Republicans

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

SACRAMENTO - It seemed like a fairly good idea at the time - the idea of Abel Maldonado running for governor. He wasn't going to win. But neither would he be a Republican embarrassment. There was no Republican in sight with even a faint chance of beating Gov. Jerry Brown next year. Amend that. There was no credible challenger preparing to take on the Democratic incumbent, period. The moderate Maldonado, 45, from Santa Maria - a former mayor, legislator and lieutenant governor - seemed credible.

In 1986, lawmakers decided the problem of illegal immigration had to be dealt with. More than 3 million people were living in the United States after crossing the border illegally or overstaying their visas. A new law signed by President Ronald Reagan gave legal status and a path to citizenship to most of those unauthorized residents - helping many secure a slice of the American dream but also giving fuel to critics who sought to turn "amnesty" into a pejorative. Less than 30 years later, the number of immigrants living in the country illegally is thought to have nearly quadrupled, and the freighted baggage of amnesty looms over new efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws.

WASHINGTON - Republican opposition in many statehouses to expanding Medicaid next year under President Obama's healthcare law - opposition that could leave millions of the nation's poorest residents without insurance coverage - will likely widen the divide between the nation's healthiest and sickest states. With nearly every GOP-leaning state on track to reject an expansion of the government health plan for the poor, the healthcare law's goal of guaranteed insurance will become a reality next year mostly in traditionally liberal and moderate states.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

Republicans have become a devious party that believes if you cannot win by following fair rules, there is nothing wrong with rigging the game. To their constitutionally endorsed advantage in the Senate, they have added a manipulated advantage in the House of Representatives that some Republicans would like to leverage into an advantage in presidential elections. Let's take a look at how the political game board is set up: The population of California is significantly greater than the combined population of the 20 smallest states in the union, the majority of which are as red as California is blue.

The complaints of congressional Republicans that President Obama's inaugural address sent them no bouquets and love letters show a lot of gall, given the history of the last four years. Obama's inauguration speech in 2009 was crammed with language about bipartisan cooperation and ending the political rancor in Washington and what did he get for it? First, he got Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell's declaration that the paramount priority of his caucus was to make Obama a one-term president.

The Republican National Committee's Spring gathering is taking place this week at Loews Hollywood. That is not Hollywood, Fla., or Hollywood, S.C., or Hollywood, Ala. - all real towns in really red states - but Hollywood, Calif., the place where Sean Penn, Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, George Clooney and the rest of the entertainment industry's liberal horde earn their keep. Like Nixon going to China, the Republicans have entered hostile territory.

Republicans not only have to compete with the star power of Michelle Obama, it just may be that they have set a trap for themselves by making the central question of the 2012 presidential campaign, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" At their convention in Charlotte, N.C., this week, the Democrats, from the first lady on down, are responding to that question with some pretty sharp answers. Here's the most succinct one: "GM is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead. " It's a great bumper sticker line and has the added advantage of deeper resonance.

The "fiscal cliff" looms ahead and it is a solid bet that no one will come up with a deal in time to stop the country from careening off the edge. Nearly everyone claims they want to avoid the automatic tax increases and massive budget cuts that will start kicking in on Jan. 1, but few are ready to make the compromises necessary to make that happen. As expected, anti-tax purists in the House Republican Caucus have gotten in the way of Speaker John A. Boehner's attempts to come up with a fix for the fiscal cliff.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's nominee to lead the Energy Department won unanimous confirmation by the Senate on Thursday while two other Cabinet choices narrowly advanced out of committee, amid complaints from Democrats over Republican delaying tactics. Ernest J. Moniz, an MIT physics professor who becomes the new Energy secretary, is the fifth Cabinet appointment confirmed since Obama won a second term, and the first without any Republican dissent. By comparison, all but one of President George W. Bush's 11 initial second-term appointments were confirmed by the end of April, even though his party held no more Senate seats than Democrats control now. Republicans had delayed consideration of Thomas E. Perez, Obama's choice to lead the Labor Department, and Environmental Protection Agency nominee Gina McCarthy before Thursday's party-line committee votes to recommend them to the full Senate.

In requiring the U.S. Senate to confirm presidential appointments, the Constitution aims to ensure a second level of scrutiny of the qualifications of government officials. But Senate Republicans have hijacked the confirmation process, not only to thwart individual nominees but to undermine laws they don't agree with. If they continue in their obstructionism, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) should revisit the possibility of doing away with the filibuster for nominations. The most immediate test case involves the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that moderates disputes between labor and management.

WASHINGTON - The federal deficit is shrinking more quickly than expected, and the government's long-term debt has largely stabilized for the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday in a report that could strengthen the Obama administration's hand in the budget battles with congressional Republicans. The budget office continues to say the federal government faces a long-range budget problem - mostly caused by the costs of an aging population - but its new forecast pushes the crunch point for that problem off into a considerably more distant future: well after the 2020 presidential election.

WASHINGTON - Top career officials in the Internal Revenue Service withheld information from Congress for months about the tax agency's targeting of conservative organizations for extra scrutiny, according to documents released Monday as a controversy involving alleged political bias in tax enforcement gathered strength. Members of Congress called for firing the agency's acting commissioner, one of the senior officials involved, and President Obama said he would "not tolerate" any such abuse of power by the IRS. "If you've got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous; it's contrary to our traditions.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - If he runs for president, says Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), he wants to be considered on his own merits. But when he brought his fledgling campaign to Iowa this weekend, there was no escaping the double-edged legacy of the man he's almost always compared with - his father. Until recently, Ron Paul, the former Republican congressman from Texas, still largely overshadowed his son. Then came Sen. Paul's filibuster in March over the Obama administration's use of drones.

WASHINGTON - First came the letter-writing campaigns, then the protests at town hall meetings and now the television ads. The last several weeks in New Hampshire have had the feel of a heated electoral season - but the target of this siege, first-term Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, isn't on the ballot until 2016. Welcome to Round 2 in the battle over gun control. The first round ended last month, when a proposal to expand the background check system to cover most commercial gun sales fizzled in the Senate.

WASHINGTON - The immigration reform bill crafted by a bipartisan group of senators has deeply split the Republican minority even as lawmakers prepare to take the first votes on the proposal Thursday. Alabama's Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, a conservative former prosecutor with a courtly drawl, has emerged as the leading opponent of the bill. He is aiming at his GOP colleagues with unusual zeal, and calls out the architects of the bill as, essentially, dishonest. "Sen. Flake is wrong: It's not a 13-year path to citizenship or welfare," blared one recent missive from Sessions targeting Arizona's Republican senator, Jeff Flake, who helped draft the legislation.

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans boycotted a committee vote Thursday on President Obama's nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, drawing accusations of obstructionism from Democrats. Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said McCarthy had not adequately responded to their requests for information, so they didn't show up for the scheduled vote. They want more information on how the EPA makes decisions on new regulations, how it has used private email to conduct public business, and other transparency issues.

When President Obama told students in Mexico that without the support of U.S. Latinos he would not be president, he wasn't talking about the GOP's Ruben Barrales. But Barrales gets the message. He is the son of immigrants, and San Mateo County's first Latino supervisor. Mexico gave him its Ohtli medal, for his work on behalf of Mexican Americans. Once a Democrat, he went to work in the George W. Bush White House and ran San Diego's regional chamber of commerce. His principal task now, as head of GROW Elect , is cultivating Latino Republican elected officials in California, not exactly fertile soil for the GOP of late.