They were for it before they were against it. Current and would-be GOP members of Congress tweeted their praise for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl before deleting the evidence. Among others, Arizona Senator and failed 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain declared he would be "inclined to support" the very kind of prisoner exchange […]

In December 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lectured American troops worried about vital equipment shortages plaguing U.S. combat forces in Iraq. "You go to war with the army you have," Rumsfeld pontificated, "not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." That was a particularly galling statement for Rumsfeld of […]

And now for today's quiz: When is $10 billion greater than $310 billion? When Republicans control the House of Representatives. Yes, the American people got another lesson in GOP math this week when House Republicans refused to budge on a $10 billion, five-month extension of unemployment benefits for 1.3 million long-term jobless workers while the […]

There are tragedies and then there are scandals. The killings of four Americans in Benghazi, as investigations by the State Department and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have already confirmed, was a tragedy, and likely a preventable one. But the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture was both a tragedy and a scandal. The […]

The Bundy Ranch controversy has now divided Nevada's two United States Senators. While Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) referred to Bundy's armed supporters as "domestic terrorists," his Republican colleague Dean Heller praised them as "patriots." Their disagreement begs the question: What do you call someone who owes the United States government a million dollars and […]

This week, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted to release a declassified version of its 6,000 page report on the CIA's abuses and deceptions as part President Bush's program so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques." Predictably, its architects immediately circled the wagons. On Fox News, former Bush National Security Adviser and CIA Director Michael Hayden called […]

As Condoleezza Rice reminded Americans this week, nothing succeeds like failure for the members of George W. Bush's national security team. Addressing a $15 million dollar Republican fundraiser, Bush's former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State blasted the Obama administration's handling of the Ukraine crisis, declaring "When America steps back and there is a […]

Earlier this week, Republicans politicians and pundits, bloggers and bosses couldn't contain their glee over a spate of polls showing the public's disapproval for the Affordable Care Act. But as I warned just yesterday, Obamacare's conservative saboteurs might soon contract a severe case of premature elation. After all, the experience of President Bush's badly bungled […]

As they have for months, conservatives are trumpeting polls showing Obamacare's difficulty in winning the hearts and minds of the American people. While The Hill reported "four years later, Democrats wait for ObamaCare popularity bounce," the far-right Townhall celebrated a spate of negative surveys, including a 53 to 41 disapproval score in the latest from […]

President Obama this week took the unusual step of appearing with Zach Galifianakis on his online ersatz talk show, "Between Two Ferns." If Obama's goal was to encourage younger Americans to check out the Affordable Care Act, then the President can rightly declare "Mission Accomplished": the Funny or Die web site is now the number […]