Back in 2007, President Bush described his future after the White House. "I'll give some speeches," he said, "just to replenish the ol' coffers." As the Dallas Morning News revealed Thursday, Bush will collect his first speaking fees on March 17 at an invitation-only event in Calgary, Alberta. As it turns out, it is altogether […]

Three months after Barack Obama praised Abraham Lincoln in his victory night speech in Chicago, the first African-American President is celebrating the 200th birthday of the first Republican at several events this week. But across the Republican Party's last remaining bastion in the South, the AP reported on Tuesday, the Lincoln bicentennial is being marked […]

Plugging his new book The Gamble on the Iraq surge, the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks offers a jaw-dropping account of the critical decision to pay off Sunni insurgents. Contrary to George W. Bush's "decider" myth, it was David Petraeus who simply informed the President of that defining change in tactics the General implemented on his […]

The Senate's passage Tuesday of the economic recovery package followed a now-familiar 30 year pattern. The Democratic President Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him in 1993, faced a monolithic wall of GOP opposition to his economic program. But Republicans Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George W. Bush 20 years later enjoyed substantial Democratic support […]

As recounted in the Los Angeles Times today, Karl Rove last week laughably claimed of the Bush White House, "we didn't leak." Of course, Valerie Plame, the covert CIA operative outed by the administration over its bogus claim that Iraq sought yellowcake in Niger, can attest to Rove's lie. As it turns out, Team Bush […]

What do Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin have in common? As it turns out, two centuries after their shared February 12th birthdays and on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's theory, today's Republican Party largely rejects the achievements of each. Of course, from basic science and global warming to economics 101, the GOP's […]

As the American auto industry teetered on the brink of collapse in December, Vice President Dick Cheney beseeched his GOP allies in Congress to back an aid package, warning, "If we don't do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever." Now as they seek to obstruct President Obama's recovery program […]

As CQ Politics first reported yesterday, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) leaked word of his delegation's secret trip to Iraq. Hoekstra, who in 2006 decried "unauthorized disclosures of classified information [which] only help terrorists and our enemies - and put American lives at risk," used Twitter to inadvertently announce the presence of […]

As I noted earlier, the Senate has apparently reached a $780 billion compromise stimulus package after supposed moderates amputated over $100 billion in funding for health care, education and other vital initiatives. While many of my liberal allies disagree with my assessment that President Obama got rolled by bringing a knife to a gun fight […]

As President Obama finally starts to fight for his economic stimulus bill, roadblock Republicans in the Senate continue to decry the price tag. While John Thune (R-SD) described how many times $1 trillion worth of $100 bills would circle the earth, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proclaimed "Americans can't afford a trillion-dollar mistake." Of course, […]