PERRspectives: Bush Admin. Archives

Bush Admin. Archives

	DOJ Confirms Cheney's Key Role in CIA Leak Case The Obama administration again this week moved to protect former Vice President Dick Cheney's 2004 interview with the FBI over the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. But in so doing, the Justice Department's court filing only served to confirm Cheney's central role in guiding the Bush White House response to - and retaliation against - Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. As the Washington Post reported, a list of what Cheney discussed with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is documented in... more Posted on July 3, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Fleischer Declares Reform Movement Bush's Gift to Iran Freedom, George W. Bush repeatedly insisted, "is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." Now with tens of thousands of protesters in the streets of Tehran, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer declared the reform movement is his boss' gift to Iran. In an email last Friday on the eve of the Iranian vote, Fleischer wasn't content to give his boss credit for the defeat of the Hezbollah coalition in the Lebanese elections a week... more Posted on June 15, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	The Obama Effect in Lebanon, the Bush Defect in Gaza In the wake of the surprisingly strong showing by the pro-Western coalition in Sunday's elections in Lebanon, the debate is raging as whether President Obama can take any credit for it. McClatchy, Newsweek, Politico, the AP and a host of others pondered whether the President's dazzling speech in Cairo and recent diplomatic efforts in Beirut amounted to an "Obama Effect" which helped blunt Hezbollah and its allies, or instead played little role in the face of competing Christian factions, Saudi... more Posted on June 9, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Powerline's Hinderaker Reminds Us of Bush's Genius That President Obama had a very good week seems beyond dispute. His groundbreaking speech in Cairo Thursday was praised worldwide. Meanwhile, NBC's Brian Williams aired a fawning two-hour look inside the Obama White House that the Daily Show rightly compared to an episode of MTV's Real World. But when Newsweek's Evan Thomas described Obama's stratospheric global standing as "sort of God," that was more deification than 2004 Blog of the Year Powerline could stomach. Of course, John Hinderaker's nausea could... more Posted on June 6, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Cheney: "Never Any Evidence" for 9/11-Iraq Link We Made Repeatedly Former Vice President Dick Cheney's acknowledgement yesterday that there was "never any evidence" that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks on the United States was doubly surprising. The first shock was that for one of the few times during his legacy reclamation project, Cheney told the truth. And second, the leading members of Team Bush, including the President and Cheney himself, have continued to propagate the myth of the bogus Saddam-9/11 link they first introduced in 2002. Appearing on... more Posted on June 3, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Obama NYC Date Night Highlights Bush Vacation Record That Republicans are apoplectic about President Obama's "date night" in New York is pathetically predictable. That the GOP and its conservative water carriers remain silent about George W. Bush's record-breaking presidential vacation time is less surprising still. To be sure, some will quibble with Obama's decision to fulfill his pledge to his wife that they would attend a Broadway show after the campaign. Few would question Obama's work ethic while confronting the myriad, simultaneous challenges bequeathed to him by President... more Posted on May 31, 2009 \| Comments (4)

	Israel Again Cites Secret Bush Agreement to Expand Settlements Despite encountering a wall of opposition from both the Obama administration and Congress during his recent visit to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted he would nevertheless expand existing settlements in the West Bank to account for "natural growth." But as the Israelis again made clear, they are relying on a secret 2004 agreement with President Bush which, contradicting his administration's public statements, gave a greenlight to new settlement activity. To be sure, the line from Washington has been... more Posted on May 24, 2009 \| Comments (3)

	Did Alberto Gonzales Lie to Congress over Torture? "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 of 2002 then-White House Counsel Gonzales personally approved the use of waterboarding, months before the Justice Department's infamous Bybee memo blessed the practice. By labeling... more Posted on May 23, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Obama Repudiates Bush Doctrine in Annapolis Speech 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 commencement address of his own, his speech to the West Point class of 2002. Obama's repudiation of Bush's aggressive unilateralism was evident in a pledge... more Posted on May 22, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Finally Greeted as Liberator In the run-up to the war in Iraq, Dick Cheney infamously predicted, "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted in liberators." Just days later John McCain too declared, "There's no doubt in my mind" that "we will be welcomed as liberators." Now six years later, George W. Bush is finally doing some liberating, not in Baghdad but in New Mexico. Speaking to graduating high school students in Artesia, the ex-President revealed it was he himself who had been... more Posted on May 22, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	GOP in 2007: CIA "Misleading" and an "Anti-Bush Cabal" That House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has badly bungled the imbroglio over what she knew and when about the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture is hard to dispute. Seemingly snatching PR defeat from the jaws of victory, Pelosi should have instead simply called the Republicans' bluff and insisted on investigations of torture architects, perpetrators and "accomplices" alike, letting the bipartisan chips fall where they may. But by savaging Pelosi for her statement that the CIA "misled" Congress, Bush's Republican water... more Posted on May 20, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	An End to Bush's "Big No" on Energy Conservation President Obama today announced plans to dramatically cut vehicle emissions while substantially increasing fuel efficiency by 2016. In so doing, the President didn't merely set the first national standards for gas mileage standards and curbing the production of greenhouse gases. Obama's move also represents a complete repudiation of the George W. Bush approach to energy conservation Ari Fleischer once summed up in four words: "that's a big no." As the Washington Post noted, President Obama plans to put an end... more Posted on May 19, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Lindsey Graham: Waterboarding Illegal, But It Works 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." During the same hearings, he dropped jaws by concluding that the Bush White House "saw the law as a nicety we could not afford." As... more Posted on May 13, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Cheney's MAD Dick Cheney's MAD, just not in the way you think. As Time, the AP and virtually every pundit across the political spectrum debate the meaning of Cheney's ubiquity on your television screen, it may be an old Cold War theory which best explains his strategy. The former vice president isn't merely trying to rewrite history or work the jury with his repeated claims that torture "saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives" and that "nothing devious or deceitful or... more Posted on May 13, 2009 \| Comments (4)

	Liz Cheney Wrongly Claims Dad Following Gore's Example In rejecting George W. Bush's insistence that the new occupant of the White House "deserves my silence," Liz Cheney Tuesday defended what she deemed her father's "obligation to speak out." But by likening former vice president Dick Cheney to his predecessor Al Gore, daughter Liz made her dad's critics' point for them. Despite his warnings on global climate change and later criticism of Bush over Iraq and torture, throughout Dubya's first year Al Gore showed public respect and vocal support... more Posted on May 12, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Bush was Laughing at You, Not with You That the right-wing blogosphere panned Barack Obama's attempts last night at presidential humor as "lame" and "mean-spirited" comes as no surprise. That conservatives were apoplectic when Wanda Sykes crossed the line in lampooning the Palin family's method failures and likened Rush Limbaugh to a terrorist was even less so. But to conclude that Saturday's White House Correspondents Dinner proved "class made an exit with the Bush Administration" is to blissfully ignore President Bush's eight-years of joking at the expense of... more Posted on May 10, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Will Jay Bybee Be Disbarred...Like Bill Clinton? As the controversy over the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture continues to fester, the fate of appeals court Judge Jay Bybee hangs in the balance. Even as the torture memo author lobbied his Nevada Congressional delegation to come to his defense, New York Republican Peter King declared, "Judge Bybee should be given a medal for what he did." And while many are calling for his impeachment and prosecution, a draft of an internal Justice Department report purportedly recommends that... more Posted on May 9, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	20 Years After Iran-Contra, Cheney Defends Torture's "Little Guys" Announcing his Christmas 1992 pardons of Caspar Weinberger and five other Iran-Contra figures, President George H.W. Bush introduced a time honored Republican scandal evasion by decrying "the criminalization of policy differences." Now 22 years after his own role in a Congressional minority report which blasted the allegations of Reagan administration abuses of power as "hysterical," Dick Cheney is back to defend the "little guys" now at the center of the Bush 43 administration's regime of detainee torture. In an interview... more Posted on May 6, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Mormons Engulfed by Marriage, Baptism, Torture Controversies While President Obama's looming commencement address at Notre Dame sadly remains controversial among a vocal minority of Catholics, it is one of America's fastest growing faiths which is at the center of three political storms this week. On Tuesday, ABC confirmed AmericaBlog's reporting that a Provo LDS member posthumously baptized Obama's late mother. Continuing his church's active role in opposing marriage equality, a Utah Congressman moved to block Washington DC's plans to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. And... more Posted on May 6, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Obama's Cinco, Bush's Dieciséis As his unfortunate joke to Jay Leno about his meager bowling skills revealed, impromptu humor is not Barack Obama's strong suit. On Monday, to laughter from attendees and the press alike, President Obama flubbed his day-early White House celebration of Cinco de Mayo by proclaiming it, "Cinco de cuatro." And that, the right-wing blogosphere insists, demonstrates that "our genius president" is the beneficiary of a fawning media that would have savaged President Bush for the same slip-up. Unlike George W.... more Posted on May 5, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Condi Rice Butchers American History. Again. Much has been made of Condoleezza Rice's use Monday of the bogus Nixon tautology in defense of torture. Falling back on Tricky Dick's infamous statement that "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal," Rice told a group of students that "by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture." But perhaps overlooked in Rice's banality of evil is her latest misuse of history. Having previously appropriated... more Posted on May 1, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	AP Blames Obama for Deficit, Ignores Bush Tax Cuts Last month, I examined how Liz Sidoti, Ron Fournier and other of the Republican bath water drinkers at the Associated Press present conservative opinion pieces to readers using headlines which wrongly begin with the word, "Analysis." Now in an another broadside deceptively titled "Fact Check," the AP pins blame for the federal budget deficit on President-then-Senator Obama and Congressional Democrats. Sadly for the myth making machine that is the AP, long before last fall's bipartisan economic bailout it was President... more Posted on April 29, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Conservatives Politicizing Crime. Again. Dating back to at least the presidency of George H.W. Bush, conservative defenders of the Republican faith have turned to the "criminalizing politics" evasion when confronted with the lawlessness and wrong-doing of their leaders. And so it is once again with the fierce debate regarding the potential prosecution of the architects of the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture. Now, after deploying the criminalization of politics defense for everything from Iran-Contra and the U.S. attorneys purge to the Scooter Libby... more Posted on April 23, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Team Peddles 9/11-Iraq Link Torture Failed to Produce Coming just days after the Obama administration released the OLC memos which justified the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture, a 200 page Senate Armed Services Committee report is producing a new wave of shocking revelations. As it turns out, intelligence and military officials were preparing the brutal interrogation program eight months before its approval by the Bush Justice Department. And in trying to sell the invasion of Iraq, the Bush torture team ordered the abuse of detainees to manufacture... more Posted on April 22, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Republicans Fume as Obama Fails to Sense Chavez' Soul That Republicans would be outraged over President Obama's handshake with the buffoonish Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was predictable in much the same way one can forecast the daily setting of the sun. But while Obama brushed off the significance of the brief encounter at the Summit of the Americas, Nevada Senator John Ensign deemed "irresponsible" what New Gingrich blasted as bolstering the "enemies of America." Apparently, President Obama failed, as George W. Bush did with Vladimir Putin, to first look... more Posted on April 20, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Mukasey Defends Bush's "Hypothetical" Torture As the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Politico reveal, the apologists for George W. Bush's regime of detainee torture are circling the wagons. While one anonymous Bush official claimed the Obama's release of the torture memos "laid it all out for our enemies," former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an op-ed written with his CIA counterpart Michael Hayden proclaimed, "The President has tied his own hand on terror." Of course, in his 1700 word screed, Mukasey never acknowledges... more Posted on April 17, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Obama Adopts GOP's "Criminalizing Politics" Defense on Torture During his confirmation hearings in January, Attorney General Eric Holder declared "waterboarding is torture." But in language eerily reminiscent of the administration Barack Obama was to replace, Holder assured Republican advocates of torture, "we don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist" with the outgoing Bush White House. Now with word that the Justice Department will not prosecute CIA personnel who used the brutal interrogation techniques he immediately banned upon taking office, President Obama is sounding like the man... more Posted on April 16, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	NSA Surveillance Illegally Targets Americans. Again. Back in February 2006, Texas Senator John Cornyn led Congressional Republicans with his famous defense of President Bush's regime of illicit NSA domestic surveillance, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead." Now, as the New York Times revealed today, one of those illegal targeted was apparently one of Cornyn's Capitol Hill colleagues. And as it turns out, this is the second time in six months the National Security Agency's lawless fishing expeditions have come to light. As... more Posted on April 16, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Before 9/11, Rumsfeld Almost Gutted the U.S. Military Despite the Obama administration's 4% increase in the Pentagon budget, Republican leaders and their conservative echo chamber are predictably issuing dire warnings about draconian cuts in defense spending and "disarming America." Of course, critics of Secretary Gates' strategic shift of resources to boost the nation's ability to fight current wars and future counterinsurgencies neglect to mention the Department's proposed budget (excluding funds for Iraq and Afghanistan) jumps next year to $534 billion, a $21 billion increase. And as it turns... more Posted on April 8, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	GOP "Death Tax" Fraud Back from the Grave In 2001, President Bush waged a largely successful campaign to curb the estate tax. But eight years after denouncing that scourge of the ultra-rich, Republicans have resurrected their "death tax" talking point, complete with its repeatedly debunked claims about the impact of estate levies on small businesses and family farms. Even as they decry the deficit spending the Bush recession has required, Congressional Republicans aided and abetted by some Democrats are pushing an estate tax windfall for the wealthiest Americans... more Posted on April 2, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Right Denounces Online Tactics It Uses Every Day Across the right-wing blogosphere, red meat reactionary Andrew Breitbart is being hailed as a visionary hero for his call to arms, "online activists on the right, unite!" In his jeremiad, Breitbart warns that a "digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing" and insists the right's "embrace of Judeo-Christian ideals" has prevented it from adopting its opponent's "propaganda techniques that were perfected in godless communist and socialist regimes." Of course, from astroturfing and paid blog commenters to... more Posted on March 30, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Growing Blowback for Bush Torture Team The past 48 hours have not been kind to the architects of the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture. In the UK, British police are investigating whether its MI5 intelligence service was complicit in the torture of former Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohammed. Meanhile, a Spanish court is poised to launch a criminal probe of Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and four other Bush administration officials over their roles in crafting the legal framework condoning U.S. torture. And in a devastating piece... more Posted on March 29, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Cocaine Use Back in the News Tabloid rumors are now making the rounds that a supposed friend of vice presidential daughter Ashley Biden is shopping a video alleged to show her using cocaine. But while any gossip (no matter how dubious) regarding the first and second families gone wild is always sure to make the news, this imbroglio is certain to refresh memories of George W. Bush's purported predilection for the white powder. After all, as former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan suggested in his book... more Posted on March 29, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Bush's Answer to Chuck Todd: Go Shopping During President Obama's press conference Tuesday, NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd demonstrated once again why he ought to return to his previous role as a political analyst. Even as Americans are losing their jobs, homes and retirement savings, Todd asked the President "why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?" Of course, Todd only needed to look to Obama's predecessor for another presidential model of sacrifice. Whether the... more Posted on March 25, 2009 \| Comments (3)

