Possibly more than any of the others, Rep. Paul Ryan’s operational motto seems derived from that classic bit by comedian Steve Martin: “Let’s get small.”

As The Hill reports this morning: “Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) argued in a speech to activists Thursday night that robust opposition to abortion rights is crucial to the GOP's political chances.”

Paul Ryan will never end abortion. And they will bungle it again in 2016, with Ryan up front and Rick Santorum with his lurid prose and torrid, neo-Goth imagery trailing behind. Ryan is a strict ideologist, again like Martin’s caricature of '80s fledgling conservatives with a list of “things I believe” tacked on to his refrigerator. But then he tends to switch ideologies at random.

It is hard to believe, but if the Internal Revenue Service is claiming the right to intercept emails without court order because citizens have no expectation of privacy with email, nothing could be more outrageous and wrong and unacceptable.

Rand Paul hit the wall this week in trying to explain himself at Howard University.

He did so in trying to reach out to an African-American audience, and he should have learned the lesson at his first TV interview with Rachel Maddow. Paul defaulted back to a small-church libertarian explanation of states’ rights and federal dominance that would be perhaps useful in a legal history course and is unfortunately standard in certain libertarian circles.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) owes Ashley Judd a public apology for discussing with his campaign staff the idea of smearing Judd with lowbrow attacks on her faith and mental health. 

Today, feminist groups and their allies in the White House and Congress will celebrate “Equal Pay Day,” a made-up holiday aimed at focusing attention on the so-called "wage gap," the notion that women only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.

Of course we know that this is a gross exaggeration. This number comes from comparing full-time working women to full-time working men with no consideration for education, career choices, job markets or even time spent out of the workplace.

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard sits down with John Feehery and Peter Fenn from Pundits' Blog to discuss the burst of legislative activity happening in Congress.

If Senate Republicans succeed in their filibuster against gun background checks — which are supported by 90 percent of voters and would prevent those on terror watch lists from getting guns to mass murder our children — it will be one more dagger in the heart of the discredited Republican brand that may well bring a rule change in the Senate that is long overdue.

The great curse of Republican politics, and the great reason that Democrats have won so many national elections in the last decade, is that GOP politics is now an arms race among extremists who drive each other and drive the GOP further outside mainstream America.

The word is out. I got calls from reporters about it all weekend: CNN is going to bring back "Crossfire."

Everybody wants to know: Do I think that’s a good idea or not? As a former co-host of "Crossfire," from 1996-2002, here’s my answer: That depends on which "Crossfire" you’re talking about, the real "Crossfire" or the “kiddie” version.

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?” — Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957

I’m not sure why it hasn’t caught on yet, since revolutionaries like Ron Paul have gone from outlander to center-stage hero, that an original Irish outlaw like Whitey Bolger did not claim sovereignty for South Boston.

Truth is, Whitey was motivated by a sense of tribal Southie. He could be seen as a political operative gone amok and without a plan or following. His anger is pure. But suppose Whitey had called for a separate state back then: Southie as the 51st state, or better yet, an independent entity like a redneck Switzerland, using the Rumsfeld/Kerry model.