I drew a version of this one in 2006, anticipating the 2010 underwear bomb. With a slight caption revision, it’s as good today as it was then.  As Mark Twain once observed, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Congress, as usual, is paralyzed. It can’t figure out how to extend the low-cost student loan program. Without Congressional action, the interest rate will double, from 3.4 percent to 6.8, on July 1. The cost of extending the program for a year is estimated to be $6 billion. With the economy still weak and with [...]

I’ve grown to hate presidential campaigns. No matter what either candidate does, the other guy, and the  echo chamber of his supporters in Congress and the media, will attack it. Obama may be guilty of over-celebrating the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, but one has to ask how the Republicans would be [...]

The big tech companies are spending billions to stockpile patents. Earlier this month Microsoft paid more than $1 million each for 925 AOL patents, Microsoft then sold 650 of them to Facebook for $550 million. Google and Apple have aggressively hoarded patents, as well. The reason? Yes, these companies still create amazing new products, but [...]

As usual, this completely dysfunctional Congress can’t seem to find the fix for Social Security. The trust fund is now estimated to run out of money in 2033, three years earlier than previously anticipated. After that, taxes will cover only about 75 percent of promised benefits. It’s still not all that hard to fix it. [...]

Another Titanic cartoon. Hey, we only get the centennial of the sinking once. The Ryan budget, now the official budget of the Republican Party and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, is certainly bold. It’s also radical. Over time, it would essentially limit the federal government’s spending to defense, Medicare and Social Security, and it would drastically [...]

  I’m a bit late with tis one, but the issues raised by the Trayvon Martin shooting aren’t going away any time soon. This country seems forever trapped in the surreal nexus of race, guns and fear that ended Martin’s life. At one point in the frenzied national discussion that followed, the part the hoodie [...]

Another one about the Supreme Court’s likely decision, unthinkable just a few months ago. If the Court throws this back to Congress, it may be another generation before Americans can enjoy the health care security that every other industrialized democracy enjoys. In the meantime, more millions will be unable to afford or even find insurance, [...]

The Supremes seem poised to rule against the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate that everyone buy health insurance. Big surprise there, from a radically right-wing activist court, with the five justice majority willing willing to twist themselves into pretzels to achieve the desired outcome. What they will leave is a broken  health care system that’s [...]

This cartoon will have the same strong impact all my previous 500 or so gun cartoons have–none. Pushed hard by the gun-worshiping fundamentalists of the NRA, state legislatures have fallen all over themselves in a rush to adopt ever crazier laws legalizing guns everywhere you can think of–in college campuses, in shopping malls, in courtrooms, [...]