This week, long shot Republican congressional candidate Jazmina Saavedra broadcast a Facebook live video from a Denny's in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she stalked a trans woman into the ladies' room and harassed her until she left. Saavedra, a Trump ...read more

Since the election of Donald Trump, Maxine Waters has become one of the most visible icons of the Resistance. Whether she's "shoving" TYT correspondent Michael Tracey, appearing on t-shirts with her catchphrase "reclaiming my time," or openly calling for impeachment following ...read more

Societies have long known that when inventors don't ask hard questions of themselves, the results can be catastrophic. Mark Zuckerberg learned this the hard way this week when he testified before Congress over two consecutive days concerning Cambridge Analytica's breach of ...read more

When Conor Lamb won his special election in Pennsylvania last week, he distanced himself from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, calling for new leadership if the Democrats retake Congress in November. Since Lamb won by only a handful of votes, this may have been shrewd ...read more

For all of its ability to twist and pervert the political process to suit its needs, it's amazing that some members of the Republican Party never quite seem to learn that basic fact of political reality: It's not the scandal, it's the cover up. Politico reports that Trump's ...read more

Media outlets have been running headlines claiming the Paris climate talks are humanity's last chance to save the planet -- a bold claim that sounds absurdly hyperbolic if it weren't basically a scientific fact. Overwhelming data conclusively shows that humanity is on the brink ...read more

“I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.” -Dorothy Dix There’s an eerily familiar sound of silence in the halls and walls of Congress. This lack of noise means ...read more

Speaker of the House of Representatives-Republican leader John Boehner announced his resignation to a somewhat surprised media on September 25th, 2015. Speaker Boehner stated his last day will be October 30th, 2015 and offered his support to Majority leader Kevin McCarthy to ...read more

Weeping orange man John Boehner has finally decided to call it quits on his tumultuous tenure as Speaker of the House. From Politico: Speaker John Boehner, who rose from bartender's son to the most powerful man in Congress, will retire at the end of October, ending a tumultuous ...read more

Andy Borowitz for the epic win of the internet this week: The fact that a Congress full of so many idiots exists in a modern democracy is genuinely mind blowing. More mind blowing is the fact that the head of an institution guilty of persecuting Jews, Pagans, Muslims, ...read more

When Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in front of Congress in 2011, he received 29 standing ovations. Today we'll see more of the same. Netanyahu will speak before Congress Tuesday morning in what the White House has said is a breach of diplomatic protocol. In January, Speaker John ...read more

Dear Atheists In Congress: I know you're in there. We all do. Not that I needed confirmation, but the American Humanist Association says 24 of you have privately revealed to the organization that you don't believe in god. And surely the number of you in Congress is higher ...read more

Tea Party Rep. Steven Palazzo sent every one of his fellow members of Congress a Bible last week, regardless of their individual religious affiliations. Along with each was a note, which read in part: "On a daily basis, we contemplate policy decisions that impact America's ...read more

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said that he wants a special congressional investigation of Google because of recent a issue with the company's search algorithm that's affecting a single movie. That just so happens to be America: Imagine a World Without Her, (which is a very ...read more

Rep. Vance McAllister (R-LA), who was elected on a family values, conservative Christian platform, was apparently caught on video by The Ouachita Citizen newspaper embracing and passionately kissing a female staffer, Melissa Peacock. McAllister has been married since 1997. The ...read more

I spent most of Saturday hiking up and down the impossibly steep trails of Muir Woods National Monument. The expanse of ancient redwood groves and lush pine forests near San Francisco Bay was set aside in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt and named in honor of the ...read more

I’m not saying I was some ostrich with my head in the sand before working at the Daily Banter, but I have to admit that over the past 6 months, a lot less has slipped through my cracks. And it drives me insane. Because it’s usually the kind of stuff that flows under the ...read more

Last week, Bill Maher told the New York Times that his show will attempt to oust a sitting member of Congress. Moreover, he will ask his viewers to help him select the congressperson that is both terrible enough and in a competitive enough race to get the bullseye put on their ...read more

Gallup's latest party favorability poll shows the Republican Party collapsing from a favorability of 38 percent to 28 percent over the last month, perhaps indicating that the House GOP, and specifically the tea party, is a drag on the rest of the party due to the government ...read more

James Fallows weighs in on the astonishing behavior of the GOP and their threats to shut the government down over the funding of Obamacare: This isn't "gridlock." It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results ...read more

