THE INK & STEEL Uncommon Sense for the Common Man
Political Commentary

Fair and Balanced™: The Most Trusted Name in Entertainment

It paid the largest known media defamation settlement in American history for airing claims its own stars privately called crazy. It won another lawsuit by arguing that no reasonable viewer expects facts from its biggest show. And now two dozen of its personalities run the federal government. At what point are we allowed to stop calling it news?

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More From the Desk

Political Commentary

We Can Afford Everything but You

We're told universal healthcare is a fantasy the country can't afford — right after conjuring a $300 billion fund to rebuild the nation we just bombed and $14 million to paint a reflecting pool that promptly turned green. Here's the math they'd rather you never do.

· #Universal Healthcare
Political Commentary

Unconditional Surrender: He Delivered One — Ours

He promised an unconditional surrender from Iran, and — credit where it's due — he delivered one. There's just one glass-shard-in-your-heel detail: the party doing the surrendering is us. A field guide to losing while spiking the football.

· #Donald Trump
Political Commentary

The President's Preferred Painkiller

Trading Tylenol for tinfoil. The President declared an autism link based not on peer-reviewed data but on a feeling he had that morning. Then scientists in Liverpool published the definitive, evidence-based rebuttal. A case study in governing by gut.

· #Donald Trump
Political Commentary

The Real Cost of 'Making America Great Again': Our Children's Lives

Another Friday, another school shooting — this time through the stained-glass windows of a Catholic school. In a sane world it would be a national crisis. In this term, it's a line item, and the official response is to dismantle the very policies that were finally working.

· #Donald Trump
Political Commentary

The Grand Unveiling of the Obvious: Why One Party Just Doesn't Get Science

It's a difference so fundamental it renders many conversations moot before they begin: one side asks 'what does the evidence say?' and the other asks 'what feels right to me?' A field guide to the epistemic universe where pawns move diagonally just because you want them to.

· #Donald Trump
Political Commentary

The Ivory Tower, Trump's Wall: When Education Becomes a Bargaining Chip

Harvard, treated like a rogue state in need of sanctions. Blocking international students doesn't protect American jobs — it pushes the brightest minds into the welcoming arms of rival nations, and forfeits nearly $38 billion in the process. Isolationism dressed up as patriotism.

· #Donald Trump

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  • PolitiFact

    Pulitzer-winning, nonpartisan fact-checking from the Poynter Institute — every rating shows its receipts.

  • The Associated Press

    A nonprofit news cooperative and the wire other newsrooms quote: verified, plain, just the facts.

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    A global wire bound by the Trust Principles of independence, integrity, and freedom from bias.

  • NPR

    Nonprofit public media with rigorous editorial standards — and corrections made out in the open.