When the forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) overran Mosul and Tikrit two months ago, I laid out 10 Lessons from Bush's Fiasco in Iraq. But like Spinal Tap, I should have gone to 11. I forgot to include one additional moral from Mesopotamia: John McCain got it all horribly wrong. […]

Conservatives have a new sound bite. On behalf of all Americans, they are offended by the sound of President Obama's sound bites. (At times, I am too. After all, if "we tortured some folks," then we have a legal and moral responsibility to prosecute some folks.) Rich Lowry, taking a break from seeing starbursts from […]

Politico practices journalism in much the same way that bricks float.* For years, its mission to "win the morning" has often come at the expense of the truth. But with Katie Glueck's piece on Iraq titled "Neocons to Obama: No Half-Measures," the publication Charles Pierce rightly mocks as "Tiger Beat on the Potomac" has reached […]

With their 225 votes to sue President Obama, House Republicans provided one of the most ironic spectacles in recent U.S. political history. After waves of op-eds by Speaker John Boehner (here and here) and his legal puppet master David Rivkin (here and here) declared Obama guilty of almost every sin in the calendar, the House […]

Five years ago, I described Dick Cheney's strident defense of detainee torture as a strategy of "mutual assured destruction." The former Vice President's gambit was a simple one. In 2009, Cheney dared President Obama to either prosecute him and other Bush administration officials over their program of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (in which case massive Republican […]

With the overlapping crises in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, Republicans trying to pin the blame on President Obama are singing the same sound bite in unison. As Mitt Romney put it earlier this year: Our esteem around the world has fallen. I can't think of a major country, it's hard to think of […]

With the body count growing daily in Gaza, the conservative commentariat has predictably circled the wagons around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud government. "Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity," Charles Krauthammer declared this week and repeating Bibi's mantra about his Hamas enemies. "We're using missile defense to […]

Judging from the flood of articles with titles like "Has Darrell Issa gone rogue?" and "When Darrell Issa goes 'rogue'," the grand inquisitor of the Obama administration may have finally gone too far even for his Republican colleagues. Having lost the spotlight on the GOP's fishing expeditions on Benghazi and the IRS, the House Oversight […]

Back in 2010, Arizona Senator John McCain told surprised Americans that "I never considered myself a maverick." Now, the failed 2000 and 2008 GOP White House hopeful is telling an even bigger tall tale about the Iraq war he so vociferously supported. "You'll find this surprising," he told CNN's Jake Tapper about a would-have-been McCain […]

House Republicans have announced that constitutional expert and George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley will be their star witness in upcoming hearings regarding Speaker John Boehner's proposed lawsuit against President Obama. Turley's starring role may be an uncomfortable one. For starters, just two weeks ago he co-authored an op-ed with Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson […]