As the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 powers over Tehran's nuclear program near their end, those dedicated to killing a deal potential deal are out in force. The cable news networks are littered with TV ads by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a group funded in large part by the right-wing billionaire Sheldon […]

So it's come to this. In the wake of Donald Trump's description of Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, remarks that have divided the GOP presidential field, the "severely conservative" former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney declared, "I think he made a severe error in saying what he did about Mexican-Americans." And for that, Bernie […]

In the wake of the Charleston massacre, Americans are debating when, where and whether states, businesses and individuals should display the Confederate flag. But as a recent CNN/ORC poll suggests, the debate we are having is the wrong one. Even after neo-confederate terrorist Dylann Roof slaughtered 9 in the cradle of secession, 57 percent of […]

As the Confederate flag is coming down, calls for states to nullify federal laws are going up. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton advised county clerks, magistrates and justices of the peace they may opt-out of performing same-sex marriages the United States Supreme Court legalized nationwide on Friday. As it turns out, Paxton isn't just […]

From its inception, America's history has often been the product of the changing balance between compelling but conflicting national ideals. The federal versus the state, "rugged individualism" versus collective action for the public good, the separation of church and state, and isolationism versus crusading globalism are just some of the pendulum swings that have defined--and […]

If nothing else, the Republican Party is an irony producing machine. In the very week that some GOP leaders reversed course on displaying the Confederate battle flag in the wake of the Charleston slaughter, the party's best and brightest protested that the Supreme Court's decision in the King v. Burwell was its "worst since Dred […]

If integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching, opportunism is doing so only under the spotlight. And when it comes to South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, much of the American media is confusing the two. Reading Politico or the Washington Post's resident conventional wisdom regurgitator Chris Cillizza, you'd never know candidate […]

As he accepted Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April 1865, Union General Ulysses S. Grant was neither jubilant nor boastful. "I felt sad and depressed at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause," Grant later recalled, "though their cause was, […]

For all of the disputes and controversies over the Affordable Care Act, one thing has been consistent. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has repeatedly forecast that Obamacare would reduce the national debt. Nevertheless, when CBO told Congress in July 2012 that a repeal of Obamacare would raise the national debt by $109 billion over […]