In the wake of the surprisingly strong showing by the pro-Western coalition in Sunday's elections in Lebanon, the debate is raging as whether President Obama can take any credit for it. McClatchy, Newsweek, Politico, the AP and a host of others pondered whether the President's dazzling speech in Cairo and recent diplomatic efforts in Beirut […]

That President Obama had a very good week seems beyond dispute. His groundbreaking speech in Cairo Thursday was praised worldwide. Meanwhile, NBC's Brian Williams aired a fawning two-hour look inside the Obama White House that the Daily Show rightly compared to an episode of MTV's Real World. But when Newsweek's Evan Thomas described Obama's stratospheric […]

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's acknowledgement yesterday that there was "never any evidence" that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks on the United States was doubly surprising. The first shock was that for one of the few times during his legacy reclamation project, Cheney told the truth. And second, the leading members of Team […]

That Republicans are apoplectic about President Obama's "date night" in New York is pathetically predictable. That the GOP and its conservative water carriers remain silent about George W. Bush's record-breaking presidential vacation time is less surprising still. To be sure, some will quibble with Obama's decision to fulfill his pledge to his wife that they […]

Despite encountering a wall of opposition from both the Obama administration and Congress during his recent visit to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted he would nevertheless expand existing settlements in the West Bank to account for "natural growth." But as the Israelis again made clear, they are relying on a secret 2004 agreement […]

"Senator, that I don't recall remembering." With those six words uttered during the furor over his purge of U.S. prosecutors, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales likely etched his epitaph. But as it turns out, "hypothetical" may be the most important word Gonzales ever spoke to Congress. New revelations this week suggest that in the spring […]

On Friday, President Obama addressed the graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy. In promising to "maintain America's military dominance," Obama also signaled a clear break with his predecessor's Manichean worldview and the Bush doctrine of preemptive war. As it turns out, George W. Bush debuted those discredited concepts seven years ago during a service academy […]

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, Dick Cheney infamously predicted, "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted in liberators." Just days later John McCain too declared, "There's no doubt in my mind" that "we will be welcomed as liberators." Now six years later, George W. Bush is finally doing some liberating, […]

That House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has badly bungled the imbroglio over what she knew and when about the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture is hard to dispute. Seemingly snatching PR defeat from the jaws of victory, Pelosi should have instead simply called the Republicans' bluff and insisted on investigations of torture architects, perpetrators and […]

President Obama today announced plans to dramatically cut vehicle emissions while substantially increasing fuel efficiency by 2016. In so doing, the President didn't merely set the first national standards for gas mileage standards and curbing the production of greenhouse gases. Obama's move also represents a complete repudiation of the George W. Bush approach to energy […]