These things happened in the United States this year. An unarmed man was killed by police, supposedly for stealing some cigars. Those who took to the streets simply seeking truth, among them some looters, were denounced by some conservatives and an entire news network as "thugs" and "lynch mobs." Just months earlier, a Nevada tax […]

With the word that NBC correspondent Chuck Todd will replace David Gregory as the host of the withered carcass that is Meet the Press, the chattering classes left and right are offering their advice on reanimating the corpse of the once-proud Sunday talk show. Ultimately, though, there is only piece of guidance for the Beltway's […]

"Israel has no better friend than the U.S.," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed to a joint session of Congress in 2011, "and the U.S. has no better friend than Israel." As recent events have once again confirmed, Bibi is only half-right. As the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, Netanyahu's government not only worked around the […]

Over just the last few weeks, three unarmed African-American men have been killed by police. After the Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri, President Obama urged all Americans to "remember this young man through reflection and understanding" and to "comfort each other and talk with one another in a way that heals, not […]

Watching Rick Perry 2.0 get Biblical on his audience this weekend in Iowa has some conservatives seeing starbursts again. "Dressed all in black, Governor Rick Perry took the podium at the Family Leadership Summit and quoted the book of Isaiah," Breitbart News gushed. "Here am I, send me!" he said. Now, if this riff sounds […]

When the forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) overran Mosul and Tikrit two months ago, I laid out 10 Lessons from Bush's Fiasco in Iraq. But like Spinal Tap, I should have gone to 11. I forgot to include one additional moral from Mesopotamia: John McCain got it all horribly wrong. […]

Politico practices journalism in much the same way that bricks float.* For years, its mission to "win the morning" has often come at the expense of the truth. But with Katie Glueck's piece on Iraq titled "Neocons to Obama: No Half-Measures," the publication Charles Pierce rightly mocks as "Tiger Beat on the Potomac" has reached […]

Conservatives have a new sound bite. On behalf of all Americans, they are offended by the sound of President Obama's sound bites. (At times, I am too. After all, if "we tortured some folks," then we have a legal and moral responsibility to prosecute some folks.) Rich Lowry, taking a break from seeing starbursts from […]

Better late than never, the New York Times this week announced it would finally use the term "torture" to refer to the set of Bush administration practices euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques." But in ending one disservice to its readers, Times executive editor Dean Baquet performed another. By now proclaiming "the debate is […]

Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, is a fixture on American television screens and op-ed pages. His defense of the Netanyahu government and its military campaign in Gaza is full throated. Just 8 days after proclaiming in the Washington Post that "to guarantee peace, this war must be given a chance," […]