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 […]

In the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the conservative echo chamber chants in unison, President Obama has been "weak" and "feckless" and is wearing "mom jeans," which "invites aggression." For the likes of Lindsey Graham, Sarah Palin and most of all John McCain, those are pretty shameless statements to make. After all, when […]

Proving once again that politics no longer ends at the water's edge, Republican leaders and many in the media have been lambasting President Obama's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While the Washington Post editorial board charged that Obama's foreign policy is "based on fantasy," Senator John McCain and his Mini-Me Lindsey Graham (R-SC) […]

The New York Times reported Monday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is has proposed cutting the U.S. Army from its wartime peak of 570,000 troops to as few as 440,000. Under pressure from the 2011 sequester and the recently inked Murray-Ryan budget plan, Hagel's blueprint would shrink the active duty Army to its lowest strength […]