	Judd Gregg and the GOP's Triple-Double on National Debt Timing, they say, is everything. On the very night President Obama suggested Republican critics of his $3.6 trillion budget plan have a "short memory" when it comes to the sea of red ink he inherited, PBS' Frontline offered a stinging reminder in a documentary titled "Ten Trillion and Counting." Featured prominently among the Republican amnesiacs was Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), who just one day earlier slammed Obama's "banana republic" budget. Absent, of course, from Gregg's recollection for PBS was the... more Posted on March 25, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	When Presidential Humor Attacks The right-wing blogosphere is predictably abuzz in the wake of President Obama's shockingly insensitive off-the-cuff joke comparing his bowling to the Special Olympics. Following as it did Joe Biden's request at a rally last year that a wheelchair bound man "stand up," Obama's unfortunate appearance with Jay Leno isn't going to help matters for the new White House. Of course, when it comes to thoughtless presidential humor, George W. Bush was the master. As his teasing of children, the blind,... more Posted on March 20, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Rice Denies Bush Pushed Bogus Saddam - 9/11 Link On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war, Condoleezza Rice joined the long list of Bush White House figures taking to the airwaves to rewrite their boss' tragic legacy. "No one," she told Charlie Rose last night, "was arguing that Saddam Hussein somehow had something to do with 9/11." Of course, Rice was just one of many Bush administration officials making that claim before and after the invasion. And as it turns out, Ari Fleischer and George... more Posted on March 19, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Cheney Ignores Bush Pledge That Obama "Deserves My Silence" During his first post-presidential appearance yesterday in Canada, George W. Bush said he would refrain from criticizing his successor, insisting President Obama "deserves my silence." Apparently, Dick Cheney did not read the memo. In a blistering attack on Obama just two days earlier, Cheney ignored Bush's Golden Rule. And as I noted Sunday, Dick Cheney has also rejected Vice President Al Gore's precedent of respect and restraint towards a new administration. For his part, President Bush in Calgary gave a... more Posted on March 18, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	O Canada: Bush Wins over Prime Minister Poutine As part of his effort to earn "ridiculous" amounts of money and "replenish the ol' coffers," George W. Bush Tuesday headed to Calgary for his first post-presidential speech. But while lawyers and shoe throwers gathered to protest the man many north of the border now view as a war criminal, most Americans have largely forgotten that in 2000 candidate Bush scored what he thought was one his first major endorsements from fictitious Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine. During the 2000... more Posted on March 17, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Cheney Rejects Gore's Model for Ex-VP Decorum One day after Dick Cheney claimed President Obama is making the nation less safe, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs joked that CNN invited the former vice president only because "Rush Limbaugh was busy" and Cheney was "the next most popular member of the Republican cabal" available. But when CBS' Chip Reid protested the "sarcastic" tone towards the ex-VP, he apparently forgot that as vice president Dick Cheney told a sitting United States Senator to "go f**k yourself" on the... more Posted on March 16, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Cheney's "Stuff Happens" Defense of Republican Failure Just days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pooh-poohed the escalating chaos in the streets of Baghdad, saying with a shrug, "stuff happens." Now six years later, former Vice President Dick Cheney has elevated Rumsfeld's flip response to the level of theory in defending the Bush administration's eight-year record of failure. Of course, whether it was 9/11, sectarian conflict in Iraq, the rise of Hamas, the Bush recession or Hurricane Katrina, Cheney and the leading lights... more Posted on March 15, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	GOP Myths Claim Bush, Not Obama, Inherited a Recession Two days after Americans learned that U.S. household wealth plummeted by a staggering $11 trillion (an 18% drop) in 2008, the Washington Post featured a critique of President Obama's rhetoric attributing the recession to George W. Bush. But while Obama's statement that "by any measure, my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster" is inescapably true, his Republican opponents continue to stand truth on its head. It was George W. Bush and not Barack Obama, they falsely maintain, who inherited a... more Posted on March 14, 2009 \| Comments (3)

	Fleischer and Bush Still Peddling 9/11 - Saddam Link On the very day Politico detailed the concerted effort by former Bush aides to resuscitate their boss' moribund legacy, his one-time press secretary Ari Fleischer battled MSNBC's Chris Matthews on the subject of the Iraq war. But while a newly tenacious Matthews turned on a Bush White House he once praised as "good guys," Fleischer at least was consistent. Six years after the invasion of Iraq, Fleischer like President Bush continues to falsely link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks.... more Posted on March 12, 2009 \| Comments (4)

	The Distracted President: Bush, Stem Cells and 9/11 Within minutes of President Obama's reversal of George W. Bush's strict limits on federal support for embryonic stem cell research, the Republican noise machine was reliably regurgitating its "distracted president" talking point. But while House Minority Whip Eric Cantor's sound bite was faithfully repeated by Time's Mark Halperin, apparently lost in the phony debate which followed was history's most recent - and tragic - example of presidential distraction. That is, while George W. Bush was single-mindedly focused on stem cells... more Posted on March 9, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Will McCain Back Obama on Bush Signing Statements? As the New York Times revealed Monday, President Obama has instructed administration officials not to rely on the hundreds of signing statements issued by his predecessor. That move should please John McCain. After all, the Republican presidential candidate not only pledged "never to issue a signing statement." Back in 2005, McCain was doubled-crossed when President Bush issued a signing statement effectively negating the Detainee Treatment Act he authored. In his Times piece, Charlie Savage (who earlier won a Pulitzer Prize... more Posted on March 9, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Republicans, Science and Manufacturing Uncertainty On Monday, President Obama as promised reversed George W. Bush's draconian restrictions on federal support for stem cell research in the United States. But just as important as that key step was its larger message that this White House rejects the politicization of science which has dominated Republican strategy for a generation. And at the heart of that cynical subservience to business interests and social conservatives alike has been one of the Republican Party's most destructive tactics, manufacturing uncertainty. After... more Posted on March 9, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Bush to Face International Criminal Court He Opposed? The week in war crimes was a busy one. As the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing about creating a truth commission to probe the wrongdoing of the Bush administration, the Obama Justice Department released the first set of secret Bush DOJ memos which effectively eradicated constitutional and other legal protections for American citizens and suspected terrorists alike. And while the CIA revealed it had destroyed 92 videotapes of detainee interrogations, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant... more Posted on March 7, 2009 \| Comments (3)

	For Holtz-Eakin, Bush Budget Lies Equal the Truth During the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain's chief economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin took more positions on the federal budget deficit than Newt Gingrich has had wives. Within a matter of weeks last year, Holtz-Eakin alternately claimed John McCain would balance the budget by either 2013 or 2017, all before announcing in April, "I would like the next president not to talk about deficit reduction." It is that comical record which makes Holtz-Eakin's criticism of Barack Obama's pledge to halve the... more Posted on February 24, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Obama vs. Bush on Halving the Deficit As word of President Obama's proposed first budget leaked this weekend, his pledge to halve the federal budget deficit by 2013 quickly became the headline. Even after ending President Bush's practice of cooking the books to understate the red ink, Obama is targeting to slash the $1.3 trillion deficit he inherited to $533 billion by the end of his first term. For their part, conservative mouthpieces like Commentary immediately proclaimed Obama's commitment "hocus pocus." Of course, Republicans in theory should... more Posted on February 22, 2009 \| Comments (4)

	The Republicans' Next $2.7 Trillion Lie As the New York Times detailed this week, the Obama administration will end George W. Bush's fuzzy math when it comes to the federal budget and budget deficit. But by accurately reflecting the true costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare reimbursements, disaster responses and the AMT, the Obama White House is now projecting an extra $2.7 trillion increase in debt over the next decade. Which means that the groundwork has been laid for the Republicans' next lie.... more Posted on February 21, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	AP Perpetuates Myth of GOP Fiscal Discipline In the wake of Congressional Republicans' unified rejection of President Obama's just signed $787 billion economic recovery program, the AP's Liz Sidoti wrote Tuesday that "GOP tries to restore image of fiscal discipline." Sadly, that image is now as ever a myth. Far from the deficit hawks of Republican legend, the modern Republican party from Reagan forward devastated the U.S. treasury, leaving mounting debt and hemorrhaging red ink for as far as the eye can see: As the chart below... more Posted on February 17, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Cheney, Pardoned Abrams Furious Libby Wasn't Even in its last throes, the Bush administration remained an irony producing machine when it came to the PlameGate conviction of Scooter Libby. As the Daily News reported, Vice President Dick Cheney furiously lobbied President Bush to pardon his former chief of staff even hours before Barack Obama's inauguration. But for sheer humor value, Cheney's outrage over Libby's fate was exceeded by Eliot Abrams. Abrams, after all, was himself pardoned by George H.W. Bush over his Iran-Contra role. Of course,... more Posted on February 17, 2009 \| Comments (4)

	Canada Fitting Choice for First Bush Speech Back in 2007, President Bush described his future after the White House. "I'll give some speeches," he said, "just to replenish the ol' coffers." As the Dallas Morning News revealed Thursday, Bush will collect his first speaking fees on March 17 at an invitation-only event in Calgary, Alberta. As it turns out, it is altogether fitting that Bush travel to Canada for his first post-presidential address. After all, in March 2000 then-Governor Bush accepted the glowing endorsement - albeit fictitious... more Posted on February 13, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	"Unless Otherwise Directed" in Iraq Plugging his new book The Gamble on the Iraq surge, the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks offers a jaw-dropping account of the critical decision to pay off Sunni insurgents. Contrary to George W. Bush's "decider" myth, it was David Petraeus who simply informed the President of that defining change in tactics the General implemented on his own in 2006. As it turns out, from Paul Bremer's catastrophic disbanding of the Iraqi army in 2003 to key elements of the surge itself,... more Posted on February 11, 2009 \| Comments (3)

	Rove Lies About Leak-Proof Bush White House As recounted in the Los Angeles Times today, Karl Rove last week laughably claimed of the Bush White House, "we didn't leak." Of course, Valerie Plame, the covert CIA operative outed by the administration over its bogus claim that Iraq sought yellowcake in Niger, can attest to Rove's lie. As it turns out, Team Bush and its allies leaked classified national security information all the time, almost always for partisan political advantage. And while the conservative echo chamber sought medals... more Posted on February 10, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Hoekstra Just Latest Republican to Leak Security Secrets As CQ Politics first reported yesterday, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) leaked word of his delegation's secret trip to Iraq. Hoekstra, who in 2006 decried "unauthorized disclosures of classified information [which] only help terrorists and our enemies - and put American lives at risk," used Twitter to inadvertently announce the presence of high-ranking American officials in Baghdad. As it turns out, Pete Hoekstra is just the latest Republican politician to reveal classified national security information in recent... more Posted on February 7, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Remember When: Congress Passes $1.4 Trillion Economic Package As President Obama finally starts to fight for his economic stimulus bill, roadblock Republicans in the Senate continue to decry the price tag. While John Thune (R-SD) described how many times $1 trillion worth of $100 bills would circle the earth, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proclaimed "Americans can't afford a trillion-dollar mistake." Of course, back in 2001, the GOP had no qualms (along with some invertebrate Democrats) in passing George W. Bush's much larger $1.4 trillion tax cut package.... more Posted on February 6, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Obama Admits Own, Bush's Mistakes There can be little doubt that yesterday was the worst day of the fledgling Obama presidency. In a matter of hours, the President saw two key nominees undone by their tax woes. The surprising implosion of Tom Daschle then proceeded to consume an Obama media offensive originally intended to pressure obstructionist Senate Republicans blocking the urgently needed stimulus bill. But even as he wrestled with problems largely of his own making, Barack Obama reminded Americans why they voted for him... more Posted on February 4, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Remembering Bush-Style Bipartisanship on the Economy With Senate Republicans threatening a filibuster over the President economic stimulus package, the Washington Post on Monday offered its assessment that "as Obama talks of bipartisanship, definitions vary." For the likes of Rush Limbaugh, that definition is George W. Bush. As Bush showed in 2001, bipartisanship on the economy meant jamming his catastrophic $1.4 trillion tax cut package down the throats of Congress largely unchanged, backed by many pliable Democrats. For the Republican leadership and their newly anointed spokesman Rush... more Posted on February 3, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	2001 Flashback: Dems Vote for $1.35 Trillion Bush Tax Cut For those keeping score, Wednesday's final was Immovable Object 1, Irresistible Force 0. For all of his unprecedented outreach to Republican leaders on his economic stimulus package passed by the House yesterday - the poetry of post-partisanship, larding the bill with business tax provisions he opposed, meeting three times with GOP leaders, a rare presidential trip to Capitol Hill - Barack Obama was rewarded with no Republican votes. And if Mark Halperin is to be believed, Obama's shutout yesterday is... more Posted on January 29, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Latest GOPer to Show Democrats Better for the Economy On Friday, the New York Times provided a jaw-dropping analysis of the dismal state of the economy under George W. Bush. Just days after the Washington Post documented that Bush presided over the worst eight-year economic performance in the modern American presidency, the Times charted his historic failure in expanding GDP, producing jobs and fueling stock market growth. As it turns out, Bush is just the latest Republican to confirm the maxim that Wall Street and the economy overall almost... more Posted on January 24, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Cheney Should Smile as Obama Tells GOP , "I Won" Staying true to his commitment of bipartisanship, President Obama today hosted Congressional Republican leaders to discuss his proposed $825 billion economic recovery package. But while Obama listened to the GOP team air both its grievances and its alternative proposals, the President also gently reminded his Republican guests, "I won." And as Congress considers the Obama stimulus program, that's a message the Republicans should remember well from Dick Cheney eight years ago. As Politico detailed, Obama summed up the economic crisis... more Posted on January 23, 2009 \| Comments (6)

	Obama Reverses Bush Course on Reproductive Rights When it comes to Americans' reproductive rights, it's amazing what a difference one week - and one new president - makes. On Sunday, President Bush offered a final parting gift to anti-abortion extremists in the form of "National Sanctity of Human Life Day." But by Thursday, President Barack Obama marked the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade by declaring "I remain committed to protecting a woman's right to choose." And on Friday, Obama will reverse... more Posted on January 23, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Boehner Recycles GOP's "Club Gitmo" Talking Point On the very day President Obama signed an executive order calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center within one year, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) regurgitated one of the GOP's tried and untrue talking points in its defense. Claiming the facility "has more comforts than a lot of Americans get," Boehner is just the latest Republican to present that blight on America's international standing as "Club Gitmo." At a press conference today, Boehner rejected the notion... more Posted on January 22, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Blocking Holder Cornyn's Latest Defense of Bush Crimes Less than a week into the Obama presidency, Texas Senator John Cornyn has emerged as the new face of the obstructionist Republican Party in Congress. Rejecting President Obama's calls for a new spirit of cooperation, Cornyn on Tuesday delayed the inevitable confirmation of Secretary of State Clinton. The next day, Cornyn pushed back the confirmation of Eric Holder as Attorney General by at least a week out in hopes of a extorting a pledge not to pursue torture prosecutions against... more Posted on January 22, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Bookends Presidency with Jesus, Life Day Proclamations When he famously proclaimed Christ his favorite philosopher ("because he changed my heart") during a 1999 Republican debate, George W. Bush was signaling the outsized role the religious right would play in his presidency. Now as his disastrous tenure in the White House draws to a close, President Bush has offered Christian conservatives a final parting gift in the form of "National Sanctity of Human Life Day." As it turns out, that January 18, 2009 goodbye kiss to anti-abortion extremists... more Posted on January 19, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Bush's Farewell Conflation of 9/11 and Iraq In his predictably self-absorbed farewell address to the nation, President George W. Bush grudgingly acknowledged, "There are things I would do differently if given the chance." But as he demonstrated last night, rejecting his repeated linkage of the 9/11 attacks to his war on Iraq is not among them. Even as Bush and Vice President Cheney prepare to slink off into the sunset, their duplicitous conflation of Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein is destined to outlive their... more Posted on January 16, 2009 \| Comments (2)

