Last night's airing of the PBS Frontline documentary "Cheney's Law" could not have come at a more fitting time. As Congress begins debate on a new FISA bill and the issue of immunity for telecommunications firms, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey begins confirmation hearings in the Senate. But as Frontline reminded us last night, the […]

When former White House press secretary Tony Snow announced his resignation in August, he claimed his departure was motivated by his need for "dough." Appearing on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday night, it turns out Snow is content to shill for President Bush for free. Rejecting the assertion that Bush was far from […]

In a double-edged sword for the Bush administration, Monday's Washington Post reports that the Pentagon believes it has dealt "devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months." But with the good news surrounding Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), responsible for only a small fraction of the attacks against U.S. forces and […]

On the campaign trail in Michigan on Saturday, GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney announced his support for more seasonal visas for foreign workers laboring in tourism, agriculture and other sectors of the economy. As well he should. After all, Romney routinely hired illegal aliens to do the landscaping for his tony Boston area home. […]

One day after Vladimir Putin scolded Secretary of State Condi Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates over the administration's plans for a European missile defense system, Rice fired back at the Russian president. But before lecturing Putin on his return to authoritarianism in Russia, Rice should have first checked with her boss President Bush about […]

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore on Friday predictably produced flashbacks to the 2000 election fiasco, complete with the usual conservative venom and liberal wistfulness. But seemingly lost in the tales of the parallel lives of George W. Bush and Al Gore are their sharply contrasting views towards their respective legacies. […]

Just days after his comical "sit down with your attorneys" gaffe over military action against Iran, Mitt Romney has unveiled a new tough-on-terrorism ad. But taking a tough line against Iran's development of nuclear technology, Romney once again returned to his tried and untrue formula of conflating all Muslims into a single unified threat to […]

Predictably, the conservative chattering class and its amen corner in the right-wing blogosphere are apoplectic about the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore. But their rage and angst about the Nobel Committee's "politicized awards" for "mass exaggerators" and "deceptive rhetoric" isn't merely a function of the inconvenient truth of the success of Gore's global […]

Just one week after the New York Times revealed the existence of secret Bush administration memos condoning an uninterrupted policy of detainee torture by the CIA, it appears to be payback time. In a highly unusual move, CIA Director Michael Hayden has ordered an investigation into the agency's watchdog office itself, led by Inspector General […]

While Republican politicians, conservative commentators and the right-wing blogosphere continued their jihad against the private school scholarship of 12 year old S-CHIP beneficiary Graeme Frost, the Supreme Court Wednesday quietly handed the son of multimillionaire former Viacom CEO Tom Freston private school tuition courtesy of New York taxpayers. Frost, as you'll recall, is the Maryland […]