That President Bush authorized Scooter Libby to selectively leak portions of the highly classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate as part of a coordinated assault on Joseph Wilson and other debunkers of pre-war Iraq WMD claims should come as a surprise to no one. What is surprising is that at least one Republican has the […]

Jerome Armstrong (founder of MyDD) and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (of DailyKos fame) are bringing their "Crashing the Gate" book tour to my home town of Portland. Their PDX itinerary on April 9th and 10th concludes with an event Monday evening to help Rob Brading unseat Oregon House Speaker Karen Minnis. Earlier this week, I had […]

Facing dismal poll ratings and the potential loss of both the House and Senate, the Republican National Committee appears set with its 2006 mid-term election strategy. Call it "Brand W." That is the central message in a memo from GOP pollster Jan van Lohuizen to RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. Acknowledging the GOP's current challenges, van […]

Neo-conservative founding father Irving Kristol once famously said, a neoconservative is "a liberal who's been mugged by reality." Now the once-preening adherents of the Bush Doctrine are being beaten and battered by events on the ground. First came the Sharia-influenced constitution and sectarian violence in Iraq and the Hamas government in Palestine. With the possible […]

These may be dark times for President Bush and the GOP, but Republicans are happy. Or at least happier than Democrats. That's the unsurprising conclusion of the annual survey of American happiness ("Are We Happy Yet?") by the Pew Research Center. Just as predictably, conservatives like George Will are happier still about what they see […]

This weekend's third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq brought another shake-up in the Top 10 GOP Sound Bites List. Catapulting to #4 is the new White House medley, "We're Makin' Progress", performed by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and General George Casey. Still topping the charts is the hard rocking smash hit, George […]

With its sympathetic portrait of a polygamous family, the new HBO series "Big Love," is helping to heat up the culture war. The show has been the fodder of a Newsweek feature on the polygamy rights movement, complete with headlines such as "Polygamists Unite!" For conservative stalwarts like Charles Krauthammer and Rick Santorum, "Big Love" […]

A sense of humor has always been an invaluable tool for presidents. Self-deprecating humor helped endear John F. Kennedy to the press and allowed Ronald Reagan to disarm his critics. But for George W. Bush, humor provides only a occasional glimpse of the truth and a rare window into the dark soul of a man […]

Just in time for Lincoln's birthday, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will arrive in Washington. Next Thursday, February 9th, hundreds of right-wing activists, high-profile Republican politicians and conservative groups of all stripes will descend on the capital to give lie to the Great Emancipator's words, "with malice toward none; with charity for all." […]

This past week has been among the most instructive in the annals of the Pentagon's inexcusable "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Among the lessons learned: while the American military has no place for soldiers who pose on gay web sites, the Bush White House press corps is another matter altogether. On Wednesday, the Center for […]