The Attorney General of the United States branded him a "terrorist," and with good reason. His bombings killed two people and wounded over 150 others. "Radicalized" as a child, his acts of terror were motivated by his extremist religious ideology. Armed and dangerous, he eluded a massive federal manhunt, likely with the support of his […]

Back in December 2005, John Yoo was asked if any law or treaty could prevent the President of the United States from torturing someone, "including by crushing the testicles of the person's child." Yoo, then head of President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, responded, "I think it depends on why […]

As President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised in September, the State Department Accountability Review Board on Wednesday delivered its report on the Benghazi consulate assault which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The findings are sharply critical of the State Department, calling security at the Libyan outpost "grossly inadequate," a […]

As the Obama administration and Congress ponder their responses to the slaughter in Newtown, Connecticut, one of the central tensions in the American system of government is once again coming to the fore. That is, the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution's Bill of Rights are neither absolute nor in harmony with each other. For example, […]

Memorial Day should not be a day for politics. It should be a time for all Americans to remember and honor the men and women in uniform who sacrificed - and still sacrifice - all to make our freedom possible. And yet John McCain, a man whose own service in Vietnam deserves the respect and […]

Desperate to deny President Obama any credit for the daring Bin Laden operation in Pakistan that George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney were on record as having opposed, veterans of Dubya's administration and their right-wing water carriers are trying a new and similarly despicable tactic. Obama, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Romney […]

Echoing Teddy Roosevelt's famous line, Vice President Joe Biden used a major address on foreign policy Thursday to "promise you the President has a big stick." That provides a sharp contrast to the big shovel Republican nominee Mitt Romney will need to bury the embarrassing flip-flops in his foreign policy past. After all, the same […]

For years, the Bush torture team and its ardent supporters have depended on what might be called the Seinfeld defense of its regime of detainee interrogation: it's not a lie, if you believe it. But with the release of this week Philip Zelikow's 2006 memo warning the Bush administration about its illegal detainee interrogation techniques, […]

On Monday, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney blasted President Obama's open mic comment to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he'll have more "flexibility" to deal with issues like missile defense after the November election. Predictably, a "disturbed" Romney denounced Obama's remark as "alarming" and "troubling." But what is surprising is that Governor Romney went on to […]

This week, Karl Rove took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal in the feeble attempt to undermine of one of President Obama's signature achievements, the killing of Osama Bin Laden. "Mr. Obama did," Rove sniffed, "what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation." Well, not quite every commander-in-chief. […]