Among the least surprising revelations in the shocking Inspectors General report on President Bush's domestic surveillance programs are those concerning John Yoo. As it turns out, in justifying the NSA's warrantless wiretapping of Americans beginning in 2001 the Bush administration relied solely on the same legal architect behnid the President's regime of detainee torture. And […]

When the New York Times in December 2005 revealed President Bush's program of illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA, reaction from the White House and its Republican allies was swift - and furious. "These politically motivated leaks," Pete Hoekstra declared, "must stop." But now desperate to defend at any cost Bush's regime of detainee torture, […]

If Barack Obama's speech in Egypt is being criticized by both Osama Bin Laden and Mitt Romney, the President must be doing something right. After all, as Mitt's rich history of jaw-dropping mistakes and demeaning statements about Islam suggests, Governor Romney is perhaps the person least qualified to pontificate on American outreach to the Muslim […]

Coming just weeks after DHS issued its supposedly controversial warning over the growing right-wing terror threat in the United States, the assassination of Dr. George Tiller has reignited the now white-hot debate regarding anti-abortion terrorism. While the American Prospect's Adam Serwer concluded, "the murder of George Tiller is undoubtedly terrorism," Michelle Malkin predictably rolled her […]

As I've noted before, the distance between the incendiary rhetoric of the Republican Party and anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-government and above all anti-abortion extremism is a growing ever shorter. With Sunday's murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, that disturbing dynamic deserves deeper examination. After all, while even arch-conservative Attorney General John Ashcroft once deemed such […]

"Senator, that I don't recall remembering." With those six words uttered during the furor over his purge of U.S. prosecutors, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales likely etched his epitaph. But as it turns out, "hypothetical" may be the most important word Gonzales ever spoke to Congress. New revelations this week suggest that in the spring […]

On Friday, President Obama addressed the graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy. In promising to "maintain America's military dominance," Obama also signaled a clear break with his predecessor's Manichean worldview and the Bush doctrine of preemptive war. As it turns out, George W. Bush debuted those discredited concepts seven years ago during a service academy […]

Nothing, it would seem, pleases the Republican mind more than regurgitating demonstrably false and shockingly mean-spirited talking points. So Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign must been ecstatic to score a twofer last week. In a single sentence, Ensign not only faithfully reproduced the GOP's "Club Gitmo" talking point, but resuscitated the old Republican claim that […]

If nothing else, Alabama Senator and ranking Judiciary Committee Republican Jeff Sessions can be counted on to faithfully regurgitate his party's talking points. In February 2006, Sessions joined John Cornyn (R-TX) and Pat Roberts (R-KS) in propagating the "give me death" defense of President Bush's regime of illegal domestic surveillance, proclaiming, "Over 3,000 Americans have […]

During his spirited defense today of the Bush administration's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tortured logic itself. Graham not only cited former CIA agent John Kiriakou's discredited account of waterboarding's success, he went on to claim "one of the reasons these techniques have survived for about 500 years is apparently they work." […]