comedienne Joan Rivers tells Howard Stern why she ditched a joke calling Michelle Obama “Backie O.”

Didn’t we just talk about this?

American states and localities, desperate for new sources of revenue, concoct some creative ways to tax.

Greg Mankiw has a plan for cutting the deficit.

What happened to the 15 million jobs that were supposed to be created in the past 10 years but weren’t?

The Republican Study Committee has come up with some significant budget cuts.

Google no longer needs adult supervision.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was greeted with protests from some EU parliamentarians when he addressed them as its rotating president of the European Council.

Pedestrian fatalities are up. Experts blame Michelle Obama.

Like it or not, human rights is only at the top of the agenda for countries that otherwise don’t much matter.

Dr. Dre is arguing that police officers have no right to privacy.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley managed to alienate non-Christians within moments of taking office.

Sarah Palin’s unfavorability ratings continue to climb. And there’s very little room for her recovery.

Joe Lieberman will not run for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate.

As noted recently, whites are leaving the Democratic Party in droves. Some black Democrats think it’s time to take affirmative action.

Now that Republicans have the House, wouldn’t they be better off playing nice?

Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech was, like a political stump speech, crafted and polished over months and years of delivery.

George Allen is running for his old Senate seat.

NYT public editor Arthur Brisbane explains how it came to pass that his paper reported as fact the erroneous news that Gabrielle Giffords had been killed.

Factions on the right and left continue to charge one another with trying to politicize the Tucson murders. They’re now nitpicking the memorial service.

Mitt Romney has hired my wife’s boss as his pollster.

Kay Bailey Hutchison will not run for re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Despite anecdotal evidence debunking global warming, 2010 was another record year for warm temperatures.

America’s foremost tax foe has weighed in on the Afghanistan War debate.

By this point in the last presidential cycle, there were already 14 major party candidates who had publicly announced. There are zero today.

Faced with mounting debt, the lame duck Illinois legislature rushed through a massive tax hike in the wee hours this morning.

Defying logic, New York City taxis are least available when they’re most needed: as people are getting off work.

UQ’s Thoreau makes a compelling point: “Usually people blame the 2nd amendment for a mass shooting. This time they’re blaming the 1st. But why not all the others?”

Wondering why CATO doesn’t rail against big business is like demanding to know why NARAL doesn’t spend more time advocating for the plight of stray cats or why PETA doesn’t seem to care about the homeless.

The relationships between inflammatory rhetoric and political violence is complicated.

Are we in the year twenty eleven or the year two thousand eleven.

The sitting RNC chairman is losing to a field of no-name candidates. Is he actually the favorite?

While our politics are seldom violent, our violence is often politicized.

While I support a college playoff, there’s an argument to be made for the integrity of the regular season.

We have laws preventing the sales of gun to crazy people. We’re not enforcing them very well.

Should we limit the number of rounds guns can hold in order to minimize shooting sprees?

Palin’s infamous “target” poster recycles a theme used by both parties over the years.

The Republicans are increasingly the party of white America. That’s short term good but long term bad for the GOP.

The words “mother” and “father” will be removed from U.S. passport applications and replaced with gender neutral terminology.