As the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Politico reveal, the apologists for George W. Bush's regime of detainee torture are circling the wagons. While one anonymous Bush official claimed the Obama's release of the torture memos "laid it all out for our enemies," former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an op-ed written with […]

During his confirmation hearings in January, Attorney General Eric Holder declared "waterboarding is torture." But in language eerily reminiscent of the administration Barack Obama was to replace, Holder assured Republican advocates of torture, "we don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist" with the outgoing Bush White House. Now with word that the Justice […]

Back in February 2006, Texas Senator John Cornyn led Congressional Republicans with his famous defense of President Bush's regime of illicit NSA domestic surveillance, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead." Now, as the New York Times revealed today, one of those illegal targeted was apparently one of Cornyn's Capitol Hill colleagues. […]

Despite the Obama administration's 4% increase in the Pentagon budget, Republican leaders and their conservative echo chamber are predictably issuing dire warnings about draconian cuts in defense spending and "disarming America." Of course, critics of Secretary Gates' strategic shift of resources to boost the nation's ability to fight current wars and future counterinsurgencies neglect to […]

In 2001, President Bush waged a largely successful campaign to curb the estate tax. But eight years after denouncing that scourge of the ultra-rich, Republicans have resurrected their "death tax" talking point, complete with its repeatedly debunked claims about the impact of estate levies on small businesses and family farms. Even as they decry the […]

Across the right-wing blogosphere, red meat reactionary Andrew Breitbart is being hailed as a visionary hero for his call to arms, "online activists on the right, unite!" In his jeremiad, Breitbart warns that a "digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing" and insists the right's "embrace of Judeo-Christian ideals" has prevented […]

The past 48 hours have not been kind to the architects of the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture. In the UK, British police are investigating whether its MI5 intelligence service was complicit in the torture of former Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohammed. Meanhile, a Spanish court is poised to launch a criminal probe of Alberto […]

Tabloid rumors are now making the rounds that a supposed friend of vice presidential daughter Ashley Biden is shopping a video alleged to show her using cocaine. But while any gossip (no matter how dubious) regarding the first and second families gone wild is always sure to make the news, this imbroglio is certain to […]

During President Obama's press conference Tuesday, NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd demonstrated once again why he ought to return to his previous role as a political analyst. Even as Americans are losing their jobs, homes and retirement savings, Todd asked the President "why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be […]

Timing, they say, is everything. On the very night President Obama suggested Republican critics of his $3.6 trillion budget plan have a "short memory" when it comes to the sea of red ink he inherited, PBS' Frontline offered a stinging reminder in a documentary titled "Ten Trillion and Counting." Featured prominently among the Republican amnesiacs […]