The life of the American conservative is a perpetual crisis of cognitive dissonance, especially when it comes to the run-up to the Iraq war. So three new stories this week are certain to cause right-wing minds to explode, or at least to seek the safe harbor of denial. First came word of a new book […]

In his eternal quest for the White House, John McCain has demonstrated repeatedly that no indignity suffered at the hands of George W. Bush is too great to be forgiven. To appease conservative GOP primary voters, McCain reversed many of his long-held positions in order to appropriate the third term Bush agenda. And yesterday, McCain […]

In the pantheon of his presidential failures, the utter inability of former Texas oilman George W. Bush to influence OPEC and the price of oil stands out as the most predictable - and ironic. Just one day after OPEC members rejected President Bush's call to boost crude production, oil jumped to the stratospheric level of […]

Even as Israel began withdrawing its troops following its latest clashes with Hamas forces in Gaza, Vanity Fair published a shocking account of how the Bush administration bungling fueled the crisis there. Covert U.S. backing of armed Fatah units helped spark the bloody civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza. But given that […]

324. That's the number of days left for George W. Bush to deliver on his January pledge of a signed Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. But what seemed like Bush's cockeyed optimism just weeks ago now verges on fantasy. With Israeli forces and Hamas fighters battling in Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday announced the suspension […]

With each passing day, John McCain seemingly deepens his commitment to a third term Bush agenda. As the GOP primaries approached, McCain experienced just-in-time reversals on making the Bush tax cuts permanent and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Like President Bush, McCain butchers history in comparing a 100-year presence in Iraq to the U.S. […]

In a rare moment of humility, President Bush during this morning's press conference acknowledged that he knew little about Russian President Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Responding to NBC reporter David Greg's dubious assertion that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama seemed to know much about Medvedev, Bush owned up to his own ignorance, […]

Today's Washington Post praised John McCain's "ironclad refusal to issue signing statements." While his Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton defended using "signing statements in very rare instances," the Post lauded McCain's "sharp break" from the unprecedented practice of the Bush administration. But what the Washington Post neglected to mention was why John McCain […]

Exactly two years ago, I dissected the Bush administration's dubious legal justification for its illicit program of NSA domestic surveillance. Then, I argued that the President's twin claims that his constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowed Bush to operate outside the legal mandate of FISA […]

Just yesterday, I documented George W. Bush's hilarious - and pathetic - history when it comes to Kosovo. Now with Serbian rioters storming the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, Bush's dubious grasp of the implications of an independent Kosovo doesn't seem so funny any more. That the United States would come to grief in the Balkans […]