Among the least surprising political developments this week is the looming resignation of Bush Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson. That news comes in the wake of calls from Democratic Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) for Jackson to step down over charges of cronyism in public housing deals in Philadelphia. […]

Events on the ground in Iraq continue to defy the Bush's administration's ongoing misrepresentation of the Iranian threat there. Just one day after Republican Senator Lindsay Graham wrongly claimed Iran was backing just one of the three Shiite forces in Basra comes word that Tehran brokered a deal aimed at halting the carnage there. As […]

On Sunday, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) showed once again that President Bush, John McCain and their conservative amen corner can't tell the players in Iraq even with a scorecard. Even as Graham proclaimed of the fighting in Basra, "the militias that we are fighting are backed by Iran," President Bush and Vice President Bush continue […]

In the Washington Post today ("Disloyalty That Merits An Insult"), Clinton adviser James Carville gave his best Dana Perino impersonation. Defend his hyperbolic denunciation of surprise Obama endorser Bill Richardson, Carville mirrored Perino's famous "once a Bushie, always a Bushie" code of political ethics. By proclaiming loyalty a cardinal virtue above all others, James Carville […]

George W. Bush is suffering from another severe case of premature Iraq elation. That's the inescapable diagnosis after a week which featured sunny statements from the President even as Baghdad and Basra descended into chaos. On last week's fifth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, President Bush was blissfully unaware of the tumultuous three-way Shiite […]

In December 2005, New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau broke the shocking story of the Bush administration's program of illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA. Now, in a new book due out next week, Lichtblau details the White House's 13-month effort to block the Times' revelations of its lawlessness. And to be […]

News that Mitt Romney has joined John McCain on the campaign trail is fueling speculation that the Arizona Senator may tap his defeated rival for the Republican VP slot. Which would make perfect sense. Back by the Bush braintrust and conservative chattering classes, Romney claims to know something about the economy, a topic on which […]

As much as anything else, presidential campaigns are won and lost by the media narratives that rightly or wrongly come to define a candidate. In the case of Repubican nominee John McCain, the seemingly unshakable narrative of the political "maverick" could not be further off the mark. At almost every turn, McCain in his eternal […]

Politics, they say, produces strange bedfellows. After Hillary Clinton's visit with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review editorial board today, truer words were never spoken. That Senator Clinton chose that of all venues to weigh in on Barack Obama's pastor controversy would have been unthinkable in the years past. After all, the Tribune Review is owned by […]

In another unfortunate case of premature Iraq elation, the Wall Street Journal last week celebrated the decline and fall of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr. Echoing the "bring 'em on" taunt of their former boss, ex-Bush advisers Dan Senor and Roman Martinez triumphantly asked "Whatever Happened to Moqtada?" But as the renewed turmoil in Baghdad […]