	Mocking Obama, Right Lauds Bush as Abraham Lincoln With Barack Obama's inauguration just days away, the conservative commentariat is outraged about comparisons between the 44th president and the 16th, Abraham Lincoln. The true successor to the Great Emancipator, the right-wing noise machine continues to insist, is George W. Bush. And as it turns out, no one has made that comical analogy more frequently - or forcefully - than Bush himself. Over at CQ, guest columnist Richard Connor is just the latest to echo the right-wing line that "history... more Posted on January 15, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Still Peddling Myth He Inherited a Recession During a final press conference characterized by his trademark petulance, George W. Bush repeated the myth that opened his presidency. Defending his failed stewardship of the economy, President Bush falsely claimed Monday, "I inherited a recession." Sadly for the first MBA president, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the same NEBR which declared the current Bush recession began in December 2007, concluded his first started in March 2001. Of course, that didn't stop the double-dipping President Bush from pretending otherwise.... more Posted on January 13, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	George W. Bush, the "Nobody Could've Predicted" President In an interview Thursday with the AP, Vice President Cheney neatly summarized the failed Bush presidency. Comparing the financial meltdown and implosion of the American economy with the 9/11 attacks, Cheney insisted, "I don't think anybody saw it coming." As it turns out, from 9/11, sectarian conflict in Iraq and the election of Hamas to the Bush recession and the drowning of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the leading lights of the Bush administration claimed they never saw it coming.... more Posted on January 12, 2009 \| Comments (3)

	Bush May Struggle to "Replenish the Ol' Coffers" As he prepares to slink into the sunset, George W. Bush is like a giddy child when it comes to his future presidential library. While acknowledging this week that the institution won't be a "George Bush is a wonderful person center", he said, "It will be cool-looking." But when it comes to his plans for a post-presidential windfall from giving speeches and writing a memoir, it appears the historically unpopular Bush may struggle to "replenish the 'ol' coffers." That objective,... more Posted on January 11, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Cheney's Lesson for Obama on the Economy His inauguration just days away, President-elect Barack Obama is facing friendly fire over his economic stimulus plan. With today's grim news that unemployment skyrocketed to 7.2% in December came rumblings of discontent from economist Paul Krugman, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a bevy of Democratic Senators worried that Obama's proposed recovery package is too timid given both the scope of the crisis and his overwhelming mandate from the American people. But in addition to heeding the words of his allies,... more Posted on January 9, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	DOJ to Prosecute New York Times over NSA Story? In a Newsweek exclusive three week ago, former Justice Department official Thomas Tamm revealed his role in helping the New York Times make public President Bush's program of illegal domestic surveillance. Now Salon's Glenn Greenwald has details on the DOJ's efforts to punish the whistleblower. And as it turns out (and as I suggested back in 2007), the Bush administration's ultimate target may be the New York Times itself. As Greenwald spells out today, the Justice Department investigation is not... more Posted on January 7, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	Yoo, Bolton and Saltsman Lead GOP Irony Machine Beaten and battered, the Republican Party long ago was reduced to an irony-producing machine. But for sheer productivity, Monday's hypocrisy generation by leading lights of the conservative movement was impressive. In the span of 24 hours, would-be RNC chairman and distributor of "Barack the Magic Negro" Chip Saltsman announced his party needed to improve its outreach to minority communities. Meanwhile, John Yoo and John Bolton, two men who helped gut the Geneva Conventions, called for Congress to uphold its role... more Posted on January 6, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Laura Bush Memoir Tops List of Upcoming GOP Books On Monday, the Scribner division of publishing giant Simon & Schuster announced it had signed a book deal with First Lady Laura Bush. While her husband and his former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have each so far failed to secure publishers for their respective memoirs, Laura Bush's "intimate account" of her eight years in the White House is scheduled for release in 2010. As it turns out, the First Lady's memoir is just the first of a torrent of books... more Posted on January 5, 2009 \| Comments (1)

	Loyal Bushie O'Beirne Protests Obama Changes at the Pentagon 10 days ago, the Obama transition team notified about 90 of the Pentagon's 250 Bush political appointees that their services would no longer be needed after Inauguration Day. But despite DoD spokesman Geoff Morrell's declaration that holdover Republican Defense Secretary Robert Gates was "absolutely satisfied" with way the transition was being handled, one loyal Bushie at the Pentagon was anything but. Jim O'Beirne - the same Jim O'Beirne who famously populated the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad with Republican campaign... more Posted on January 1, 2009 \| Comments (0)

	"I Don't Recall Remembering" - The Alberto Gonzales Story During April 2007 Senate testimony about his role in the purge of U.S. attorneys, Alberto Gonzales famously explained, "that I don't recall remembering." Now comes word that the former Attorney General is writing a tell-nothing memoir designed to salvage his irreparably damaged reputation. Judging from his interview today in the Wall Street Journal, Gonzales has rediscovered his memory, if not the truth. Gonzales' self-serving historical revisionism when it comes to rubber-stamping President Bush's illegal NSA domestic surveillance, authorizing the torture... more Posted on December 31, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Administration Slashed Probes of Stock Fraud As the fallout from the meltdown of the American financial system continues to poison the U.S. economy, the laissez-faire dogma and deregulatory zeal of the Bush administration rank high among the usual suspects responsible for it. Just days after the New York Times and the White House exchanged shots over the President's key role in the cascading calamity, a new study from Syracuse University revealed that investigations for stock fraud by the Bush SEC and Justice Department have virtually disappeared.... more Posted on December 28, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Gaza Tensions Highlight Bush's Broken Peace Promise In January, George W. Bush famously predicted he would broker a Middle East peace by the end of his presidency. Now with Israel and Hamas on the brink of another confrontation in Gaza, Bush's pledge of a two-state solution is just the latest failure of his disastrous tenure in the White House. Tensions between Israeli and Hamas forces have been escalating since the expiration last week of a six-month truce negotiated by Egypt. The retaliatory tit-for-tat has included Israeli strikes... more Posted on December 26, 2008 \| Comments (4)

	Begging Libby's Pardon When President Bush issued holiday pardons for 19 miscreants past and present on Tuesday, former Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby wasn't among them. But with the two year campaign by right-wing pundits, GOP politicos and even Republican White House hopefuls now reaching a crescendo, Libby may yet get his slate wiped clean by the outgoing President. And to be sure, nothing in George W. Bush's past statements would suggest the Plamegate felon won't get the same Weinberger treatment the President's father... more Posted on December 24, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	The Heart and Soul of George W. Bush Even before entering the White House, George W. Bush used "heart and soul" as his measure of the man. In 1999, then-candidate Bush famously proclaimed Christ to be his favorite philosopher, "because he changed my heart." Last week, Bush tried to bookend his disastrous presidency by declaring, "I didn't compromise my soul." But as repeatedly revealed by his ringing endorsements of criminals and con men, tyrants and thugs, the unethical and the incompetent, Bush's ability to know hearts and sense... more Posted on December 21, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Award Winner Colson on Watergate Source Mark Felt The death today of Mark Felt, the Washington Post's legendary "Deep Throat" source during the Watergate scandal, capped two weeks which spurred inevitable comparisons between the lawbreaking of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Felt's passing followed days after Newsweek identified former DOJ official Thomas Tamm as the whistleblower who brought President Bush's illegal NSA domestic surveillance to the light of day. As it turns out, that revelation came less than a week after Bush bestowed the Presidential Citizens Medal... more Posted on December 19, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	The Next 10 Bush Midnight Regulations As the clock ticks down on his failed presidency, George W. Bush has issued a torrent of midnight regulations. Whether the topic is curbing consumer safety and product liability lawsuits, mining on public lands, mountain-top removal, endangered species, clean water or power plant emissions, Bush will try to saddle Barack Obama with last-minute rule changes invariably favoring business interests over health and environmental concerns. With other difficult-to-undo policy pronouncements, faith-based charities receiving federal funds now have Bush's blessing to discriminate... more Posted on December 17, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	The "So What?" President In a final effort to rehabilitate his irredeemably sullied reputation, President Bush made surprise visits this weekend to Iraq and Afghanistan. But far from being his valedictory tour as commander-in-chief, a 24 hour span only cemented his legacy of failure. During a press conference in Baghdad Sunday, an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at Bush, the same signal of disdain directed at Saddam Hussein five years earlier. And in an interview on ABC Monday, George W. Bush encapsulated his fiasco... more Posted on December 16, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	NSA Domestic Surveillance Whistleblower Comes Forward Three years after the New York Times first revealed the Bush administration's program of illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA, whistleblower Thomas Tamm has acknowledged his role in making public the President's lawbreaking. In its expose Sunday, Newsweek details how the former Justice Department official came to discover the White House's violations of the FISA law and reluctantly decided to turn to the Times. Whether or not Tamm is ultimately arrested for his revelations, the same voices in President Bush's... more Posted on December 14, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush's Final Double Standard on Religious Discrimination In the last throes of his failed presidency, George W. Bush has been nothing if not consistent with his flurry of midnight regulations. Whether the topic is mining on public lands, mountain-top removal, endangered species, clean water or power plant emissions, Bush will try to saddle Barack Obama with last-minute rule changes invariably favoring business interests over health or environmental concerns. But in one area, President Bush is cementing a glaring if predictable double-standard. While faith-based charities receiving federal funds... more Posted on December 13, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	Obama Recycles Bush's "Ongoing Investigation" Talking Point Over the past eight years, perhaps no two words came to encapsulate the ethical failings and rampant lawlessness of President Bush than "ongoing investigation." From the Valerie Plame affair and the U.S. attorneys purge to countless other scandals, Bush administration officials deployed the "ongoing investigation" dodge as a shield against charges of criminality reaching the highest levels of the White House. Which is why hearing Bush's tried and untrue sound bite coming from President-Elect Obama in response to the Blagojevich... more Posted on December 10, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Bagging Blagojevich or How the Right Learned to Love Patrick Fitzgerald News this morning that U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has indicted Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich predictably brought cheers from the conservative chattering classes. Blagojevich's arrest over the "pay for play" Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama and myriad other jaw-dropping corruption schemes Fitzgerald simply deemed "staggering" led the right-wing Hot Air blog among others to proclaim "Fitzmas arrives early this year." Of course, when the crime was obstruction and perjury over the outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame as political... more Posted on December 9, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush and the "Lovable Loser" Effect While George W. Bush's ham-handed legacy project got off to a bumpy start last week, the lamest of lame duck presidents got some good news from Gallup. In an analysis published Wednesday, Gallup revealed that lame duck presidents usually see their approval ratings rise in the weeks between their successor's election and inauguration. Noting that the President has experienced a small bump in his approval ratings since Election Day, the Los Angeles Times led the way in proclaiming, "Americans start... more Posted on December 8, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Defends Use of Bogus Saddam Link to 9/11 In the waning days of his failed presidency, George W. Bush has launched a quixotic reclamation project to salvage his irreparably tarnished reputation. Sadly, that effort stumbled out of the gate earlier this week when the President and Karl Rove couldn't get their stories straight as to whether Bush would have launched his war on Iraq had he known with certainty that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. But when it comes to his repeated use of... more Posted on December 5, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Next for Bush: Fight AIDS or Fill the Coffers? During the first of what promises to be many attempts to resurrect his moribund reputation, President Bush in an interview with ABC's Charles Gibson offered a tantalizing glimpse of his life after the White House. Bush spoke glowingly of being able to "go help people deal with malaria or AIDS" before quickly adding, "I'm not suggesting that's what I'm going to do." Of course, his hesitation at doing good should come as no surprise. After all, in September 2007, George... more Posted on December 4, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush, Rove Get Stories Crossed on WMD and Iraq From part-time CNN analyst and full-time Dick Cheney hagiographer Stephen Hayes comes word that Karl Rove is spearheading a "Bush legacy project." If so, Rove and Bush might start with getting their stories straight on the Iraq war and whether it was the right course for the United States in the absence of weapons of mass destruction. On Tuesday, Rove did his part in the resurrection of his former client's moribund reputation. As the Huffington Post detailed, Rove during a... more Posted on December 3, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	New WMD Report Echoes 2001 Panel's Warnings on Terrorism Even as Barack Obama was introducing his national security team to the nation Monday, Americans learned of a chilling new report detailing the scope of the global threat of weapons of mass destruction. Dramatically titled "World at Risk," the study led by former Senators Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jim Talent (R-MO) predicted a better than even chance that the world would experience a WMD attack within the next five years. As if President-Elect Obama didn't already have enough to worry... more Posted on December 2, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Sweeping Bush Rule to Limit Abortion, Birth Control Access During a discussion of abortion in the final presidential debate, Republican John McCain shocked millions of Americans with his sneering remarks and derisive air quotes when it came to the "health of the mother." Now as he prepares to leave office, President George W. Bush is making that condescension towards American women the law of the land. His eleventh hour so-called "right of conscience" regulation would allow health care workers of all stripes to refuse to provide abortion services, artificial... more Posted on December 2, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush's Economic Crisis and the Myth of the Clinton Recession It's official. According to a statement from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the United States has been in a recession since December 2007. But while that conclusion from the non-governmental NEBR differs from the traditional definition of two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction, by any accounting the Bush recession will be well underway by the end of this year. And by either measure, the conservative talking point of a Clinton recession "inherited by George W. Bush" remains a myth.... more Posted on December 2, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Five More Signs of the Deepening Bush Recession On Wednesday, President-Elect Obama and President Bush provided a study in contrasts in their respective responses to the American economic crisis. In Chicago, Obama unveiled a new economic recovery advisory board to be led by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. Back in Washington, George W. Bush pardoned a Thanksgiving turkey. But as the lame duck poses with a turkey at the White House, a cascade of foul economic indicators provided five more signs of the deepening Bush recession. The bad... more Posted on November 26, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Recession, Not Jawbone, Drives Down Oil Prices In the pantheon of his presidential failures, the utter inability of former Texas oilman George W. Bush to influence OPEC and the price of oil stands out among the most predictable - and ironic. While gas has dipped below $2 a gallon and a barrel of oil has plummeted almost $100 since its record high in July, those developments owe nothing to George W. Bush's famous 1999 boast that he would "jawbone" his friends in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia into... more Posted on November 25, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	The Decline and Fall of the First MBA President If nothing else, George W. Bush is an irony-producing machine. After all, the collapse of the American economy, perhaps the enduring legacy of Bush's tenure in the White House, was presided over by the man many once lauded as the nation's "first MBA President." Now with the Bush recession deepening into a crisis of historic proportions, "MBA President" has joined expressions like "mission to Mars", "weapons of mass destruction" and "we do not torture" among the cruel jokes of the... more Posted on November 23, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Grim New GDP Forecasts Show Deepening Bush Recession In his sober column today decrying President Bush's lame-duck abdication of leadership, Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman fretted, "The prospects for the economy look much grimmer now than they did as little as a week or two ago." Make that 24 hours. Just one day after I compiled the dismal numbers for the mushrooming Bush recession, startling new forecasts for gross domestic product (GDP) show the economic crisis will be even longer and deeper than initially feared. U.S. GDP... more Posted on November 21, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Measuring the Bush Recession As the American economy plunges deeper into crisis, the conservative chattering classes are hoping for a replay of their 2001 blame game. Having successfully perpetuated the myth that President Bush "inherited a recession" from Bill Clinton, right-wing mouthpieces from Rush Limbaugh to Fred Barnes began blaming Barack Obama for the Bush recession literally within hours of his election. But as a quick glance at the data shows, across virtually economic indicator from GDP, unemployment and consumer confidence to home prices,... more Posted on November 20, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	The National Review's Nazi Self-Parody As Georgia Congressman Paul Broun learned last week, politicians and pundits of all stripes should resist the temptation to compare their opponents to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Apparently, the staunch conservatives at the National Review didn't get the memo. Facing both conservative calamity at the polls and defections in its own ranks, the Review's Deroy Murdock suggested that a 1930's Nazi-style purge is just what the doctor ordered for the Republican Party. As the New York Times detailed Monday,... more Posted on November 17, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Palin, Like Bush, Slanders Democrats on Terrorism With each passing day, Sarah Palin resembles more and more "George Bush in lipstick." Two days ago, she like George W. Bush in 2000 was duped by Canadian pranksters posing as foreign leaders. And today, Palin like President Bush in 2006 essentially accused her Democratic opponents of being terrorist sympathizers. Palin's slander came during a speech in Missouri. Claiming that Democrats want to slash defense spending, John McCain's running mate picked up his earlier treason charge and amplified it: "What... more Posted on November 3, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Palin, Like Bush in 2000, Duped by Canadian Pranksters Given her Neanderthal social views and staggering ignorance of foreign affairs, it's no surprise that many have dubbed Sarah Palin "George Bush in Lipstick." Now, eight years after a Canadian comic duped then-Governor Bush into accepting the endorsement of a mythical prime minister in Ottawa, John McCain's running mate has suffered a similar fate. In even more spectacularly embarrassing fashion, as it turns out, Sarah Palin was punked by a prank call from a Montreal radio host posing as French... more Posted on November 1, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush's Final Campaign '08 Disappearing Act Zero and 26. Those two numbers tell the tale when it comes to the toxic effects of President Bush on the candidacies of John McCain and his Republican colleagues. Zero is the number of public appearances Bush has made on behalf of GOP candidates this election cycle. 26 is the number of seconds George W. Bush and John McCain have been seen together in public since McCain earned the President's endorsement in March. And as the New York Times and... more Posted on November 1, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	In Final Days, Bush Bypasses Laws on Privacy and Hiring Discrimination Even in its last throes, the Bush administration continues its uninterrupted lawlessness. As two recent stories by Charlie Savage of the New York Times revealed, President Bush ignored Congressional statutes requiring privacy disclosures by his Department of Homeland Security and non-discrimination in hiring by faith-based groups receiving federal funds. In twice turning his back on the rule of law, Bush again resorted to his favorite executive power-grabbing tools, the signing statement and "interpretation" by the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel.... more Posted on October 29, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain Attacks Bush for Economic Policies They Share One day after proclaiming on Meet the Press that he and George W. Bush share a common philosophy, John McCain took to a stage in Cleveland Monday to attack the President's economic policies. As it turns out, of course, when it comes to ideology and policy on the economy, John McCain and George W. Bush are virtually indistinguishable. The feebleness of McCain's effort to distance himself from Bush was revealed in its brevity. Despite the AP's headline that "McCain says... more Posted on October 27, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Remembering George W. Bush at the Al Smith Dinner On Thursday, candidates John McCain and Barack Obama took a break from the down and dirty battles of the election to poke fun at each other during the annual Al Smith dinner in New York. But if McCain and Obama's night of graciousness and good-natured ribbing was a welcome break from the highly-charged campaign, it also served as a reminder of George W. Bush's all-too-revealing remarks at the same event eight years earlier. As he showed then, Bush's attempts at... more Posted on October 17, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	"Comeback McCain" Recycles 2004 Convention Speech for Bush After a weekend of rampant speculation that Monday would produce yet another incarnation of John McCain, the only comeback from his campaign appears to be the text of his 2004 speech to the Republican National Convention. McCain's latest transformation - after McCain the Goldwater disciple, the Reagan footsoldier, the Maverick, the neocon, the experienced one, the change agent, Maverick II and, most recently, the race-baiting smear merchant - is once again that of "the fighter." And if you think you've... more Posted on October 13, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	ABC Exposes GOP's "Give Me Death" Defense of NSA Spying Back in December 2005, Texas Senator John Cornyn pioneered what became the Republican Party's "give me death" defense of President Bush's program of illegal NSA domestic surveillance. "None of your civil liberties matter much," Cornyn announced, "after you're dead." As ABC revealed in its shocking expose of NSA personnel monitoring the private phone calls of Americans abroad, your civil liberties don't matter much while you're living, either. Despite President Bush's repeated assurances that "I'm mindful of your civil liberties," NSA... more Posted on October 9, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	McCain Echoes Bush on the Joys of Dictatorship From the beginning of the general election race, the central challenge facing John McCain has been to distance himself from the wildly unpopular occupant of the White House. In June, McCain whined that "you will hear every policy of the President described as the Bush-McCain policy." The previous month, McCain water carrier Lindsey Graham threw down the gauntlet for his man, "good luck making him George Bush." Sadly, McCain yesterday shot himself in the foot once again, this time by... more Posted on October 1, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Palin Adopts Bush's "Ongoing Investigation" Plamegate Dodge With each passing day, Sarah Palin's handling of TrooperGate grows more and more reminiscent of George W. Bush's management of the PlameGate affair. President Bush, after all, in October 2003 proclaimed "I want to know the truth" about who outed covert CIA operative Valerie Plame and promised to fire anyone in his administration responsible. Now, after pledging in July that voters should "hold me accountable" in the dubious firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, Sarah Palin like Bush... more Posted on September 24, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	The Bush Doctrine for Dummies, Sarah Palin Edition No safe havens for terrorists. Preventive war. Democracy expansion. Those are the three central tenets of the Bush Doctrine, the guiding theory of unilateral American foreign and national security policy since 9/11. And today, on the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin revealed she never heard of it. Emerging Thursday from her undisclosed location for her first encounter with the press, John McCain's stealth running mate displayed a shocking... more Posted on September 11, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	9/11 and Bush's Law of Bin Laden With the anniversary of the September 11 attacks once again upon us, Bush's Law of Bin Laden is also again on display. That is, in the Bush playbook, the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden is directly proportional to the threat to the President's own political standing. At the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Dana Perino played down the Bin Laden danger to her lame-duck boss' flatline political standing, if not to the American people: Q: But Osama bin... more Posted on September 11, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Eight Years Ago: Bush at the Republican Convention Across the right-wing blogosphere and conservative commentariat, the water carriers of the Republican Party can hardly contain their glee that Hurricane Gustav has washed out an appearance by the wildly unpopular President Bush at their Minnesota conclave. Over at the Weekly Standard, "gets Bush out of St. Paul" tops their list of benefits that the national disaster of Gustav brings the GOP. In the everything-is-good-news-for-McCain department, the Politico reports that "for many delegates gathering here, that's not a bad thing"... more Posted on September 1, 2008 \| Comments (4)

	McCain Camp Joins Bush and Delay: There Are No Uninsured As I've noted previously, what passes for John McCain's health care plan is virtually identical to the stillborn scheme from George W. Bush. Now, the McCain campaign has joined President Bush and indicted former House Majority Leader Tom Delay in offering a novel solution - denial - to the problem of America's 46 million uninsured. As it turns out, they simply don't exist. That's the word from the architect of John McCain's health care proposals, John Goodman. No one in... more Posted on August 28, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Bush, McCain, Rice and Romney Fail 21st Century History Test No doubt, history will not be kind to George W Bush. And to be sure, Bush is already returning the favor. Apparently stunned by the Russian assault on Georgia, President Bush forgot his invasion of "sovereign" Iraq and declared, "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century". As it turns out, John McCain, Condoleezza Rice and Mitt Romney all failed the same test on 21st century history. While unwilling to acknowledge that he had misread Vladimir Putin's soul back... more Posted on August 24, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Rice Missing Again as "Putin Determined to Strike in Georgia" One of the most enduring moments of the 9/11 Commission hearings came when Condoleezza Rice casually recalled the now infamous August 6, 2001 presidential daily brief (PDB). "I believe," she said, "the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'" Now almost exactly seven years later, Secretary of State Rice seems to have missed the warning signs once again. Having sent mixed messages to Tbilisi in July and on vacation as Russian armor poured into the country,... more Posted on August 13, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Eight Years Ago Today: Bush's Broken Promise Eights years ago today, George W. Bush uttered the now broken promise that has come to define his failed presidency. Accepting his party's nomination, Governor Bush promised to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House. But as events continue to show, a more accurate - and ironic - mantra for the lawless Bush White House would be "no controlling legal authority." At the time it was delivered, Bush's acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia was... more Posted on August 3, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Exploding Deficit Blows Up Bush's Budget Promises On Monday, the White House announced that President Bush will leave his successor an estimated $482 billion budget deficit for the next fiscal year. But that sea of red ink isn't only an indelible mark on Bush's legacy going forward. It's a reminder of one of George W. Bush most cynical ploys - and broken promises. That, of course, is his bogus 2004 pledge to halve the federal budget deficit by 2009. As he faced reelection in 2004, George W.... more Posted on July 29, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Brooks Blasts Obama But Praised Bush for "Remaking the World" That the Republican water carrier and New York Times columnist David Brooks would blast Barack Obama's Berlin speech was utterly predictable. (Kevin Drum even predicted the title of the piece, "Playing Innocent Abroad.") To be sure, by slandering Obama's call to "remake the world" with epithets including "saccharine," "treacle," and "Disney," Brooks did not disappoint. Of course, even less surprising is that back in 2005, David Brooks had only glowing praise for President Bush's democratization agenda and its audacious vision... more Posted on July 25, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	This Week in War Crimes It's been a very busy week for war crimes and war criminals. In some good news for the cause of justice and the upholding of international law, Bosnian Serb mass murder Radavan Karadzic was finally captured in Belgrade, just days after the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity in Darfur. But for Americans, those positive developments were offset by news that the Bush administration's own war crimes trials - and potential pre-emptive pardons -... more Posted on July 23, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	"All Roads Lead to Rove" - A Conversation with Don Siegelman Dominating the discussion at this weekend's Netroots Nation conference in Austin was the urgent need to restore the rule of law now under withering assault by the Bush administration. From the suspension of habeas corpus and detainee torture to warrantless wiretapping and the politicization of the Justice Department, session after session detailed the unaccountable lawlessness of the Bush White House. And to be sure, no speaker made that case more personally than former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Siegelman, sentenced to... more Posted on July 22, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Agrees with McCain High Gas Prices "Psychological" Two days ago South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford admitted "I'm drawing a blank" when asked if there are "significant economic differences" between his man John McCain and President Bush. In a White House press conference today, Bush himself offered yet another compelling argument why John McCain is his natural successor. As it turns out, both Bush and McCain now support offshore oil drilling, have a shared believe it will have not an impact for years, and are convinced... more Posted on July 15, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain Mimics Bush with Iran Jokes, Bin Laden Boasts Just one month after airing an ad declaring "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," John McCain once again joked about creating carnage in Iran. On the stump Tuesday, McCain added killing Iranians with cigarette addiction to last year's musing about "bomb bomb Iran." Whether he's yukking it up over conflict with Tehran, following Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell" or just being the "worst nightmare" of Al Qaeda and Hamas, John McCain... more Posted on July 9, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Bush's Future Civics Lesson: "Replenish the Ol' Coffers" Over at the National Review on Saturday, Kathryn Jean Lopez suggested a novel future for George W. Bush after he completes his disastrous tenure in the White House. The most unpopular President in modern times, Lopez insists, would "make an awesome high-school government teacher." But leaving aside for the moment his obvious aversion to academic study and the English language (as well as the U.S. Constitution), Bush has already made up his mind about his "post-service service." Upon leaving office,... more Posted on July 6, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Jesse Helms and the Partisan Eulogies of George W. Bush Eulogies often tell us more about the living than the deceased. With his glowing words Friday about the late Jesse Helms, George W. Bush offered a case in point. Lauding the legendary North Carolina segregationist just as he did Helms' fellow traveler Strom Thurmond only five years earlier, Bush boosted his Republican allies even in death. But as a quick comparison to his meager 2002 statement about Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone shows, President Bush is the master of the partisan... more Posted on July 4, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	This Just In From Afghanistan: Bush Doctrine Still Dead. The steady stream of bad news about Afghanistan this week served to highlight two inescapable truths regarding the conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. First, Barack Obama was right that the ongoing commitment of American forces in Iraq is preventing the United States from successfully pursuing Al Qaeda along the Pakistan frontier. Second, the Bush Doctrine - with its tenet of no safe havens for terrorists - is still dead. In Washington, President Bush acknowledged that June, which saw... more Posted on July 4, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	CBS Shows GOP "Emergency Room" Health Care Plan in Action In a disturbing report on Wednesday, CBS News offered Americans a glimpse of their health care future under President Bush, John McCain and their Republican allies. Detailing two cases of patients dying untreated and unnoticed in New York and Los Angeles emergency rooms, the story shows the exceptions that may increasingly become the rule. Call it the Republicans' "Emergency Room" health care plan. During a July 2007 visit to Cleveland, President Bush unveiled his emergency room cure for the ills... more Posted on July 3, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	"Stupidest Guy" Feith Defends Rice's "Mushroom Cloud" Back in 2003, General Tommy Franks called Bush Iraq intelligence fabulist Douglas Feith "the f**king stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Two years later, Colin Powell's one-time aide Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said of Feith "seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Defending Condoleezza Rice's - and by extension, President Bush's - pre-war "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" Iraq talking point, Douglas Feith today once again justified his critics' low opinion of him. Writing at the National Review,... more Posted on June 23, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Scott McClellan and Bush's Soprano Family Values On Friday, Scott McClellan learned the hard way that the Bush White House is a lot like the Soprano family. As HBO's legendary Jersey mobster Tony Soprano once put it, "Once you're into this family, there's no getting out." Judging by McClellan's treatment at the hands of George W. Bush's foot soldiers on the House Judiciary Committee, today's Republican Party shares the Soprano family values. Testifying about the Plamegate affair, the former White House press secretary turned tell-all author found... more Posted on June 22, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Gonzales Sacked Levin, Lied to Senate Over Torture Policies ABC News Thursday provided a new twist on Alberto Gonzales' role in the converging Bush administration torture and prosecutor purge scandals. According to ABC, the new Attorney General Gonzales in early 2005 sacked top administration lawyer Daniel Levin over his December 2004 memo declaring "torture is abhorrent," only to promise him a U.S. attorney slot to placate him. But lost in ABC's account is the fact just before he carried out his retribution against Levin, Alberto Gonzales lied to the... more Posted on June 20, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Studies Refute McCain's 30 Gitmo Recidivists Talking Point In the wake of the Supreme Court's restoration of habeas corpus rights in its Boumediene decision Friday, John McCain and his allies on the right have predictably forecast an American bloodbath at the hands of terrorists unleashed from Guantanamo. While Justice Antonin Scalia claimed the ruling would "almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," Newt Gingrich contended the Supreme Court "could cost us a city." As for McCain, he simply regurgitated a soon-to-be familiar GOP talking point, "30 of... more Posted on June 16, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain to Swim to the Gates of Hell to Catch Bin Laden During a town hall meeting in New Jersey on Friday, Republican presidential nominee John McCain reiterated his pledge to "get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." Amazingly, McCain was able to make his promise without his signature line about following Bin Laden to "the gates of hell." Even more amazing, McCain cited swimming as the skill American intelligence operatives will need to help him do it. McCain promised his Garden State audience that he, unlike George W. Bush,... more Posted on June 15, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	McCain's Sins of Military Commission On the stump in New Jersey today, John McCain launched a thundering two-pronged assault on yesterday's Supreme Court decision on habeas corpus rights for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Again raising the specter of "unaccountable judges," McCain picked up on his earlier, right-wing handbook assault against so-called judicial activism. Then turning to fear-mongering, McCain proclaimed "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country" will lead to more attacks against the American people. But lost in McCain's red-faced... more Posted on June 13, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Jon Stewart Gives Ralph Reed a Pass on Abramoff Ties On Tuesday, Jon Stewart welcomed former Christian Coalition wunderkind and Jack Abramoff scandal figure Ralph Reed to the Daily Show to pitch his new book, Dark Horse. But while the two discussed Reed's joining Scooter Libby, Bill O'Reilly and Lynne Cheney among the ranks of racy right-wing novelists, Stewart gave the disgraced lobbyist and failed Georgia Republican pol a free ride when it came to Reed's own close association with Abramoff. Ironically, Reed's Daily Show appearance came just one day... more Posted on June 11, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Lindsey Graham Decides McCain is Bush After All South Carolina Senator and John McCain water carrier Lindsey Graham did his man no favors on the Sunday talk shows. Just five days after McCain pleaded with voters during his disastrous "green screen" speech not to believe that he represents a third term for George W. Bush, Graham agreed that "John McCain is calling for an extension or maybe enhancement of the Bush policies." Amazingly, Graham's pronouncement came just one month after he dared the media and voters to equate... more Posted on June 9, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Gas Hits $4 a Gallon; Bush "Hadn't Heard That" Just a little over three months ago, President Bush declared he "hadn't heard" that gasoline would soon reach $4 a gallon. Today, the milestone anticipated by all save the President of the United States came to pass: "Drivers are paying an average of $4 for a gallon of gasoline for the first time. AAA and the Oil Price Information Service say the national average price for a gallon of regular gas rose to $4.005 overnight from $3.988. But consumers in... more Posted on June 8, 2008 \| Comments (5)

