A new Gallup poll revealed that so far, the extremely popular President Obama has exceeded Americans' high expectations for him. But while I have no argument with the high marks he received for his handling of foreign policy and the economic recovery, Obama's first 100 days have at times resembled the tale of King Solomon. […]

Dating back to at least the presidency of George H.W. Bush, conservative defenders of the Republican faith have turned to the "criminalizing politics" evasion when confronted with the lawlessness and wrong-doing of their leaders. And so it is once again with the fierce debate regarding the potential prosecution of the architects of the Bush administration's […]

Coming just days after the Obama administration released the OLC memos which justified the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture, a 200 page Senate Armed Services Committee report is producing a new wave of shocking revelations. As it turns out, intelligence and military officials were preparing the brutal interrogation program eight months before its approval […]

During one of the more memorable episodes of Seinfeld, George Costanza helps Jerry prepare for a lie detector test by advising, "it's not a lie if you believe it." And so it is with Republican defenders of the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture. As it turns out, Marc Thiessen, David Rivkin, Peggy Noonan, Michael […]

That Republicans would be outraged over President Obama's handshake with the buffoonish Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was predictable in much the same way one can forecast the daily setting of the sun. But while Obama brushed off the significance of the brief encounter at the Summit of the Americas, Nevada Senator John Ensign deemed "irresponsible" […]

Among the more comic moments of last week's right-wing tea-bagging extravaganza was the plea from former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer to save the rich. But even as Fleischer wrongly fretted that "their burden keeps getting heavier," new data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed the income gap between rich and poor tripled between […]

In 1993, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously warned that American society was "defining deviancy down." To the approval of conservatives, Moynihan cautioned that when it came to crime, family breakdown and other social pathologies, "we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the 'normal' level […]

As the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Politico reveal, the apologists for George W. Bush's regime of detainee torture are circling the wagons. While one anonymous Bush official claimed the Obama's release of the torture memos "laid it all out for our enemies," former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an op-ed written with […]

During his confirmation hearings in January, Attorney General Eric Holder declared "waterboarding is torture." But in language eerily reminiscent of the administration Barack Obama was to replace, Holder assured Republican advocates of torture, "we don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist" with the outgoing Bush White House. Now with word that the Justice […]

Back in February 2006, Texas Senator John Cornyn led Congressional Republicans with his famous defense of President Bush's regime of illicit NSA domestic surveillance, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead." Now, as the New York Times revealed today, one of those illegal targeted was apparently one of Cornyn's Capitol Hill colleagues. […]