In the course of American and world history, slavery and the Holocaust are sui generis cataclysms. Any comparisons--especially casual ones--to the Nazi genocide of European Jewry and the bondage and oppression of African-Americans necessarily diminish these unique and unparalleled horrors. To seriously equate the ordinary to the almost unimaginable is a special kind of blasphemy […]

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. That's especially true with former American presidents, whose approval numbers invariably rise as their time away from the Oval Office increases. That's one reason why Politico and the right-wing commentariat trumpeting a new CNN/ORC poll showing that George W. Bush now enjoys a higher approval rating than President Obama […]

With the loss of Ramadi to ISIS forces, the Republican Party has launched one of its most ambitious myth-making operations in recent memory: Barack Obama lost Iraq. "We had the conflict won," John McCain declared this week, "thanks to the surge." Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard and the Project for a New American Century […]

As the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination heats up, one name keeps popping up as the GOP's go-to guy on poverty, economic inequality and social policy. "My views on this were shaped a lot on this by Charles Murray's book," Jeb Bush recently proclaimed, adding. "I like Charles Murray books to be honest […]

If being a neocon means never having to say you're sorry, then being an accessory to a world-historical mistake must grant you some kind of magical immunity. So it would seem after reading Bush administration stenographer Judith Miller's revisionist history on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. In mea non culpa "The Iraq […]

Back in October 2008, then Republican presidential candidate John McCain had one of the finest moments of his career. When angry Minnesota town hall questioners claimed Democrat Barack Obama was "an Arab" who could not be trusted, Senator McCain was quick to respond. After first lecturing the crowd that "I have to tell you, Sen. […]

Among the supposed revelations in the new book by former Obama adviser David Axelrod is the claim that the 44th President was "bulls**ting" about his past opposition to marriage equality. While President Obama today claimed otherwise, his deference to political expediency was no mystery to his supporters. For them, his Hamlet act that his views […]

Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has two primary claims to fame. First, in July 1990 the Reagan appointee was part of the 2 to 1 majority that overturned Oliver North's Iran-Contra convictions. Then in 2004, he co-chaired the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United […]

That NBC Evening News anchor Brian Williams falsely tried to appropriate the heroism of America's actual fighting men and women is bad enough. (In that he has plenty of company; Ronald Reagan recalled his role in the liberation of Nazi death camps among "all the bad things that happened in that war" when "I was […]

This week, the Hindu-turned-Catholic Bobby Jindal doubled down on his bogus "no-go zones" claim at the center of his anti-Muslim crusade for the White House. He quickly had company in the form of Iraq war cheerleader and anti-Islamic xenophobe Frank Gaffney, who declared that Dearborn, Michigan is already one of those no-go zones in America. […]