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," […]

Republicans hoping to win over Jewish voters apparently believe that Israel's war in Gaza is, well, a godsend. Pointing to polling that shows that Democrats (31 percent) are less likely than Republicans (65 percent) to see the carnage in Gaza as justified, GOP advocates like former Bush administration official Noam Neusner claim "that is going […]

With their 225 votes to sue President Obama, House Republicans provided one of the most ironic spectacles in recent U.S. political history. After waves of op-eds by Speaker John Boehner (here and here) and his legal puppet master David Rivkin (here and here) declared Obama guilty of almost every sin in the calendar, the House […]

Five years ago, I described Dick Cheney's strident defense of detainee torture as a strategy of "mutual assured destruction." The former Vice President's gambit was a simple one. In 2009, Cheney dared President Obama to either prosecute him and other Bush administration officials over their program of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (in which case massive Republican […]

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the target of the latest right-wing slander du jour. In an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley, Pelosi blamed Hamas for initiating the current war in Gaza and reiterated U.S. support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. As to why Hamas sponsor Qatar was included in truce negotiations, the number one […]

In their controversial 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt proposed a dramatic change in American financial aid for Israel currently amounting to $3 billion annually. "It is time to treat Israel like a normal country," they argued, "and make U.S. aid conditional on an end to […]

Once upon a time, Democrats were the party of slavery, states' rights, secession and nullification. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the solid Democratic south sought the "Redemption" of the former Confederate States with the reestablishment of white supremacy through violence and voter suppression. For a hundred years, the architects and enforcers of Jim Crow's […]

With the overlapping crises in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, Republicans trying to pin the blame on President Obama are singing the same sound bite in unison. As Mitt Romney put it earlier this year: Our esteem around the world has fallen. I can't think of a major country, it's hard to think of […]

Earlier this week, two federal appeals courts reached opposite conclusions as to whether Congress intended for the Affordable Care Act to provide health insurance subsidies to Americans purchasing coverage through both state and federally-run exchanges. While Romneycare architect and Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber seemed to create some confusion with remarks from 2012, for the drafters […]