The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read

February 10, 4:25 PM ET

| By Michael Hastings

Earlier this week, the New York Times’ Scott Shane published a bombshell piece about Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, a 17-year Army veteran recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan. According to the Times, the 48-year-old Davis had written an 84-page unclassified report, as well as a classified report, offering his assessment of the decade-long war. That assessment is essentially that the war has been a disaster and the military's top brass has not leveled with the American public about just how badly it’s been going. "How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?" Davis boldly asks in an article summarizing his views in The Armed Forces Journal.

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Why the Foreclosure Deal May Not Be So Hot After All

February 9, 12:58 PM ET

| By Matt Taibbi

It's too easy on the banks and not generous enough to homeowners, among other problems.

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Romney Gets Rick Rolled

February 8, 3:11 AM ET

| By Tim Dickinson

Santorum flattens the GOP Frontrunner in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. Who saw that coming?

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Why It's Time to Start Pushing for a Minimum Wage Hike

February 7, 5:20 PM ET

| By Jared Bernstein

Conservative doctrine says you help the middle class by bequeathing deep goody bags to the top – it’s called "trickle down," and it doesn’t work. What does work? The national minimum wage.

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Ronald Reagan: Welfare Queen of Montana (or: Tax Tips for Mitt Romney)

February 7, 12:55 PM ET

| By Rick Perlstein

Like the former president, Mitt is a tax evasion pro. Unlike him, he can't seem to make the story go away.

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Obama on the Upswing

February 6, 3:17 PM ET

| By Lauren Lipsay

Good news for President Obama: A new Washington Post-ABC News poll has him leading presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, 51-45 percent, in a hypothetical general electi... | More »

Jon Stewart on Trump's Romney Endorsement

February 3, 1:56 PM ET

| By Julian Brookes

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart hailed gazillionaire cheeseball Donald Trump's decision to endorse Mitt Romney for president. In these divided times, noted Stewart, it's some comfort to know that two Ivy-League educated son's of megarich families can find common ground – despite the fact that one of them, Trump, is a billionaire and the other merely a multi-multi-millionaire.

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The Komen Foundation Makes a U-Turn on Planned Parenthood Funding

February 3, 1:43 PM ET

| By Julian Brookes

Leading breast-cancer charity the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, which earlier this week drew a ferocious backlash when it announced it was pulling funding for Planned Parenthood, on the grounds that the family planning organization was under congressional investigation, released a statement on Friday revising its funding policy: "We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives," the statement says. "The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood." There remains some doubt over whether PP's funding will be fully restored, but anything short of that is sure to cast doubt upon Komen's commitment "to saving women's lives." This and other unexpected news in today's installment of our Daily Threat Assessment photo gallery.

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What the New Jobs Report Means

February 3, 12:34 PM ET

| By Jared Bernstein

Today’s employment report shows that we’re seeing some steady improvement in the thing people care most about: JOBS. But we're not out of the woods yet.

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Mitt's Policies Worse Than His Gaffes, More

February 2, 3:15 PM ET

| By Lauren Lipsay

Mitt Romney's problem isn't so much that he's gaffe-prone. It's more that his verbal slips give real insight into how terrible is policies would be.

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Chris Rock Happy to Pay Higher Taxes

February 2, 1:33 PM ET

| By Julian Brookes

The comedian, who's worth an estimated $70 million, told the Associated Press Wednesday, "I look at it this way: I can pay higher taxes and people can have jobs or I can pay lower taxes and I have my kids' teacher asking me for a loan because she's going to lose her house, which is true." This and other news (some good, some bad) in the latest installment of our Daily Threat Assessment photo gallery.

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Jon Stewart on Mitt's 'Very Poor' Gaffe

February 2, 11:03 AM ET

| By Lauren Lipsay

Daily Show host Jon Stewart was shocked – shocked! – by Mitt Romney's latest gaffe – saying, during an interview on CNN, that he's "not concerned about the very poor," because they can fall back on our nation's wonderful social safety net. Stewart had a spot-on analogy: "It's like a doctor saying, 'I'm not concerned about the very healthy, because they're fine, or the very sick because, you know, morphine.'" To try to make sense of "Romney's apparent conflation of the very rich and very poor," Stewart invited correspondents Jason Jones and John Oliver to each represent one of the two classes.

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