	McCain Proclaims Himself a Fool in New Ad Just three days after his calamitous "green screen" speech, John McCain today released his first general election ad, one which may prove similarly damaging. Declaring "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," McCain invited Americans to revisit his still-jaw dropping "bomb bomb Iran" joke during an April 2007 town hall meeting. As you'll remember, McCain in April 2007 famously responded to a question about when America would "send an air mail message to Tehran." Singing... more Posted on June 6, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Phase 2 Report Ends Roberts' Iraq Intel Stonewall Four years after Kansas Senator Pat Roberts triumphantly cleared the Bush administration of misusing pre-war Iraq intelligence, the Phase 2 report of the Senate Intelligence Committee he once chaired today reached a much different conclusion. After Roberts successfully stonewalled past the 2004 and 2006 elections the studies examining White House statements on the Iraqi threat and the role of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, his successor Jay Rockefeller today concluded: "The president and his advisers undertook a relentless public... more Posted on June 5, 2008 \| Comments (9)

	Olmert Deals Bush Double Defeats on Syria, Settlements On Wednesday, embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and lame duck American President George W. Bush will meet in Washington in a gathering of the walking wounded. Bush's fading hopes to secure a Middle East peace agreement before leaving office have dimmed further as scandal enveloped his Israeli counterpart. Worse still, by moving ahead with peace talks with Syria and the expansion of West Bank settlements over just the past two weks, Olmert has already dealt President Bush a double-blow.... more Posted on June 3, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	McClellan Knew About, Defended Bush Leak of Iraq NIE As FireDogLake, Huffington Post and others detail, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan revealed that it was President Bush himself who authorized the selective leaking of the 2002 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate. As he disclosed both in his book and during interviews today, McClellan says Bush admitted declassifying portions of the NIE to allow Scooter Libby to attack Joe Wilson and other administration critics in July 2003. Getting less attention, though, is McClellan's own critical role in defending President... more Posted on May 29, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	A Look Back at Scott McClellan's Greatest Hits The response from the Bush administration and its amen corner to the blistering charges in former press secretary Scott McClellan's new book has been quick, brutal and predictable. While his predecessor Ari Fleischer proclaimed himself "heartbroken" over McClellan's revelations, his eventual successor Dana Perino branded him "disgruntled." Even as Karl Rove likened the man who once lied for him to a "left-wing blogger," former Bush homeland security adviser Frances Townsend trashed McClellan as "self-serving" and "disingenuous." As for President Bush... more Posted on May 28, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	White Lies: McClellan Then and Now on Bush's Cocaine Use Among the more fascinating if less significant revelations in Scott McClellan's new book is his discussion of George W. Bush's past use of cocaine. Bush, McClellan now claims, told him he couldn't remember whether or not he used coke. That, of course, is a far cry from the response of Governor Bush offered Americans during the 2000 campaign. And as it turns out, McClellan, too, was telling the public white lies. This morning, ABC News offered McClellan's recollection of his... more Posted on May 28, 2008 \| Comments (5)

	Bush's Jawbone Fails Again For the second time in two months, President Bush's efforts to "jawbone" his Saudi friends over the cost of oil fell on deaf ears. On Friday, oil surged to a record $127 after Bush's meeting with King Abdullah failed to secure a production increase beyond the meager 300,000 barrels the Saudis previously committed to on May 10th. In all, it was just the latest dismal failure for the jawbone of the Texas oilman who campaigned on his powers of persuasion... more Posted on May 18, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	President Bush Sacrifices Golf to Aid War Effort Last year, First Lady Laura Bush said of the costs of the Iraq war for the American people, "no one suffers more than their President and I do." Now we know why. While U.S. troops were sacrificing life and limb in the battlefields of Baghdad, President Bush sacrificed...golf. In an interview today, George W. Bush made it clear that avoiding the links now was the least he could do after avoiding combat 40 years ago. As the Politico reported, the... more Posted on May 13, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Repeats Promise of Mideast Peace by January As he heads off to Israel to commemorate that nation's 60th anniversary, George W. Bush is nothing if not optimistic about the prospects for Middle East peace. Even as his negotiating partners are incapacitated by scandal and internal conflict, the lame duck President reiterated his January promise to produce an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement by the time he leaves office eight months from now. Earlier this year during his first visit to the region, Bush assured the world that his better-late-than-never... more Posted on May 13, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	The Bush Wedding Everyone Missed While all eyes this weekend were on the Crawford, Texas wedding of first daughter Jenna Bush, another Bush marriage this year has gone largely unnoticed in the press. After a stormy eight year courtship, George W. Bush and John McCain tied the knot at a March ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. During the well attended but little understood nuptials, John McCain finally promised to love, honor and obey his new partner. Committing themselves to be together "us richer... more Posted on May 12, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Mothers' Day, Global Warming and McCain's Character Campaign What do Mothers' Day and global warming have in common? Both, as it turns out, are essential ingredients in John McCain's "character" campaign for the White House. That is, given the staggering unpopularity of his party's platform and president, John McCain is now running away from both. From here on out, the McCain campaign will be about the character of the man. And on Mothers' Day this Sunday, that includes a portrait of John McCain as the good son. Appearing... more Posted on May 10, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Laura Bush Replaces Husband at Burma Cyclone Press Briefing On Monday, a nation led by a ruler with dictatorial tendencies was devastated by a storm of biblical proportions for which its government was woefully unprepared. Which may explain why the White House trotted out First Lady Laura Bush rather than her husband the president to answer questions at a press conference yesterday about the disastrous cyclone in Myanmar. Given his own cataclysmic handling of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, President Bush no doubt preferred to stay... more Posted on May 6, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Take the Lindsey Graham Challenge: "Good Luck Making McCain George Bush" The record of politicians issuing challenges to the press is not a happy one. Just before his Donna Rice scandal broke in 1987, Democratic frontrunner Gary Hart dared the media to "follow me around." The rest, as they say, is history. Now, South Carolina Senator and John McCain water carrier Lindsey Graham has issued a challenge of his own. Claiming on CNN McCain "is his own guy," Graham then threw down the gauntlet, "Good luck making him George Bush." Challenge... more Posted on May 5, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	GOP: Baghdad Still Safer Than U.S. Cities From the outset of the Iraq war, Republican leaders and their amen corner in the right-wing media have sought to calm squeamish Americans by favorably comparing the violence there to life in U.S. cities. Now, John March, a developer planning (believe it or not) a "Disneyland-style" theme park in Baghdad, says the carnage in the Iraqi capital is no different than the "drive-bys" in Southern California. But while grotesque, the analogy is not novel: it has already been repeatedly deployed... more Posted on May 5, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Townsend Joins Snow on Conservative News Network (CNN) Politico is reporting that President Bush's former homeland security adviser and current intelligence advisory board member Fran Townsend is joining CNN as a contributor. Joining former White House press secretary Tony Snow as the second Bush sycophant to join the network in the last two weeks, Townsend's addition is apparently designed to help make CNN the "right choice" during its election '08 coverage. While George W. Bush may be most disliked President in modern American history, his one-time mouthpieces are... more Posted on May 4, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	McCain, Bush Staffs Coordinate on W Separation Strategy John McCain's presidential campaign has apparently found help to battle its extreme case of Bush separation anxiety. Desperate to distance the Republican nominee from the most unpopular president in modern American history, the McCain camp is closely coordinating with the White House to create the facade of separation between John McCain and George W. Bush. As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, senior McCain advisor and GOP lobbyist extraordinaire Charlie Black detailed a close working relationship with President Bush's staff. Acknowledging that George... more Posted on May 3, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Jawbones Congress, Not OPEC, Over Oil Prices One day after the price of oil hit a record of $119 a barrel, President Bush predictably pointed the finger of blame at Congress. During his often bizarre press conference Tuesday, Bush lambasted Capitol Hill for the skyrocketing oil prices which have more than tripled during his tenure. But while the President dredged up proposals from his first term, one Bush promise was notably absent from his blame game. Yesterday, George W. Bush's campaign 2000 boast that he would "jawbone"... more Posted on April 30, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Gave Green Light for Israeli Settlements in Secret '04 Letter A hallmark of the Bush presidency has been the public disavowal of actions already taken in secret. In just the latest episode of Bush White House duplicity, the Washington Post revealed today that President Bush in 2004 secretly approved the expansion of existing Israeli settlements on the West Bank despite his stated policy to the contrary dating back to the start of his first term. As the Post details, the letter George W. Bush personally delivered to then Israeli Prime... more Posted on April 24, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Two Cheers for Jenna Bush With her presidential wedding just weeks away, First Daughter Jenna Bush will once again be the subject of celebrity and political gossip alike. Just a few years ago, the bar-hopping the Bush twin seemed destined to follow in her father's footsteps as a Republican Party Animal. As it turns out, on abstinence policy and the election of John McCain - two issues near and dear to her GOP father's heart - Jenna Bush may not be much of a Republican... more Posted on April 24, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Two New Reports Slam Bush on Iraq, Afghanistan Two new reports released Thursday offer a devastating assessment of President Bush's leadership as commander-in-chief. First, the GAO concluded that "al-Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan's border area." Then just hours later, a study from the National Defense University proclaimed the Iraq war "a major debacle" whose outcome was "in doubt." Together, they paint a damning portrait of Bush's failures in the global war on terror.... more Posted on April 18, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Approval, Consumer Confidence Hit New Lows Three new surveys released today document the steep descent of President Bush, and with him, the American economy. While Bush's approval rating reached a new low of 28% in the AP poll, three quarters of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal believe that the United States is in a recession that has yet to hit bottom. So it comes as no surprise that American consumer confidence spiraled down to its lowest level in 26 years. Of course, there was... more Posted on April 11, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	The Bush League Economy in a Picture Once in a rare while, a single image tells you everything to know about the American economy. On Wednesday, the New York Times featured a simple chart showing that President Bush has presided over the first post-World War II economic expansion in which Americans' median family income declined. If the American Dream is defined in part as each generation doing better than the one before, then the Bush League Economy can officially be declared a nightmare. David Leonhardt's devastating piece... more Posted on April 10, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Right Assails Diversity Staging at Obama Event Over at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb takes the Obama campaign to task for deploying the "diversity police" during an appearance by Michelle Obama today at Carnegie Mellon University. But while the campaign staff's efforts to produce a multi-racial backdrop may have been ham-handed, they pale in comparison to the comic Republican attempts to create the illusion of any minority support at all. As the university's student paper described it: While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the... more Posted on April 9, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Five Questions for Petraeus and Crocker In their testimony before Congress today, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker began painting a picture of American progress in Iraq. But even as the United States faces a diminishing threat from Al Qaeda thanks in part to former Sunni insurgents the U.S. has largely co-opted, American forces find themselves increasingly engaged in an intra-sectarian Shiite conflict in which Iran is seemingly backing all sides. And with General Petraeus calling for an indefinite pause in the drawdown of U.S.... more Posted on April 8, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Alphonso Jackson, We Hardly Knew Ye Among the least surprising political developments this week is the looming resignation of Bush Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson. That news comes in the wake of calls from Democratic Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) for Jackson to step down over charges of cronyism in public housing deals in Philadelphia. But as I first detailed back in May 2006, Jackson was already in hot water for past admissions that political loyalty was an essential (and,... more Posted on March 31, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Iran Brokers Basra Deal Events on the ground in Iraq continue to defy the Bush's administration's ongoing misrepresentation of the Iranian threat there. Just one day after Republican Senator Lindsay Graham wrongly claimed Iran was backing just one of the three Shiite forces in Basra comes word that Tehran brokered a deal aimed at halting the carnage there. As McClatchy, USA Today, the New York Times and others are reporting, Iraqi lawmakers traveled to Qom where a general of the Iranian Qods force helped... more Posted on March 31, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush, Cheney Embrace Iranian-Backed Hakim in Iraq On Sunday, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) showed once again that President Bush, John McCain and their conservative amen corner can't tell the players in Iraq even with a scorecard. Even as Graham proclaimed of the fighting in Basra, "the militias that we are fighting are backed by Iran," President Bush and Vice President Bush continue to embrace the largest Iranian-backed political force in Iraq, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Just days after John McCain erroneously... more Posted on March 30, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Carville Announces Clinton Loyalty Oath In the Washington Post today ("Disloyalty That Merits An Insult"), Clinton adviser James Carville gave his best Dana Perino impersonation. Defend his hyperbolic denunciation of surprise Obama endorser Bill Richardson, Carville mirrored Perino's famous "once a Bushie, always a Bushie" code of political ethics. By proclaiming loyalty a cardinal virtue above all others, James Carville sounded like a member of the very Bush administration his candidate - and her party - are trying to replace. A week ago, Carville reacted... more Posted on March 29, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	Bush's Premature Iraq Elation George W. Bush is suffering from another severe case of premature Iraq elation. That's the inescapable diagnosis after a week which featured sunny statements from the President even as Baghdad and Basra descended into chaos. On last week's fifth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, President Bush was blissfully unaware of the tumultuous three-way Shiite conflict just days in the offing. Now, Bush is portraying setbacks as proof of success and escalating violence as a sign of a healthy democracy.... more Posted on March 28, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	NYT's Lichtblau Details White House Effort to Block NSA Story In December 2005, New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau broke the shocking story of the Bush administration's program of illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA. Now, in a new book due out next week, Lichtblau details the White House's 13-month effort to block the Times' revelations of its lawlessness. And to be sure, that deceitful stonewalling and the threats of retribution that followed show a Bush administration determined to conceal its criminality at any cost. In excerpts... more Posted on March 28, 2008 \| Comments (4)

