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A Look Ahead at Congress: The Tasks Syria Pushed Onto the Back Burner
Congress already had a full fall schedule to tackle after summer recess—and then the Syria question hijacked the agenda. TIME’s Alex Altman previews the string of domestic bills and battles Congress...
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Senator Tim Kaine Is Officially the “Best Speller in the United States”
The spelling competition starts in the video above around the 14:40 mark. Kaine’s moment of glory is at roughly 1:46:00. On Wednesday night, the National Press Club hosted the event of a century: a...
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The Audacity of Hype: Feds, States Fight Fake E-tail Reviews
The New York Attorney General’s office announced Monday that 19 businesses have agreed to pay more than $350,000 in total fines after being accused of forging or selling glowing reviews. Those settling...
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Septaper Surprise!: 20 Wonky Financial Slang Terms You Probably Didn’t Know
Slang, linguist Jonathan Lighter once wrote, is a way to convey an insider’s wry appraisal, something to boost a slangster’s ego by showing familiarity with concepts that bemuse others. That...
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Explaining the Shutdown to Your Kids
Hey kids, we know all this talk about the government shutting down is confusing. We’re here to help explain what’s going on. You’ve probably seen all kinds of families — your own family or a friend’s...
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Why So Many Groups Are Making Money On The Government Shutdown
When it comes to what’s good for the United States, Obama said in a recent speech, he will not negotiate. But his grassroots non-profit will use the prospect of a government shutdown as a fundraising...
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Read All About It: How the Country’s Papers Covered the Shutdown
On October 1, 2013, many newspapers from around the country led with simple headlines in big, black capital letters: GRIDLOCKED. SHUTDOWN. CLOSED. Other leading stories were slightly more poetic: OUT...
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Obama Asks Celebs to Tweet About Obamacare
The Obama administration hasn’t just embraced social media — they’re in the middle of giving it a big, long bear hug. The president’s outreach team took to Facebook and Twitter to fight (and win) their...
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Obama, Congress: America’s Veterans Have Something to Say to You
Busloads of veterans who fought in Vietnam and Korea and World War II arrived in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to tour memorials dedicated to their service. There was just one problem: Due to the...
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8 Essential Shutdown Words You Need to Know
This week editors at Merriam Webster noticed an enormous spike in “look-ups” for one particular word: furlough. For the thousands of people who want to know what in the Sam Hill that term means and for...
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Empty Hotel Rooms and Canceled Shows: How the Shutdown Damages D.C.
Washington, D.C.’s tourism office is having a rough week. Between dealing with disappointed visitors and canceled trips, promoters are busy trying to convince the public that there’s still plenty to do...
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The 9%: Congress’s Approval Rating Hits the Single Digits
On Tuesday, Gallup announced that Congress had reached a new low, winning the approval of just 9% of the American public. This breaks Congress’s record nadir from last year, when the amount of...
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Sarah Palin’s New Book About the “War on Christmas,” As a Recipe
Sarah Palin ends her new book, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas, with a collection of family recipes—starting with Christmoose Chili. They are the capstone of a 200-page...
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Test How Well You Know Some Of The Most Famous Obama Quotes
For 150 years, publisher Little, Brown and Company has been churning out editions of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, a standard for every American library that’s full of Wilde’s witticisms and pithy...
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The Worst Writing In the Federal Government Gets Failing Grade
By law, government agencies are supposed to communicate with the public in plain language, facilitating democracy with a clear, conversational tongue. But two years after the Plain Writing Act went...
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Why Pundits Shouldn’t Read Too Much Into Chris Christie’s Pronouns
In the first lines of his public apology about the traffic scandal imperiling his political future, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie referenced himself repeatedly. Arranged as a first-person poem, those...
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State of the Union: 14 Things Members of Congress Did On Social Media
As members of Congress listened to Obama make his speech, they did much more than clap or pointedly hold their applause. They poured a deluge of tweets and Vines and Instagram photos onto the Internet,...
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Study: Liberals Booze More Than Conservatives
If the Democrats want to change their slogan from “the party of inclusion” to “the party of cocktails!”, there’s research that will back them up. A new study from the Journal of Wine Economics shows...
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These Are the Words Obama Loves, and the Ones He Avoids
In the days leading up to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, members of Congress and politicos flooded the airwaves with predictions about what the president would say and...
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Lawmakers Push Obama to Soften Marijuana Rules
More than a dozen members of Congress called on President Barack Obama on Wednesday to remove marijuana from the federal government’s list of hard drugs, seizing upon his own comments in a recent...
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