OxyContin’s makers delayed the reckoning for their role in the opioid crisis by funding think tanks, placing friendly experts on leading outlets, and deterring or challenging negative coverage. Read more»

Republican candidates wagered that big bucks from outside political groups could overcome their own fundraising shortfalls ahead of the 2014 midterm elections. They were right. Last Tuesday night, Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate for the first time in eight years. Read more»

Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn took a page from Democrats when she wrongly claimed that “the White House [is] paying women 88 cents for every dollar that a guy earns in comparable positions.” That’s not a comparison of “comparable positions.” Read more»

Michigan Rep. Fred Upton exaggerated the impact of the Affordable Care Act when he claimed that “perhaps as many as 80 to 90 million Americans with employer-based health care are going to lose their plans” by late this year. Upton doesn’t mean that those millions of Americans would no longer have health insurance through their employers. And these workers won’t be receiving cancellation notices in the mail. Instead, he’s talking about health plans losing grandfathered status. Read more»

Is Islamic terror lapping at America's shores? Roger Noriega thinks so. Noriega, a Kansas native and Republican diehard, is living proof that American politics affords its sons a second chance, maybe even a third. Read more»

No matter how many times people debunk the notion that government policy created the housing bubble, it doesn't die. Now, we are having another argument about whether the government is creating a new housing disaster for taxpayers. The target this time: the Federal Housing Administration. Read more»

Mitt Romney falsely claims in a series of TV ads that President Obama “will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000.” That’s nonsense. The ads cite a conservative group’s study, but even the group itself doesn’t say Obama will raise taxes on middle-income taxpayers. Read more»

The best course of action for Democrats is to sit back and let Republicans wound their own. Increasingly, the GOP nominating process is serving Democrats—peeling back the layers of obfuscation and exposing the weaknesses and inadequacies of its likely nominees. Read more» 2

The scandal facing the Murdoch empire that has dominated media news has certainly been riveting. But has it taught us anything we didn't already know? Read more»

The battle lines for the most contentious defense budget process in decades are already being drawn. The first shots have been fired, with various deficit commissions issuing proposals for significant cuts in spending. Watch for parochial political interests and partisan preferences to play their part. Read more»

As Saturday's graduation approaches at UA, about half the university's Hispanic students won't make it to their degrees: that's nearly 10 percent lower than white students. Read more»