	Moqtada Al-Sadr Answers the Wall Street Journal In another unfortunate case of premature Iraq elation, the Wall Street Journal last week celebrated the decline and fall of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr. Echoing the "bring 'em on" taunt of their former boss, ex-Bush advisers Dan Senor and Roman Martinez triumphantly asked "Whatever Happened to Moqtada?" But as the renewed turmoil in Baghdad and violent chaos in Basra suggest, the answer may be, "he's back." The cease fire declared last summer by Sadr's Mahdi army militia has been... more Posted on March 25, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	White House Scrubs Web Site on the Economy What a difference a week makes, especially when it comes to the rollercoaster American economy. No where is the impact of looming recession and the near-meltdown on Wall Street clearer than on the White House web site. Just days ago, the site boasted about President Bush's glorious stewardship of the U.S. economy. Now, the White House's economy web page reflects the mad scramble to ward off the twin crises of the housing market and the financial system. A cached version... more Posted on March 20, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Abraham Lincoln Bush Over the course of its five-year fiasco in Iraq, the Bush administration in vain has tried to sell this conflict by referencing glorious American wars past. Its revisionist history has included failed parallels to the American Revolution, World War II, Korea, the Cold War and even Vietnam. Today, Vice President Cheney joined the conservative chorus comparing the calamity in Iraq to the U.S. Civil War. And in that ever-growing White House tall tale, of course, George W. Bush is Abraham... more Posted on March 19, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Wrong Again: McCain Proclaims Al Qaeda-Iran Alliance As I documented just two day ago, John McCain has been wrong from the start about virtually every aspect of the Iraq war. From Ahmed Chalabi and Saddam's WMD to the prospects of Americans troops being greeting as liberators and the certainty of a "rapid" U.S. victory in "three weeks," John McCain had it wrong at every turn. Today in Jordan, the Republican presidential nominee made a much fundamental - and shocking - mistake. Would-be commander-in-chief John McCain literally doesn't... more Posted on March 18, 2008 \| Comments (5)

	Cheney in Iraq: Back and Wronger Than Ever! Just one day after John McCain's drive-by photo op in Baghdad, Vice President Cheney too made a surprise visit to Iraq. Announcing "it's good to be back," Cheney no doubt reminded Americans that John McCain represents the third term Bush agenda on Iraq. And to be sure, Dick Cheney's latest pronouncements reminded Iraqis on one of their own, former Saddam Minister of Information Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, also known as Baghdad Bob. Wrong at almost every turn in the past, the... more Posted on March 17, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Forever Wrong: Five Years of John McCain on Iraq Just in time for the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain made an unannounced visit to Iraq. While McCain deemed the visit a "fact-finding" mission, his secret visit to Baghdad is just part of an extended photo opportunity in the Middle East and Europe designed to highlight his national security credentials. Unfortunately for McCain, his excellent Baghdad adventure could well produce the opposite effect. After all, this week's looming anniversary highlights that at almost... more Posted on March 16, 2008 \| Comments (10)

	Bush Laughs At Us, Not With Us. Again. On Saturday night, George W. Bush showed once again that his sense of humor, and not his dull eyes, provides a window into his soul. It provides Americans with rare, fleeting glimpses into the dark and twisted character of a man who views with disdain the citizens he was elected to serve. If Presidents Kennedy and Reagan turned to self-deprecating humor to charm the press and disarm critics, in Bush's hands the joke is both a weapon to attack enemies... more Posted on March 14, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	Bush Fails to "Jawbone" the Dollar Just one week after his latest dismal failure to "jawbone" OPEC into boosting oil production, President Bush yesterday tried his hand at talking up the plummeting U.S. dollar. Sadly, just 24 hours later, the greenback plunged to record lows against the euro and the Japanese yen. Bush's Reverse Midas Touch, it seems, has now infected both the oil and currency exchanges. Sounding more like an Econ 101 drop-out than a Harvard MBA, Bush on Wednesday declared he "absolutely" favored a... more Posted on March 13, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Three Iraq Stories, More Conservative Exploding Heads The life of the American conservative is a perpetual crisis of cognitive dissonance, especially when it comes to the run-up to the Iraq war. So three new stories this week are certain to cause right-wing minds to explode, or at least to seek the safe harbor of denial. First came word of a new book from Rumsfeld aide Douglas Feith revealing that President Bush declared "war is inevitable" in December 2002, months before UN weapons inspectors produced their report on... more Posted on March 11, 2008 \| Comments (4)

	McCain to Bush in 2000: "Take Your Hands Off Me" In his eternal quest for the White House, John McCain has demonstrated repeatedly that no indignity suffered at the hands of George W. Bush is too great to be forgiven. To appease conservative GOP primary voters, McCain reversed many of his long-held positions in order to appropriate the third term Bush agenda. And yesterday, McCain accepted Bush's Rose Garden endorsement as coming from" a man who I have a great admiration, respect and affection" for. But while John McCain now... more Posted on March 6, 2008 \| Comments (6)

	Jawbone of an Ass: Bush's Utter Failure with OPEC In the pantheon of his presidential failures, the utter inability of former Texas oilman George W. Bush to influence OPEC and the price of oil stands out as the most predictable - and ironic. Just one day after OPEC members rejected President Bush's call to boost crude production, oil jumped to the stratospheric level of $105 a barrel. This latest indignity caps seven years without results for the man who once boasted he would "jawbone" his friends in Kuwait and... more Posted on March 6, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	Failed Bush Covert Action Fueled Hamas in Gaza Even as Israel began withdrawing its troops following its latest clashes with Hamas forces in Gaza, Vanity Fair published a shocking account of how the Bush administration bungling fueled the crisis there. Covert U.S. backing of armed Fatah units helped spark the bloody civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza. But given that Condoleeza Rice's official State Department Middle East Peace Process timeline doesn't even mention Hamas, the disastrous Bush intervention seems much less surprising. Today's Vanity Fair... more Posted on March 3, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Gaza Violence Puts Bush Peace Promise in Peril 324. That's the number of days left for George W. Bush to deliver on his January pledge of a signed Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. But what seemed like Bush's cockeyed optimism just weeks ago now verges on fantasy. With Israeli forces and Hamas fighters battling in Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday announced the suspension of peace talks. As a result, President Bush's better-late-than-never engagement seems certain to be added to his eve-growing list of foreign policy failures. Bush's boast... more Posted on March 2, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain Joins Bush in War on "Democrat Party" With each passing day, John McCain seemingly deepens his commitment to a third term Bush agenda. As the GOP primaries approached, McCain experienced just-in-time reversals on making the Bush tax cuts permanent and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Like President Bush, McCain butchers history in comparing a 100-year presence in Iraq to the U.S. defense of allies like South Korea. And now, John McCain is even mimicking the adolescent petulance of George W. Bush in using the "Democrat Party"... more Posted on February 29, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Relives 2000, Proclaims Ignorance of Medvedev In a rare moment of humility, President Bush during this morning's press conference acknowledged that he knew little about Russian President Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Responding to NBC reporter David Greg's dubious assertion that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama seemed to know much about Medvedev, Bush owned up to his own ignorance, "I don't know much about Medvedev, either." President Bush's sheepishness is justified. After all, in the run-up to his 2000 election, then candidate George W.... more Posted on February 28, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	WaPo Praises McCain on Signing Statements, Ignores Bush Betrayal Today's Washington Post praised John McCain's "ironclad refusal to issue signing statements." While his Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton defended using "signing statements in very rare instances," the Post lauded McCain's "sharp break" from the unprecedented practice of the Bush administration. But what the Washington Post neglected to mention was why John McCain has such a visceral dislike for presidential signing statements. The answer, as it turns out, dates back to December 30, 2005, when President Bush betrayed... more Posted on February 25, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McConnell, Mukasey Confirm Bush Domestic Surveillance Was Illegal Exactly two years ago, I dissected the Bush administration's dubious legal justification for its illicit program of NSA domestic surveillance. Then, I argued that the President's twin claims that his constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowed Bush to operate outside the legal mandate of FISA were specious. As it turns out, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey apparently agree. In "The Republicans' Constitutional Crisis," I... more Posted on February 23, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Bungling on Kosovo Fueled Belgrade Riots Just yesterday, I documented George W. Bush's hilarious - and pathetic - history when it comes to Kosovo. Now with Serbian rioters storming the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, Bush's dubious grasp of the implications of an independent Kosovo doesn't seem so funny any more. That the United States would come to grief in the Balkans under Bush's leadership was foreseeable back in 1999. Bush at first refused to back President Clinton's air war against the Milosevic regime's campaign of terror... more Posted on February 21, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Now Less Popular Than Ebola Virus On more than one occasion (for example, here and here), I've joked that President Bush is slightly more popular than the Ebola virus. As it turns out, I may have been giving this lamest of lame ducks too much credit. A new poll from the American Research Group shows that President Bush's approval rating has plummeted to 19%. Fully 77% of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing as President. And when it comes to the sputtering U.S. economy,... more Posted on February 20, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Dazed and Confused: Bush's Hilarious History on Kosovo Generations yet unborn will speak of the intellectual confusion of George W. Bush. But no issue may be more emblematic of President Bush's ongoing cognitive crises than Kosovo and the 1999 American intervention to end ethnic cleansing there. Speaking yesterday at, of all places, the Rwanda genocide museum, President Bush defended American inaction in Darfur, declaring that "outside forces" are "unbelievably counterproductive." Yet just 24 hours earlier, Bush announced his support for the independence of Kosovo and proclaimed Bill Clinton's... more Posted on February 20, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush's AIDS Politics On his five nation swing through Africa, President Bush once again revealed the two inescapable truths of his AIDS diplomacy. First, as I noted last May, Bush never hesitates to use AIDS funding to provide air cover in his failing struggle to sway global opinion. And second, even thousands of miles from home, George W. Bush will kowtow to the religious right back in the United States. Greeted in Africa by banners proclaiming "Thank you for helping fight malaria and... more Posted on February 18, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	The Coming Right-Wing Blog Boom In the span of just six weeks, conservative angst over the comparatively feeble state of the right-wing blogosphere has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. After first trumpeting the supposed decline in traffic at liberal blogs, conservative heads nodded in agreement as Red State's Erick Erickson blamed abortion and capitalism for the abysmal state of the right's online presence. But for all of its hand-wringing, the right-wing blogosphere may be on the verge of a boom. After all, as... more Posted on February 17, 2008 \| Comments (4)

