Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens asks why the press is ignoring Mike Huckabee's shocking statement about the Confederate flag. While the media were quick to highlight Huckabee's shameless pandering to South Carolina's far right, the press generally preferred to avoid any discussion of Huckabee's blatantly racist appeal to the Palmetto State's antebellum boosters. Sadly, for […]

On this celebration of Martin Luther King Day, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney showed once again that he is completely out of his element when it comes to matters of race and ethnicity. First, Romney offered his own rendition of "Who Let the Dogs Out" to a group of African-Americans in Jacksonville. Then that same […]

In the wake of his New Hampshire and South Carolina victories, the once-and-future GOP frontrunner John McCain is enjoying a charmed life when it comes to the press. Just days after John King's puff piece on CNN, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz offered a glowing review of McCain's accessibility to the press. But as he […]

With the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina Republican primary now history, it is once again time for the post-mortem. From the blatantly obvious to the possibly outlandish, here are five observations from Saturday's presidential primary action. 1. The Incredible Shrinking Legacy of Bill Clinton On Friday, I worried that Bill Clinton's descent into attack […]

With John McCain's return to the front of the Republican pack, the conservative Weekly Standard is reexamining the Arizona's vices and virtues. But while Dean Barnett bemoans McCain's "uncanny ability to drive virtually all conservatives nuts," Adam White and Kevin White praise McCain's record on the confirmation of right-wing judges. Not because McCain's position on […]

Perhaps the only development more disappointing than the injection of racial politics into the Democratic primary process has been the descent of Bill Clinton into attack dog politics. It seems that with each passing day, the still very popular former President sacrifices his good name - and the huge reservoir of good will he enjoys […]

The latest polls from South Carolina show former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is within striking distance of John McCain in the Palmetto State's GOP primary on Saturday. A win there by Huckabee could upend the conventional wisdom about the fractured yet wide-open Republican race. After Saturday, the GOP contest could be less about picking the […]

Once again demonstrating its gift for fiction, the Wall Street Journal offered a hilariously pathetic treatise on the hate-mongering and intolerance of liberals. Just three weeks after Bruce Bartlett took to the Journal's opinion pages to insist that Americans overlook the Republicans' racist present to instead focus on Democrats' racist past, Arthur C. Brooks today […]

Two breaking stories on Wednesday once again highlighted the Bush administration's unprecedented cloak of secrecy and its perpetual quest for plausible deniability. First, the White House acknowledged that it haphazardly recycled computer backup tapes, likely ensuring that crucial emails before October 2003 are lost forever. Then, Americans learned that the retiring CIA station chief in […]

The early results from Michigan are in and it appears that self-proclaimed favorite son Mitt Romney has survived to fight another day. A quick glance at the Republican exit poll suggests that the dismal wintry weather and the aborted Democratic primary kept independents at home, much to the dismay of John McCain. (Independents were only […]