Arithmetic. That’s what Bill Clinton says is his answer when people ask how his administration produced four budget surpluses in a row. It was also his answer for why Republicans quadrupled the national debt in the 12 years before Clinton took office and doubled it again in ...read more

Nothing quite brings the Republican Party and its vision for America into focus as sharply as the fight over Food Stamps. Suffice it to say, it’s not a pretty picture. GOP House members voted last week to cut $40 billion out of the country's primary food security program ...read more

Agree with his policies or not, it's nearly impossible for anyone with a semi-functional brain to deny that in almost any interaction with his counterparts in Congress, Barack Obama is generally the most adult one in the room. If you pare that down to just the Republicans in ...read more

I have been thinking about what counsel I would give Anthony Weiner about what would be his best move, politically (Other than stop sending pictures of yourself to women you don't know.  I mean you practically have to be brain damaged to believe them when they say they will ...read more

Washington, DC is not a popular place.  That's not really new.  For years I have been told that people "inside the beltway" are disconnected from the ordinary, hard working Americans that live outside of it.  New polling data released this week shows Congress' approval rating ...read more

Residents of the Mexican city Xalapa have a new choice for mayor, Morris the cat. Morris has more than 125,000 likes on Facebook and have inspired citizens to sponsor a donkey and chicken for other elected office.  His slogan is "cat"chy (sorry).  "Tired of voting for rats? ...read more

The program known as "Women, Infants and Children" (WIC) is officially the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.  Their web site can be found here.  The site describes the program this way: "The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, ...read more

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare turns three today.  Many of the provisions will go into effect in January 2014 and you may be unsure about how this may impact your coverage.  Some states have seen insurance companies increase their premiums and you ...read more

The House of Representatives voted this morning on Congressman Paul Ryan's budget proposal.  It passed by a vote of 221 to 207.  The 221 yeahs were all Republican, 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted no.   You can read the official vote count here.  You can read the official ...read more

My mother has told me a joke she heard from someone when she went to South Carolina.  The SC resident and native told her, "South Carolina; too small to be its own country, too big to be a mental institution."  I have spent some time in the Palmetto State and like it a lot but ...read more

For most of the country, March means one thing: college basketball.  This year, in Washington, DC it means something completely different.  The madness to which I refer is what’s happening with our federal budget.  If you are not troubled by the fact that we are facing this ...read more

The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From AP: More than 10 weeks after Superstorm Sandy brutalized parts of the heavily populated Northeast, the House approved $50.5 billion in emergency relief for the victims Tuesday night as Republican leaders struggled to close out an episode ...read more

The Daily Banter Headline Grab (via The AP): WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that he's not confident Congress can reach a budget deal and avoid a downgrading of the U.S. debt rating. Moody's Investors Service said Tuesday that it would likely cut its ...read more

By Bob Cesca: Technically, the U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee the right to vote. It seems odd, considering all of the various other rights, guarantees and structural details enumerated in the document. That said, there are amendments that provide reasons why certain ...read more

By Ben Cohen: Listening to the rhetoric of Republicans, you'd believe they wouldn't have the government do anything other than go to war on behalf of the American people (and sometimes even that isn't true - Donald Rumsfeld spent years trying to privatize the military). ...read more

By Bob Cesca: The press and the Republican Party are almost equally driven to totally destroy Social Security as we know it. The 2012 Social Security Trustees Report was released this week and here are several headlines from three of the top newspapers in the country: The Wall ...read more

By Robert Parry: The Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court behaved more like Fox News pundits than serious jurists weighing the constitutionality of an important law addressing the health of the American people. On Tuesday, they posed silly hypothetical questions of the ...read more

Steve Benen comments on the alarming fact that Americans understand that the Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy, but take it out on Obama regardless of his ability to do anything about it: The degree of national cynicism is so intense, many Americans may ...read more

A stunning chart that maps the financial wealth distribution in the US as a percentage of Congress and the Senate (via Andrew Sullivan): The notion that the US is a representative democracy is now something of a sick joke - it is a country run by millionaires for millionaires. ...read more

James Fallows on the President's job speech: On both politics and substance, the President positioned himself in the only tenable way for the next months' deliberations with the Congress and next year's election campaign. Instead of asking vaguely for "consensus" or seeming ...read more