	McCain Backs Bush on Torture Despite '05 Betrayal With his "no" vote yesterday on the Senate bill to ban waterboarding by the CIA, John McCain caved in the face of yet another betrayal by George W. Bush. President Bush, after all, stabbed McCain in the back with a 2005 signing statement that defanged the Detainee Treatment Act the now-presumptive GOP presidential nominee championed in the Senate. But in his never-ending quest to appease his party's conservative base, McCain revealed that no humiliation at the hands of George Bush... more Posted on February 14, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	The Abominable Ted Olson on "Clinton v. Obama" In case there was any remaining uncertainty, Ted Olson reminded Americans today why he must never be on the Supreme Court. The former Bush Solicitor General and 2000 Florida recount mastermind took the pages of the Wall Street Journal to crow about the ultra-tight Democratic nominating process which he prays ends up in the courts. Hoping to add insult to injury, Olson looks forward to seeing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton use the excreable Bush v. Gore decision to undo... more Posted on February 11, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Renews His War on the "Democrat Party" On Sunday, President Bush left his self-proclaimed "bubble" in the White House for a little Democrat bashing over at his Fox News safe haven. Comically daring Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to attack him during the 2008 campaign, President Bush returned to his childish mispronunciation of their party's name. Yes, a year after acknowledging his infantile gambit, President Bush has renewed his war against the "Democrat Party." A staple of Republican taunting since at least the time of Reagan,... more Posted on February 10, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Breaks 2004 Promise to Halve Budget Deficit On Monday, President Bush will unveil a fiscal 2009 budget proposal that breaks yet another promise he made to the American people. The nation's first ever $3 trillion dollar budget will produce a $400 billion mountain of red ink. And with it, Bush's bogus 2004 promise to halve to the federal budget deficit by 2009 will rightly end up in the dustbin of history. As he faced reelection five year ago, George W. Bush famously committed to cut the deficit... more Posted on February 3, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	New York Times Reporter Subpoenaed Over Sources That cheering sound you may have heard this morning was conservatives' applauding the news that New York Times reporter James Risen has been subpoenaed in an effort to force him to reveal his confidential sources. But while Republican rage may be temporarily muted over the inquiry into Risen's 2006 book, many on the right won't be satisfied until Risen goes to jail for his cardinal offense, revealing President Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program. The subpoena James Risen received from a... more Posted on February 1, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Hijacks Pell Grants for School Vouchers In his last State of the Union address, President Bush fired one final salvo his war against public education in signature fashion. Not to content to endorse yet another conservative school voucher scheme, President Bush appropriated the name of the very popular Pell Grant program to market it. And by targeting African-Americans with his "Pell Grants for Kids," Bush zeroed in on the one Democratic constituency conservatives believe might support it. Back in 2006, Democrats steamrolled to a majority in... more Posted on January 29, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush's Budget Deficit and the End of the Rosy Scenario In case panicked financial markets, rising unemployment, surging inflation and a credit crunch weren't enough cause for worry, Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orzag today added the mushrooming federal budget deficit to the mix. Coming as President Bush and Congressional leaders are conferring on a massive new economic stimulus package, the CBO estimated a $250 billion gap in 2008, up from $163 billion the previous year. Now Bush's budgetary sleight of hand, it would appear, is about to fall victim... more Posted on January 23, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Tales of the Tape Two breaking stories on Wednesday once again highlighted the Bush administration's unprecedented cloak of secrecy and its perpetual quest for plausible deniability. First, the White House acknowledged that it haphazardly recycled computer backup tapes, likely ensuring that crucial emails before October 2003 are lost forever. Then, Americans learned that the retiring CIA station chief in Thailand asked for and received permission in 2005 to destroy videotapes of Al Qaeda detainee interrogations. Together, these latest episodes of disappearing data might be... more Posted on January 16, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	George W. Bush's Gambling Problem While George W. Bush may be a recovering drinker, he apparently has now developed a gambling problem. Just 10 days into 2008, the Bush White House has placed big bets on everything from a Middle East peace treaty to the prospects for a U.S. recession, even his own popularity and legacy. Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against him - and us. Bush's most unlikely roll of the dice came during his just completed visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.... more Posted on January 11, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	Romney Follows Bush's Iron Law of Bin Laden As the New Hampshire primary approaches, a desperate Mitt Romney has emerged as a vocal defender of the foreign policy of George W. Bush. On Sunday, Romney developed a full-blown case of Bush envy, echoing the President's 2001 spaghetti western threat by saying, "I want to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive." To be sure, by alternately downplaying or emphasizing the importance of capturing Bin Laden as political circumstances require, Romney has indeed taken a page straight from the... more Posted on January 7, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	WSJ Extends GOP "Criminalizing Politics" Defense to CIA Tapes It was only a matter of time before the conservative chattering classes extended the Republicans' perpetual "criminalization of politics" defense to the exploding CIA tapes scandal. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal obliged, claiming the Justice Department's probe into the spy agency's destruction of detainee interrogation videos was the equivalent of "criminalizing the CIA." Following the script from the Tom Delay, Valerie Plame outing, U.S. attorneys purge and other Republicans scandals, the Journal's contortion is just the latest right-wing effort... more Posted on January 6, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Stonewalled 9/11 Commission from the Beginning In a devastating New York Times op-ed today, 9/11 Commission leaders Tom Keane and Lee Hamilton accused the CIA of stonewalling their panel. The chairman and co-chairman alleged that those in the Bush administration who knew about videotapes of CIA detainee interrogations but failed to inform the 9/11 panel "obstructed our investigation." But lost in their historical record is one other inconvenient truth: President Bush tried to stonewall the 9/11 Commission from the very beginning. In their op-ed, Keane and... more Posted on January 2, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Huckabee Echoes Bush in Killer Ad Lost in the pundits' pondering over Mike Huckabee's scam to show - and then not air - an attack ad against Mitt Romney is the former Arkansas Governor's apparent bloodlust. As Steve Benen and Michael Crowley note, Huckabee's spot takes Romney to task for a record in Massachusetts that included "no executions." In extolling the joys of the death penalty, Huckabee is following in the proud tradition of George W. Bush. George W. Bush's willingness to flip the switch is... more Posted on January 1, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	Bush a Block Off the Old S-CHIP On Saturday, President Bush scored a triple victory when he quietly signed a bill extending the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) through March 2009. First, the President teed up "socialized medicine" as the definitive 2008 GOP talking point in response to any new health care initiatives coming from the Democratic Party. Second, he added another win for the GOP campaign of obstructionism, blocking Democratic successes at any cost in the hope of painting Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as... more Posted on December 29, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Medals of Dishonor: How the Right Rewards Cover Ups & Payback On Friday, right-wing mouthpiece and failed Bush Labor nominee Linda Chavez demonstrated the Iron Law of Republican scandal management. Claiming the CIA official purportedly responsible for destroying detainee interrogation tapes "deserves a medal," Chavez showed the conservative commitment to rewarding those who conceal White House wrong-doing. The corollary, of course, is the GOP Payback Principle: those exposing Bush administration criminality should be prosecuted. In her Friday column titled "Destroying CIA Tapes Deserves a Thank You," Chavez argued that the 2005... more Posted on December 23, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Putin, Bush and Post-Presidential Riches The similarities between President Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, it would appear, are seemingly endless. On Wednesday. Putin followed in Bush's footsteps as the 2007 recipient of the Time Man of the Year. And now, Putin too has grand plans to reap a financial windfall upon leaving office. As it turns out, though, the scope and scale of Putin's post-presidential avarice puts George W. Bush to shame. As we learned from Bush biographer Robert Draper back in September,... more Posted on December 22, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Groundhog Day for Bush on CIA Tapes, Iran NIE Americans watching President Bush on Thursday could be forgiven for confusing his press conference with the movie Groundhog Day. In the 1993 film, Bill Murray wakes each morning only to realize he's reliving the previous day. Discussing the mushrooming CIA tapes scandal yesterday, President Bush claimed he had no recollection of knowing about the tapes' destruction in 2005 until briefed by CIA director Michael Hayden last month. Of course, that's virtually the same line he offered regarding the controversial Iran... more Posted on December 21, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Putin Succeeds "Good Friend" Bush as Time Man of the Year This morning Time named Russian President Vladmir Putin its 2007 Man of the Year. It is altogether fitting that Time selected Putin as a successor to two-time winner George W. Bush. Like his friend the American president, Putin for good or ill (mostly ill) has made his nation a major force in global affairs. And as Time notes, he did so "at significant cost to the principles that free nations prize." In its tribute "A Tsar is Born," Time details... more Posted on December 19, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush to Add Veto to Torture Signing Statement When it comes to the debate over Congressional legislation to ban waterboarding of detainees by the CIA, President Bush is proving Marx's dictum that historical events occur twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. After all, while the White House is threatening to veto the new interrogation restrictions passed this week by the House, President Bush happily issued a signing statement to the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act letting him alone judge what constitutes "cruel, inhuman,... more Posted on December 16, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Gonzales Stripped of ABA Lawyer of the Year Title The indignities never seem to end for former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. On Wednesday, I reported that the Journal of the American Bar Association had named Gonzales its 2007 "Lawyer of the Year". Now, just two days later, the ABA has bowed to the public outcry and announced it would strip Gonzales of his title. Instead, the ABA is bestowing a Miss Congeniality prize on him, relabeling Gonzales the "Newsmaker of the Year." Apparently, the ABA was too smart by... more Posted on December 15, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Bush Plays Dumb on Mitchell Report, Own MLB Steroid Role In Washington today, President Bush predictably decried the conclusion of the Mitchell report, proclaiming "steroids have sullied the game." Even less surprising is Bush's call to put the steroid scandal "behind us." George W. Bush, after all, was the managing partner of the major league baseball's Texas Rangers, a team that featured many prominent abusers of performance-enhancing drugs, including his good friend Rafael Palmeiro. Speaking at the White House Rose Garden this morning, President Bush told reporters: "Like many fans,... more Posted on December 14, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Perino, Bush and the Unlearned Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis On Saturday, White House press secretary Dana Perino confessed her ignorance regarding the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs fiasco the previous year. Of course, it should come as no surprise that the chief spokesperson for President Bush would confuse John F. Kennedy's signature national security triumph with his greatest foreign policy failure. After all, President Bush is not merely ignorant of the history, but determined that JFK's two lessons from the Bay of Pigs - taking... more Posted on December 11, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Text of Bush Letter to Kim Jong-Il Released In a dramatic reversal of policy, President George W. Bush this week sent a personal letter directly to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. According to the text of the letter obtained by the AP and other media outlets, Bush urged Kim to come forward with the details of his nuclear plan. "I want to emphasize," Bush wrote, "that the declaration must be complete and accurate if we are to continue our progress." But according to anonymous sources within the White... more Posted on December 8, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Dishonors the Legacy of Pearl Harbor The anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor gives us an opportunity to remember our tragic loss that day, and reflect on the almost unimaginable sacrifices that generation of Americans made to protect the liberty of all who followed. But as I first suggested in 2005, our observance now includes a new ritual. With each passing year President Bush dishonors the memory of Pearl Harbor, misappropriating its meaning and lessons to support his partisan political purposes and his war in... more Posted on December 7, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Right Claims Iran NIE a CIA Plot Against Bush President Bush's amen corner in the conservative commentariat is apoplectic over the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. After all, the report's conclusion that Tehran suspended its nuclear weapons program inn 2003 knocked the legs out from their "World War III" rhetoric. And as you'd expect, the same people who helped bring you the war in Iraq are now quick to claim CIA incompetence and conspiracies are behind the new assessment. At the head of the list of the... more Posted on December 4, 2007 \| Comments (9)

	Bush's M.C. Escher Strategy for Iraq More and more, President Bush's strategy in Iraq resembles an M.C. Escher illustration. Like the hands drawing each other or the elegant depiction of stairways that cannot possibly meet, the military progress of the U.S. surge is producing an image of a future Iraq that, while glorious to behold, can never be built. The very American alliances with Sunni tribal leaders that are reducing sectarian violence and the threat from Al Qaeda also threaten to undermine the Shiite majority government... more Posted on November 30, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	White House: Bush Never Resentful The visit of Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore to the Bush White House Monday constituted one of the more surreal moments in recent Washington memory. While Gore was quick to praise his campaign 2000 opponent ("He was very gracious in setting up the meeting and it was a very good and substantive conversation"), Bush press secretary Dana Perino made it clear the President harbored no ill-will towards the Oscar and Nobel-winning Vice President. "I know that this president does... more Posted on November 27, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	On Eve of Summit, State Dept Rewrites Middle East History As Condoleezza Rice prepares to host the Middle East summit in Annapolis this week, her State Department has issued an updated historical timeline of American efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The timeline is a fascinating document both for what it reveals and what it leaves out. The rise of Hamas and its election victories are mentioned nowhere. That might just be because President Bush's hands-off policy of malign neglect is in part responsible for it. The State Department's "Middle... more Posted on November 26, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	McCain, Betrayed by Bush, Rejects Signing Statements This week, Republican White House hopeful John McCain denounced George W. Bush's unprecedented use of presidential signing statements. As well he should. After all, it was President Bush's December 30, 2005 signing statement on McCain's amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act that made waterboarding and other acts of torture the continuing policy of the United States. On Monday, McCain announced that as President, he would reject signing statements altogether: "I would never issue a signing statement. It is wrong, and... more Posted on November 23, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Massive New Citizenship Backlog the Latest Voter Suppression? A Washington Post report that the Bush administration is facing a massive backlog of hundreds of thousands of applications for U.S. citizenship is sadly unsurprising. After all, as the Katrina disaster and new passport fiasco demonstrated, incompetence is the hallmark of President Bush's Department of Homeland Security. But with the news that hundreds of thousands of immigrants - many of them Hispanic - may be unable to vote in the 2008 elections, Americans can be forgiven for suspecting something more... more Posted on November 22, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	NY Daily News: Bush Furious with Rove Over Plame Leak in 2003 Just one day after excerpts from the upcoming Scott McClellan tell all book suggested President Bush lied about the roles of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Plamegate affair, the publisher is now back-tracking on the explosive claim. But despite a spokesman's assertion that McClellan "did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him," a seemingly forgotten 2005 story from the New York Daily News suggests otherwise. As Perrspectives, Talking Points Memo, the Washington Note and other blogs noted... more Posted on November 21, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	NYT Yielded to White House, Sat on Pakistan Nuclear Security Story The New York Times' recent report that the United States has been secretly helping Pakistan secure its nuclear arsenal contained another revelation. As with its 2005 expose of the Bush administration's illegal NSA domestic surveillance program, the Times sat on the Pakistan story at the request of the White House. Contrary to the repeated claims of President Bush and his amen corner, the New York Times has been more than deferential in letting the White House determine "all the news... more Posted on November 21, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	McClellan Book Confirms Bush's October 2003 Plamegate Lie On October 7th, 2003, President Bush famously declared of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official." Now we have more insight as to Bush's misplaced confidence that the truth would remain hidden. In his new tell-all book, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan claims President Bush himself played an instrumental role in the failed cover up. In his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush... more Posted on November 20, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Bush Pardons Thanksgiving Turkey "Scooter" On Tuesday, November 20th, President Bush will reveal the identity of the National Thanksgiving Turkey, which in keeping with the annual White House tradition, will receive a presidential pardon. But according to well placed White House sources, the jailbird this year was selected months ago and is known internally by his code-name "Scooter." "Scooter" was convicted on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for his part in covering up the effort to reveal the identity of covert CIA... more Posted on November 19, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Break the War Funding Deadlock: The Iraq Apology Amendment One day after the House approved an Iraq war funding bill mandating American troop withdrawals, Republicans blocked a similar measure in the Senate. With GOP intransigence and a certain veto from President Bush leading to a high-stakes showdown they seem destined to lose, Democrats need a different strategy - at least for now. One way forward is to give President Bush the money for his fiasco in Iraq with no strings attached save one: he must apologize for it. Call... more Posted on November 16, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	FISA, Yahoo and the GOP Double-Standard on Telecom Immunity As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to debate the renewal of FISA revisions made in August, President Bush and his Republican allies in Congress are endorsing a unique double-standard when it comes to immunity for telecommunications firms. Within the United States, they argue, service providers such as AT&T and Verizon must cooperate with U.S. government demands for access to Americans' electronic communications and should be immune from citizens' lawsuits. But in China and elsewhere, as Republican reaction to this week's... more Posted on November 14, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Georgia Governor Perdue and the Top 10 Republican Prayers As a devastating drought continues to parch the Southeast, Republican Governors in Georgia and Alabama are turning to divine intervention to help replenish their dwindling water supplies. In Atlanta, Governor Sonny Perdue held a public vigil at the state house Tuesday to "pray up a storm." His plea follows on the heels on Alabama Governor Bob Riley's week-long "Days of Prayer for Rain" in June. As then-Governor George W. Bush showed with his 2000 proclamation of "Jesus Day," prayer is... more Posted on November 13, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	The Party of Hate In Washington, House Minority Leader John Boehner is struggling to rebrand a downtrodden and disheartened Republican Party in time for the 2008 elections. It's no wonder. Its agenda stymied and burdened by an unpopular war and an even less popular President, the GOP is being pulverized in the polls. And with its evangelical base splintered and big business supporters jumping ship, the only message seemingly uniting Republicans is disdain - of immigrants, of blacks, of gay Americans and above all,... more Posted on November 12, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Hillary's Planted Questions and George W. Bush, Master of Political Theater The conservative commentariat and right-wing bloggers are apoplectic at revelations that Hillary Clinton fielded questions planted by her staffers during recent campaign appearances. Confirming the worst stereotypes of the ever-calculating, risk-averse Clinton, Bush sycophant Michelle Malkin labeled Hillary a "crapweasel." And she should know. After all, from planted reporters and purchased pundits to invitation-only events in front of friends-only audiences, it is George W. Bush who perfected the art of the stage managed appearance designed to "catapult the propaganda." From... more Posted on November 10, 2007 \| Comments (19)

