With his plea deal yesterday on charges of running a dog fighting operation, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick likely brought his NFL career to an end. But Vick's next calling awaits him as soon as he is released from prison. Michael Vick, it would seem, is supremely qualified to be a conservative pundit. Far from […]

President Bush has never been shy about falsely linking the 9/11 attacks to his war in Iraq. Now, the Bush White House apparently is planning to reach a new low in symbolic cynicism when it comes to selling its Baghdad debacle. General David Petraeus will deliver his much anticipated Iraq surge progress report on September […]

In the wake of the controversial O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed endorsing the progress of the surge in Iraq, the liberal blogosphere has been awash in commentary about the mainstream media's narrow reliance on the pro-surge viewpoints of "very serious people" constituting the "foreign policy clerisy." As it turns out, not so much. A new joint report from […]

Among the more tragi-comic aspects of the departure of Karl Rove is the media's renewed interest in the Bush Doctrine and its three tenets of no safe havens for terrorists, preventive war and democracy promotion. Last Monday, Rove claimed that the Bush Doctrine would live on and be the President's legacy. And this morning, the […]

As the category 4 Hurricane Dean barrels towards his home state of Texas, President Bush is trying to "get out front" of the storm's potentially devastating impact. Their state already declared a disaster area, the Lone Star State will not only benefit from the lessons of Katrina; it looks like Texans may get the "Florida […]

In 1997, Seinfeld introduced Americans to the "unvitation." The unvitation enables the cynical person to seemingly satisfy the demands of social etiquette by extending an invitation to an event or gathering which they know the recipient will - or must - reject. As we fast forward to 2007, Americans are witnessing Republicans perfect a similar […]

These are just some of the things that made me barking mad this week: Despite the pompous claim by Rudy Giuliani that he was at Ground Zero "as often, if not more, than most of the workers," a review of his mayoral archive showed he was at the Word Trade Center site only 29 hours […]

Media reaction to the recent foreign policy pronouncements of Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani provides a case study in double-standards. While Obama received a hellstorm of criticism for his statements on attacking Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan and the use of nuclear weapons, the mainstream media has been essentially silent on the blatantly bizarre and […]

Among today's least surprising and most disturbing developments is the revelation from the Los Angeles Times that the Bush White House will author the much anticipated September 15 surge progress report for General David Petraeus. Despite President Bush's frequent claims along the lines of "I'm going to wait for David to come back - David […]

In the wake of the resignation of Karl Rove, most media post-mortems of the architect of the Bush presidency describe his legacy as one of ultimate failure. That is, in the end Karl Rove fell short of his goal to secure a permanent Republican majority monopolizing all three branches of government for the next generation. […]