Last night's airing of the PBS Frontline documentary "Cheney's Law" could not have come at a more fitting time. As Congress begins debate on a new FISA bill and the issue of immunity for telecommunications firms, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey begins confirmation hearings in the Senate. But as Frontline reminded us last night, the […]

When former White House press secretary Tony Snow announced his resignation in August, he claimed his departure was motivated by his need for "dough." Appearing on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday night, it turns out Snow is content to shill for President Bush for free. Rejecting the assertion that Bush was far from […]

In a double-edged sword for the Bush administration, Monday's Washington Post reports that the Pentagon believes it has dealt "devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months." But with the good news surrounding Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), responsible for only a small fraction of the attacks against U.S. forces and […]

One day after Vladimir Putin scolded Secretary of State Condi Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates over the administration's plans for a European missile defense system, Rice fired back at the Russian president. But before lecturing Putin on his return to authoritarianism in Russia, Rice should have first checked with her boss President Bush about […]

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore on Friday predictably produced flashbacks to the 2000 election fiasco, complete with the usual conservative venom and liberal wistfulness. But seemingly lost in the tales of the parallel lives of George W. Bush and Al Gore are their sharply contrasting views towards their respective legacies. […]

Just one week after the New York Times revealed the existence of secret Bush administration memos condoning an uninterrupted policy of detainee torture by the CIA, it appears to be payback time. In a highly unusual move, CIA Director Michael Hayden has ordered an investigation into the agency's watchdog office itself, led by Inspector General […]

Over just the past 24 hours, a flurry of stories have highlighted the growing and evolving burden facing the overstretched United States military. In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert Gates stressed the need to transform the American military to address the "fundamentally political nature" of its current and future conflicts. While the Marine Corps has proposed […]

Just one day after revelations by the private security firm SITE Institute that a U.S. government leak of its clandestinely obtained Osama Bin Laden video compromised its penetration of Al Qaeda's global computing network, U.S. intelligence officials announced a probe of the damaging episode. But in the Animal Farm world of the right-wing blogosphere where […]

Today's revelations in the Washington Post regarding the Bush administration's September 7th leaking of an Osama Bin Laden videotape served to once again highlight the hypocritical Republican double-standard when it comes to the publication of classified national security information. As the CIA black sites and illegal NSA domestic surveillance stories all show, the President and […]

If there is any area of public policy where George W. Bush has been consistently "dead certain," it is almost certainly in the application of the death penalty. As Texas Governor and later as President, Bush showed himself to be an equal opportunity executioner, content to condemn the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, racist thugs […]