The Middle East peace process being led by Secretary of State John Kerry is reaching crunch time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While his coalition partners to his left will likely walk if he abandons the process, many in his own Likud Party and among its hard-right allies will rebel if he consummates a […]

Even as American and international negotiators were finalizing the interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, both houses of Congress were moving to tie President Obama's hands in the future. While a bipartisan bill mandating harsh new sanctions nears a veto-proof majority in the Senate, House Republicans announced they would take up the legislation […]

As 2013 draws to close, the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program have entered a delicate stage. But in 2014, the tensions will escalate dramatically as a bipartisan group of Senators brings a new Iran sanctions bill to the floor for a vote. As many others have warned, that promise of new measures against Tehran […]

Like the morning sun rise in the east, it never fails. At every foreign policy fork in the road, conservatives faithfully ask, WWRD--What Would Reagan Do? When President Obama urged U.S. strikes against the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons in Syria, right-wing politicians and pundits laughably looked to The Gipper for guidance. […]

As Congress debates authorizing U.S. military strikes against Syria, it's worth remembering that President Obama has painted himself into a box with not one, but two red lines. After all, Obama didn't just casually announce that "a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being […]

Just days after playing a key role in ending the log jam over Republican filibustering of President Obama's executive branch nominees, Arizona Senator John McCain put a road block in the front of the anticipated confirmation of Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey. McCain announced he would put a "hold" on Dempsey's second term heading up […]

As the carnage and chaos grow in Cairo, there are no easy answers for the United States in Egypt. But once upon a time, Republican leaders and their allies in the conservative commentariat had a simple answer indeed for the Middle East. Waiving their purple fingers in early 2005, the likes of David Brooks, Charles […]

Every July 4th, Americans gather at picnics, watch parades and shoot off fireworks to celebrate the birth of the United States. But some years are more notable than others. In 1826, Founding Fathers and former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson marked the nation's 50th anniversary by dying on that same Fourth of July. In […]

In the wake of the twin revelations about the National Security Agency's dragnet of phone calls and online activity, polling suggests that a majority of Americans apparently remain comfortable with their civil liberties being compromised in the cause of preventing terror attacks. Probably just as predictable, a survey from Pew Research showed a fair amount […]

While Americans marked this Memorial Day by honoring the fallen of the nation's wars, Republican Senator John McCain was inside Syria making the case for the next one. As reported in the Daily Beast, McCain slipped across the Turkish border to meet with Syrian rebels. As Josh Rogin detailed, McCain's surprise visit, the first by […]