Long before his shockingly disrespectful and clearly illegal campaign video stop at Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, Donald Trump had already established himself as America’s Desecrator-in-Chief. For over 30 years, Trump has ridiculed military service, mocked the U.S. armed forces’ living and the dead, and sneered at the wounded and the captured. And when […]

That Donald Trump betrayed America's Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS should come as no surprise; Trump betrays everyone sooner or later. But Trump's treachery in codifying Turkey's ethnic cleansing of the Kurds across the Syrian border is different in kind and degree. After all, agreeing with President Erdogan that the Turks "had to […]

By now, most Americans know not to take former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at his word. The Fox News regular and failed GOP presidential candidate, after all, is on his third religion and his third wife. (Callista Bisek, currently Mrs. Gingrich No. 3 and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, was previously known as Newt's "frequent […]

As 2017 draws to a close, President Donald Trump and his amen corner are bragging about his "year of solid policy accomplishments." Despite approval ratings only slightly higher than the Ebola virus, Trump took to Twitter to soak up praise from Maria Bartiromo, who gushed that "Year One has been excellent from an economic standpoint." […]

In his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, former Vice President Al Gore warned about what he saw as a dire threat to American democracy. "The 'well-informed citizenry,'" Gore fretted, "is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience.'" In a presentation on Super Tuesday 2008 ("That's Entertainment: Politics as Theater in Campaign '08"), I elaborated […]

"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." With that phrase, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States ensures civilian control over--and accountability for--the American military. While the power to declare war rests with Congress, responsibility for America's global vision, its foreign policy […]

The end is nigh for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. To be sure, ISIS affiliates in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere will remain dangerous. And its fighters and sympathizers will continue to launch terror attacks in Europe and the United States for years to come. But the writing is on the wall for […]

While Americans have been focused on the growing crisis surrounding the Trump administration's tangled web of ties to Russia, the good news coming from Iraq has gone largely unnoticed. After successfully liberating eastern Mosul from ISIS fighters, Iraqi forces have launched their final offensive to retake the western of the city from the Islamic State. […]

The grief and suffering of the families of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya in 2012 must be unbearable and interminable. Only someone with the most hardened heart would fail to understand their pain and anguish. But that doesn't mean the latest efforts of some of the relatives, enthusiastically supported by Republican hardliners, to […]

In an understandably rare interview with Fox News on Sunday, Barack Obama spoke bluntly about the "worst mistake" of his presidency. That error, as he had also recently explained to the BBC and The Atlantic, was the unraveling of Libya following the fall of Muammar Qaddafi: "Probably failing to plan for the day after what […]