A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of editing an article written by the investigative reporter Jefferson Morley for playboy.com that had to do with strange CIA connections to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which happened, of course, 47 years ago today. I enjoyed working with Jeff; he was a patient, meticulous …
In his column in The Washington Post, George Will takes on the TSA inspections by citing an unimpeachable source. “Fifty years ago,” he writes, “William F. Buckley wrote a memorable complaint about the fact that Americans do not complain enough. His point, like most of the points he made during his well-lived life, is, unfortunately, …
The head of Fox News, the prodigiously jowly former Richard Nixon tub-thumper Roger Ailes, gave an interview to Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast earlier this week. It is instructive to read what Ailes said, because his comments are full of lies of every sort–simple untruths, hyperbolic overstatement, nasty misinterpretation. They show what a low, …
Yesterday in The Washington Post, Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell, two formerly hotshot pollsters, wrote what certainly has to be the most disingenuous, cynical and purely dumb op-ed article of the year. Called “One and Done,” Schoen and Caddell argue the entirely preposterous position that to be a great president, Barack Obama should not seek …
Cut defense spending, says Eugene Robinson in this morning’s Washington Post. “The United States accounts for 46.5 percent of the world’s total defense spending,” he writes. “The next-biggest spender is China, which has undertaken an immense buildup to become a military as well as economic superpower – yet accounts for just 6.6 percent of the …
In his new memoir Decision Points, former President George W. Bush says that he personally approved the use of waterboarding against 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission human rights experts say could have legal consequences for him. Bush says that he was asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who …
In what is apt to be the single most provocative personnel change in Washington after the elections, the Washington Post reports that Congressman-elect Allen West, a Republican of the Tea Party persuasion, has hired Joyce Kaufman, a local conservative talk radio commentator known for her provocative and sometimes incendiary statements, as his chief of staff. …
Nothing is going to get done about the abuses in Congressional redistricting that almost certainly going to take place next year, especially now that the GOP has seized the whip hand in so many states with victories in gubernatorial and state legislature races. As Aaron Blake reported yesterday in The Washington Post, “When the next …
There is no shortage of self-analysis about America’s position, insightful and otherwise, especially this week. Sometimes the views of other can offer an altogether helathful shock. The German news magazine Der Spiegel this week offers a lengthy cover story called “A Superpower in Decline: Is the American Dream Over?” Some of their observations: “The fall …
On the heels of last night’s big Republican wins in the midterm elections (control of the House, several more Senate seats, a whole bunch of governorships and state legislatures), there is a kind of reasoning going on this morning that follows this line: people didn’t like the health care bill, therefore they didn’t like big …