Before he leaves office on January 20, 2017, President Obama should take two unpleasant, unfortunate but absolutely necessary steps. First, Obama should pardon his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because she's violated no laws yet nevertheless faces the likely prospect of indefinite investigation and possible prosecution. Then the 44th President should also pardon the […]

So a former reality TV star won the 2016 presidential election on Tuesday. While deeply disturbing, that victory by Donald Trump was somehow altogether fitting. After all, as research from Harvard revealed, throughout the 2016 election cycle "policy issues [were] nearly absent in presidential campaign 'coverage.'" Even during the four weeks surrounding the parties' nominating […]

Less than 72 hours after Tuesday's shocking election result, Donald Trump's transition team is hard at work transforming American government. A rogue's gallery of extremist right-wing has-beens and never-should-be's is being lined up for Trump Cabinet slots. With the success of Mitch McConnell's unprecedented blockade of Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, a list of […]

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has lied about almost everything in this election. But among his most insidious falsehoods is this. Hillary Clinton, Trump declared in Florida two weeks ago, "is going to cut your Social Security and your Medicare." As he put it a rally in Pennsylvania last month: She wants to knock the […]

Former Boston Red Sox pitching great Curt Schilling announced this week that he might run against Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2018. Schilling, previously best known as a bankrupt businessman and collector of Nazi memorabilia who was fired by ESPN despite famously bleeding from wherever in the 2004 American League playoffs, took to the cable […]

The third and final presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump provide a teachable moment on the subject of abortion. Make that many teachable moments. When moderator Chris Wallace asked the candidates their views on so-called "partial birth" abortion bans, Trump declared it's "not acceptable" that women "can take the baby and […]

On July 28, 2008, the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility jointly published the results of a year-long investigation into the hiring practices at the Bush DOJ. As the AP reported, "A new Justice Department report concludes that politics illegally influenced the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges, […]

The revelation that Donald Trump may have paid no federal income taxes over the past two decades is a dagger aimed at the heart of his presidential candidacy. For starters, his reported $915 million loss in 1995--his second billion-dollar implosion in five years--makes a mockery of Trump's repeated boasts that he is a "tremendously successful" […]

Washington is experiencing a bipartisan furor over the spiraling price hikes of EpiPen, the life-saving Epinephrine injector tens of thousands of American allergy sufferers depend on in case of emergency. On Wednesday, Democrat Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Republican Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee blasted Mylan CEO Heather Bresch over […]

Speaking a shale industry conference in Pittsburgh last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a bold promise. "My entire economic plan," Trump boasted, "will create 25 million new jobs over the next 10 years, assuming an average growth rate of 3.5 percent, and I believe we can reach beyond actually 4 percent growth." Leaving […]