The ugly picture in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is rapidly getting uglier still. After the collapse of U.S. sponsored peace talks, the Netanyahu government quickly retaliated against the President Mahmoud Abbas' unity government with Hamas by announcing 1,500 new settlement units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This week, the slaughter of […]

To hear the best and the brightest of the conservative movement tell it, Americans' freedom of religion is in dire peril. At Liberty University in April, Texas Senator Ted Cruz cautioned, "Religious liberty has never been more under attack." Ben Sasse, the Nebraska GOP Senate candidate, went even further in declaring that "the free exercise […]

They were for it before they were against it. Current and would-be GOP members of Congress tweeted their praise for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl before deleting the evidence. Among others, Arizona Senator and failed 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain declared he would be "inclined to support" the very kind of prisoner exchange […]

John McCain on Tuesday declared he would send U.S. special forces into Nigeria "in a New York minute" to free hundreds of school girls held hostage by Boko Haram. McCain's enthusiasm in unsurprising, given his past support for deploying American forces almost anywhere for almost any reason. Except, it turns out, to the place that […]

And now for today's quiz: When is $10 billion greater than $310 billion? When Republicans control the House of Representatives. Yes, the American people got another lesson in GOP math this week when House Republicans refused to budge on a $10 billion, five-month extension of unemployment benefits for 1.3 million long-term jobless workers while the […]

There are tragedies and then there are scandals. The killings of four Americans in Benghazi, as investigations by the State Department and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have already confirmed, was a tragedy, and likely a preventable one. But the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture was both a tragedy and a scandal. The […]

As Condoleezza Rice reminded Americans this week, nothing succeeds like failure for the members of George W. Bush's national security team. Addressing a $15 million dollar Republican fundraiser, Bush's former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State blasted the Obama administration's handling of the Ukraine crisis, declaring "When America steps back and there is a […]

Earlier this week, Republicans politicians and pundits, bloggers and bosses couldn't contain their glee over a spate of polls showing the public's disapproval for the Affordable Care Act. But as I warned just yesterday, Obamacare's conservative saboteurs might soon contract a severe case of premature elation. After all, the experience of President Bush's badly bungled […]

As they have for months, conservatives are trumpeting polls showing Obamacare's difficulty in winning the hearts and minds of the American people. While The Hill reported "four years later, Democrats wait for ObamaCare popularity bounce," the far-right Townhall celebrated a spate of negative surveys, including a 53 to 41 disapproval score in the latest from […]

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hold oral arguments in two cases (Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius) challenging the Affordable Care Act's requirement that insurance plans cover contraception. But with the Court's precedents and the legislative history of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) seemingly in the […]