Congressmen are upside-down in a new CNN poll.

The post-debt-ceiling poll numbers are in, and they’re not good for Republicans. A CNN poll released today finds the Republican Party is down to a 33% approval rating, vs. a 47% approval rating for the Democratic Party. Speaker John Boehner’s approval rating has dropped ten points in the past three weeks, down to 33%, while …

Links for August 6th

The Washington Post: Fewer dinners mean meaner politicsSince Gingrich's cohort of Republicans came into office in 1994, there has been a steady decline in bipartisan socialization and, indeed, socialization at all. He exhorted freshmen to return to their districts whenever possible, to be in D.C. only when absolutely necessary. The result is a dangerous loss …

Links for August 2nd

Aloha EditorI love this HTML5 WYSIWYG editor. They had me at the introductory paragraph, what with the editing of it. I haven't implemented it anywhere, but I love the concept. Slow Clap for CongressDear Congress, For your leadership, your maturity, and your inspiring ability to perform the basic duties of your job, We applaud you. …

Links for July 28th

New York Times: Nutrition Label Gets a Design OverhaulSome of the ideas to overhaul food nutrition labels are pretty clever. New York Times: After Aiding Republicans, Business Groups Press Them on Debt CeilingThe Chamber of Commerce threw the full weight of their support behind getting Democrats replaced by Republicans in last year's congressional election. Now …

Links for July 16th

Tabulaw: What Congress Does When it Runs Out of NumbersCongress recently passed a bill that created section 139D of the tax code. But there was already a 139D. No problem—they just kept the existing one. So there are two section 139Ds. Given my work on codes, this makes my head feel all explodey inside. New …

Links for July 14th

Reuters: How I misread News Corp’s taxesPulitzer-prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston broke a story earlier this week about how News Corp had received $4.8B in income tax refunds over the past four years, while paying nothing. Turns out he was entirely wrong. What he'd written was the opposite of the truth. News Corp changed …

Links for July 9th

GAO: Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin Would Provide a Financial Benefit to the GovernmentGetting rid of the $1 bill would save the government $184M/year. Not an enormous amount, on the scale of the budget, but there's no getting around that $184M is a very large amount of money indeed. Ten years ago, …

Links for July 7th

PolitiFact: George Allen changes stance again on ethanol subsidiesAllen was against ethanol subsidies. Then he was for them. Now he's against them. It's got to be dizzying, change positions every time the political wind shifts. PolitiFact: Virginia GOP says Phil Puckett voted against sending EPA a messagePolitiFact finds the RPV's criticism of Sen. Puckett to …

“The American people.”

A pet peeve of mine: Politicians who insist on talking about what “the American people” want, and what “the American people” think. Every politician who says that believes that—in a striking coincidence—what the American people want happens to be precisely what said politician wants. Never noticed this? You will now. You can hear an example …

Links for July 6th

The Register: Google dumps all 11+ million .co.cc sites from its resultsGood. .co.cc sites are almost uniformly worthless—a hive of malware sites and search engine spam. Andrew Sullivan: Boehner’s Economic Terrorism"For the GOP to use the debt ceiling to put a gun to the head of the US and global economy until they get only …