"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," President George W. Bush protested on September 1, 2005. Ultimately, Bush's feeble - and false - excuse for his tragic failure in the wake of the drowning of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina four years ago today defined his presidency. As it turns out, from […]

Traffic in Vancouver, as I learned the hard way during a recent trip to British Columbia, is a nightmare. The crisis has become so severe that the city is now home to North America's only commercial radio station dedicated 24/7 to traffic reports. But judging from the ads on AM 730, the only thing Canadians […]

Once upon a time - a time before the 2006 midterm elections consigned the GOP to minority status in Congress, a bill generally required 51 votes in the Senate to become law. But not content to rest on their record for filibusters in the 110th term, roadblock Republicans now insist even 60 votes aren't enough. […]

"In his new book, former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge confirms what most long suspected: the Bush administration manipulated the terror threat level for the President's political advantage. But while his long overdue admission is welcome, his suggestion that he resigned over the matter is laughable. As ThinkProgress and others have passed along, US News […]

The Mayo Clinic, the world famous institution cited by all sides in the contentious health care debate, defines schizophrenia as a serious brain disorder "in which reality is interpreted abnormally" resulting in "hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking and behavior." Apparently, that affliction is now running rampant among supporters of the Republican Party. As recent polling […]

Back in January, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman presciently warned President Obama about the GOP's bad faith in negotiating the stimulus bill, announcing, "Look, Republicans are not going to come on board." Now Krugman's paper is reporting the White House may finally be learning its lesson and planning to "go it alone" on health […]

As its 2003 support for President Bush's overpriced, unfunded and deeply flawed Medicare prescription benefit showed, the AARP can make some strange political bedfellows. Buti in a segment Monday slamming the 40 million member organization over its role in the current health care reform debate, CBS News made some strange bedfellows of it own. Its […]

Following President Obama's lead, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Sunday announced that a public option is "not the essential element" of the administration's health insurance reform push. Sadly, that development seems to signal that, as with the stimulus package, Obama has again fallen into a trap of his own making. In his […]

There's nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to the frothing at the mouth right-wing rage over health care reform. But thanks to the 24/7 media's transformation of politics into just another form of entertainment, delusional Birthers, deceitful Deathers, raging Teabaggers and town hall intimidators are dominating press coverage of the debate. And […]

"When politics is just another form of entertainment," I lamented in a presentation on the 2008 campaign last year, "the first thing that suffers is the truth." And so it is with the incendiary health care debate and so much else of what now passes for political discourse in the United States. Bolstered by flame-throwing […]