Like most Americans, I was horrified to learn about the shocking brutality contained in the declassified Senate torture report. Under a legal edifice erected by the Bush administration, CIA interrogators subjected terror detainees to large scale, state-sanctioned sadism. Thanks to these horrors perpetrated in all of our names, terms of art like "rectal hydration" and […]

As Dick Cheney and the usual suspects circle the wagons to defend the Bush Torture Team, one its most notorious members has been particularly active in rhetorically waterboarding the Senate torture report. On Tuesday, John Yoo, who at the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel defined torture as "in intensity to the pain accompanying […]

After five years and $40 million, a declassified version of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report may finally be released next week. But in advance of its arrival, the CIA's former head of clandestine services has resurfaced again to declare the report "an egregious falsehood" and "a dishonest attempt to rewrite history." Of course, that […]

After months of delays, President Obama is poised to finally take executive action to address the crisis of America's 11 million undocumented immigrants, 85 percent of whom are estimated to have lived in the United States for at least five years. Relying on the same authority presidents of both parties have used for over 70 […]

A growing number of Republican senators are suggesting they will block the nomination of Loretta Lynch over the issue of "executive amnesty." If so, then no choice President Obama might make for attorney general could possibly be confirmed by the new GOP-controlled Senate. After all, the next head of the Justice Department will obviously agree […]

Just in time for Veteran's Day, former President George W. Bush is promoting a new book dedicated to his father's military service. As part of his PR swing, Bush explained that he has only one regret about his 2003 invasion of Iraq. Unsurprisingly, Dubya's sole lament is not for the enormous cost in American blood […]

In the wake of the GOP's triumph in last week's midterm election, conservative commentators are demanding President Obama and his Democratic allies abandon their agenda and submit to the will of the new Republican majority. "The chastened President," Peggy Noonan lectured, should "reach out, be humble," but instead is "doubling down on hostility, antagonism and […]

On Tuesday, Republicans may recapture control of the Senate. And to be sure, they've made no secret of their plans to derail the final two years of Barack Obama's presidency. Would-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who in 2005 declared that "Any president's judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down […]

The conservative commentariat is having a field day at the expense of Hunter Biden, the vice president's 44 year-old son who was discharged from the Navy after testing positive for cocaine use. For its part, the Weekly Standard decried the "limited duty" reserve commission program under which Biden achieved his rank, lamenting "the culture of […]

The President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was arguably President George W' Bush's single greatest achievement. Thanks to American leadership and over $50 billion in U.S. funding committed since President Bush launched the initiative in 2003, millions of lives have been saved and millions more HIV/AIDS cases prevented in 15 African countries targeted for […]