	Yahoo, Communist China and Bush's America In Washington Tuesday, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee savaged Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan for the company's involvement in the 2005 jailing of a Chinese dissident. But if their bipartisan criticism of Yahoo's behavior - cooperating with a Chinese government "subpoena-like document" to supply information about journalist accused of the "illegal provision of state secrets" - sounds disingenuous, it should. After all, those are trademark tactics of the Bush administration and its Republican amen... more Posted on November 7, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Waterboarding the Constitution: Mukasey and Bush's 2005 Signing Statement As expected, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-8 to send the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to the full Senate for confirmation as Attorney General. As the AP reports, Democrats Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) provided the decisive votes after accepting "his assurance to enforce any law Congress might enact against waterboarding." Sadly for Schumer, Feinstein and the American people, Congress in 2005 already passed a law express forbidding waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amounting to torture. And... more Posted on November 6, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Pakistan Irony Watch No doubt, these have been among the darkest days in the global war on terror. The president of one of the key powers in the fight against Al Qaeda terrorism has in essence suspended his nation's constitution and rendered its democratic institutions unrecognizable. Its citizens can be detained and held indefinitely without habeas corpus protections. Their electronic communications are now subject to interception without warrants. Suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members can be denied access to the protections of the... more Posted on November 4, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Edited ABC Iraq Story Latest White House PR Fraud Just days after revelations of fake FEMA press conferences and the altering of a CDC report to Congress, the Bush disinformation machine is at it again. As ThinkProgress reports, the White House redistributed to reporters an edited version of an ABC story in the hopes of painting a picture of unvarnished progress in Iraq. Apparently, deleting damaging references to the stillborn political process in Iraq is all in a day's work for a White House committed to helping President Bush... more Posted on November 2, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	The Avenging Angel Smites Bush Consumer Safety Chief After a brief hiatus, the Avenging Angel, punisher of right-wing miscreants, resumed delivery of conservative smitings. The retribution begins in Washington with Nancy Nord, the head of the Bush Consumer Products Safety Commission. First Nord demanded that Congress not increase the staffing and budget for her woefully under-funded agency in the face of massive Chinese product recalls. Just days later, the Washington Post revealed that she and her predecessor Hal Stratton received up to 30 paid trips from companies they... more Posted on November 2, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush, Putin Supporters Push for Third Terms With each passing day, the similarities between George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin grow more striking. Early on in his presidency, Bush "looked the man in the eye" and "was able to get a sense of his soul." He found that the former KGB chief shares Bush's professed fondness for dictatorship and preference for a compliant media that can help him "catapult the propaganda." And now, both Bush and Putin have supporters pushing for third terms for... more Posted on November 1, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Madrid Bombing Case to Fuel Bush Fears of Terror Trials For supporters of the Bush administration's crusade against civil liberties in its war on terror, today's rulings in the 2004 Madrid bombing case will no doubt provide more justification for detainee torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, military commissions and other clearly extra-constitutional measures. In Madrid today as in so many terrorism prosecution trials in the U.S., sometimes the suspects are not found guilty. In Spain, the rule of law would appear to be alive and well. 21 of 28... more Posted on October 31, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Mukasey and Gonzales: Discussions of Torture "Hypothetical" A little over a week ago, I documented the disturbing parallels between the confirmation testimonies of Attorney General nominees Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales. To the dismay of many members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey like Gonzales decried the 2002 Bybee memo authorizing detainee torture, while withholding judgment on the legality of specific techniques such as waterboarding on the grounds that such as discussions are purely "hypothetical." Now, given the chance to clarify for the Senate, Mukasey dug his... more Posted on October 30, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Laura Bush: Policy Maker, Not Stereotype On Sunday, First Lady Laura Bush revealed a new side of her persona to the American people: policymaker. Describing herself "involved for a long time in policy," Mrs. Bush decried the Stepfordesque stereotype she claimed is applied to her. But given her past public statements and policy roles to date, Americans should be forgiven for chuckling in response. The still popular First Lady made her comments during an attempt to defend the indefensible, her husband's veto of the expansion of... more Posted on October 30, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	FEMA PR Fraud Philbin Loses Promotion at DNI As it turns out, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. The force of gravity still applies on planet Earth. And for at least this one day, a minimal standard of punishment for ethical wrongdoing applies to the Bush administration. Just one day after I proclaimed that no official would pay a price for the despicable and shocking fake FEMA news conference on the California wildfires, the imbroglio has cost John Philbin, the agency's director of... more Posted on October 29, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Bush to Stay "Relevant" with Holsinger Recess Appointment? ThinkProgress speculates this morning that President Bush will give a recess appointment to James Holsinger, his bizarre and wildly homophobic nominee for Surgeon General. For the White House, Holsinger's quackery and desire to "cure gays" not only makes him a very attractive successor to the disagreeable Richard Carmona. More importantly, a recess appointment in the face of overwhelming opposition from the Senate Health Committee helps President Bush "ensure that I am relevant." It's just another part of George W. Bush's... more Posted on October 29, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Never a Firing Offense: FEMA PR Frauds Move On and Up One of the hallmarks of Bush administration has been its steadfast commitment to rewarding its own incompetence, fraud and even criminality. While Katrina fall-guy Michael Brown was quietly edged out, the leading architects of the fiasco in Iraq including George Tenet, Tommy Franks and Paul Bremer received Presidential Medals of Freedom. Now in the latest example of President Bush's mantra that "nothing succeeds like failure," Harvey Johnson has escaped punishment for his bogus FEMA press conference on Thursday, while his... more Posted on October 28, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Five Years Ago: Bush's Despicable Eulogy for Paul Wellstone Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of the death of Minnesota Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone. But while much of the liberal blogosphere has remembered Wellstone's fighting spirit, grassroots populism and prescient courage in opposing the war in Iraq, little attention has been paid to President Bush's despicable eulogy of Wellstone on that sad day. As we learned five years ago, this president's smallness and partisanship even extend to the dead. Commenting on the tragic death of the popular Democratic Senator Paul... more Posted on October 27, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	FEMA, CDC and Bush's Potemkin Presidency Two stories this week once again highlighted for Americans the Potemkin Presidency of George W. Bush. Confronting Stephen Colbert's maxim that "reality has a well-known liberal bias," the Bush administration tried to pull the wool over the eyes of Congress and the media. On Wednesday, the White House acknowledged it "eviscerated" the testimony of CDC Julie Gerberding on the health impacts of global warming. And on Thursday, Bush's FEMA director Harvey Johnson staged a faux news conference about the California... more Posted on October 26, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Ups the Ante on Cuba In Washington today, George W. Bush reinvigorated his counterproductive and anachronistic crusade against the Castro regime in Cuba. As the New York Times reports, President Bush used an address to an invitation-only audience of Cuban exiles to proclaim "the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another." But while Bush's increasingly hard line may please his brother and the monolithically Republican Cuban community in Florida, his dangerously myopic... more Posted on October 24, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Deja Vu: Mukasey Channels Gonzales' 2005 Testimony By most accounts, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey is not the intellectually stunted, duplicitous partisan hatchet man and unabashed Bush loyalist that was his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales. But in his testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Mukasey followed almost the same script on Bush administration torture policy as Gonzales during his own confirmation hearings in January 2005. As it turns out, both men disavowed the infamous 2002 Bybee memo and brushed aside questions about ongoing torture... more Posted on October 21, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Who's Counting? Bush and Giuliani on the Next World War President Bush's disturbingly flip comment Wednesday about Iran and World War III not only revealed his apparent comfort when discussing global conflagration. Bush's gaffe also showed the common vision between himself, the man most likely to succeed him as head of the Republican Party and those who advise them both. For George Bush, Rudy Giuliani and the likes of Norman Podhoretz, the only dispute about "world war" is whether we're already fighting it and what number we're on. For President... more Posted on October 18, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Cheney's Law and the Constitutionality of FISA Last night's airing of the PBS Frontline documentary "Cheney's Law" could not have come at a more fitting time. As Congress begins debate on a new FISA bill and the issue of immunity for telecommunications firms, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey begins confirmation hearings in the Senate. But as Frontline reminded us last night, the architects of the Bush administration's NSA domestic surveillance program believe FISA itself is unconstitutional. First, a little background. Cheney's Law describes the Vice President's decades-long... more Posted on October 17, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Snow Job: Bush's "Democrat Party" Taunt When former White House press secretary Tony Snow announced his resignation in August, he claimed his departure was motivated by his need for "dough." Appearing on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday night, it turns out Snow is content to shill for President Bush for free. Rejecting the assertion that Bush was far from the self-proclaimed "uniter" of GOP lore, Snow pooh-poohed Stewart's example that a petulant, mean-spirited President intentionally taunted his Democratic opponents by calling theirs the "Democrat... more Posted on October 16, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Bush's Catch-22 on Al Qaeda in Iraq In a double-edged sword for the Bush administration, Monday's Washington Post reports that the Pentagon believes it has dealt "devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months." But with the good news surrounding Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), responsible for only a small fraction of the attacks against U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians, comes the Catch-22 for President Bush: the very dissipation of the Al Qaeda threat in Iraq removes his primary rationale for extending the... more Posted on October 15, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Rice, Bush Split on Dictatorship One day after Vladimir Putin scolded Secretary of State Condi Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates over the administration's plans for a European missile defense system, Rice fired back at the Russian president. But before lecturing Putin on his return to authoritarianism in Russia, Rice should have first checked with her boss President Bush about his own long-held views on dictatorship. Given the White House's penchant for torture, illegal surveillance of its own citizens, suspension of habeas corpus and the... more Posted on October 14, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush and Gore on the Prize Money The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore on Friday predictably produced flashbacks to the 2000 election fiasco, complete with the usual conservative venom and liberal wistfulness. But seemingly lost in the tales of the parallel lives of George W. Bush and Al Gore are their sharply contrasting views towards their respective legacies. Just follow the money. At his press conference yesterday, Gore announced he would donate his $750,000 Nobel Prize award to the Alliance for Climate Protection:... more Posted on October 13, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Payback Time: CIA Director Investigates His Inspector General Just one week after the New York Times revealed the existence of secret Bush administration memos condoning an uninterrupted policy of detainee torture by the CIA, it appears to be payback time. In a highly unusual move, CIA Director Michael Hayden has ordered an investigation into the agency's watchdog office itself, led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. According to the New York Times, Hayden and Helgerson have clashed over a number of issues, including the IG's scathing assessment of... more Posted on October 12, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	The Price of Bush's Military Transformation Over just the past 24 hours, a flurry of stories have highlighted the growing and evolving burden facing the overstretched United States military. In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert Gates stressed the need to transform the American military to address the "fundamentally political nature" of its current and future conflicts. While the Marine Corps has proposed shifting its forces from Iraq to take over frontline duties in Afghanistan, the Army is offering bonuses of up to $35,000 to retain specialists from... more Posted on October 11, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Right-Wing Blogs Downplay Bin Laden Tape Damage, Probe Just one day after revelations by the private security firm SITE Institute that a U.S. government leak of its clandestinely obtained Osama Bin Laden video compromised its penetration of Al Qaeda's global computing network, U.S. intelligence officials announced a probe of the damaging episode. But in the Animal Farm world of the right-wing blogosphere where some national security leaks are more equal than others, the Bush administration's latest fear-mongering or perhaps just potential incompetence is hardly cause for concern. No... more Posted on October 10, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Leaked Bin Laden Tape Shows GOP Double Standard Today's revelations in the Washington Post regarding the Bush administration's September 7th leaking of an Osama Bin Laden videotape served to once again highlight the hypocritical Republican double-standard when it comes to the publication of classified national security information. As the CIA black sites and illegal NSA domestic surveillance stories all show, the President and his amen corner are quick to call for the prosecution of those who reveal White House criminality. But when Bush and his GOP allies through... more Posted on October 9, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Equal Opportunity Executioner Bush Finds Mexican Exception If there is any area of public policy where George W. Bush has been consistently "dead certain," it is almost certainly in the application of the death penalty. As Texas Governor and later as President, Bush showed himself to be an equal opportunity executioner, content to condemn the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, racist thugs and even born-again Christians alike. But today we learned even George W. Bush's apparent bloodlust has its limits, especially when it conflicts with his ongoing... more Posted on October 8, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Laughing at Torture The revelations last week concerning secret memos authorizing an uninterrupted policy of detainee torture by the Bush administration added a new chapter to the President's book of unchecked power, unbridled lawlessness and deceit. But even from national disgrace can come humor. Don Davis over at Satirical Political Report shows even torture can be laughed at. The Torture Advice Column by Devil's Advocate cheerfully helps guide would-be Gitmo interrogators and fans of the unitary executive up to the fine line of... more Posted on October 8, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Chris Matthews: Bush White House "Good Guys" Won't Silence Me At a party last night celebrating the 10th anniversary of his MSNBC show Hardball, Chris Matthews lashed out at the Bush administration for its efforts to control his editorial content. But if his claims that "they will not silence me" ring a little hollow, they should. After all, Chris Matthews has spent the last several years telling us that President Bush, his White House and the Republican leadership team are "good guys." Matthews' tough talk didn't end there. Without mentioning... more Posted on October 5, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	Bush Signing Statement, Gonzales Perjury Concealed Torture Policy Thursday's devastating New York Times expose of the Bush administration's secret endorsement of torture by the CIA only served to confirm the worst what most Americans already suspected. First, Alberto Gonzales lied to Congress regarding the administration's policy on torture of detainees during his 2005 confirmation hearings. Second, President Bush's December 2005 signing statement accompanying the Detainee Treatment Act was expressly designed to exempt the lawbreaking he had already approved. As Perrspectives has detailed here and here, former White House... more Posted on October 4, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Bush's Hat Trick with S-CHIP Veto As White House press secretary Dana Perino promised Tuesday, President Bush on Wednesday "quietly" and "without ceremony" vetoed the expansion of the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Making good on his threat to block the additional $35 billion in funding over five years to boost the number of children covered under S-CHIP from 6.6 million to 10 million, Bush achieved three objectives - the proverbial hat trick - in one stroke of his veto pen. First, the President teed... more Posted on October 3, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	The Meaning of Blackwater In Washington today, all eyes are on the Blackwater hearings. But the relentless focus on potential atrocities committed by unaccountable, grotesquely overpaid private security firms in Iraq and Afghanistan obscures the larger issue for the United States. That is, mercenary forces simply should have no place in the national security structure of an American democracy. No doubt, mounting allegations of inappropriate use of force by Blackwater in Iraq justify the inquiry by Chairman Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and... more Posted on October 2, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Childrens Do Learn and the 4 Types of Bush Gaffes President Bush's hilarious and disturbing "childrens do learn" gaffe at an education event last week was just his latest in a long series of losing battles with his mother tongue. But while some scholars may seek to indict George W. Bush for his crimes against the English language, a generation of graduate students should thank the President for offering them the perfect thesis topic. While early analyses and collections of Bush malapropisms provide some insight into the rhetorical incontinence of... more Posted on October 1, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Hooked on Phonics at UN Early in his presidency, George W. Bush was an enthusiastic proponent of "Hooked on Phonics" for educating America's children. Now we know that his ringing endorsement came from personal experience. At the United Nations today, President Bush addressed the General Assembly using a crib sheet of phonetic pronunciations for those difficult country names and leaders sure to trip up any leader of the Free World. Much to the dismay of a White House which only yesterday deemed Barack Obama "intellectually... more Posted on September 25, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Ahmadinejad and Bush: Parallels and Second Comings The third visit to New York by the bombastic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is producing predictable howls of protest. While Columbia students protested his upcoming address there and Mitt Romney called for his indictment for genocide charges when he appears before the UN, CBS 60 Minutes host Scott Pelle lectured Ahmadinejad on the supposedly laudable religiosity of his arch-foe, President Bush. But largely lost in the build-up of the Ahmadinejad-Bush confrontation are the striking - and disturbing - similarities between... more Posted on September 24, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Blackwater, Habeas Corpus and the Global Muslim Backlash Seldom do disparate breakings news stories converge to paint a larger picture. Even as news of atrocities by American military contractor Blackwater rocked Baghdad, Republicans in the Senate blocked the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act, ensuring that the most draconian features of the Bush administration's detainee policies remain in place. Meanwhile, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) lamented the presence of "too many mosques in this country." It's no wonder a recent Pew Research Center poll revealed plummeting approval ratings for the United... more Posted on September 19, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	New Jersey Fights Bush Over S-CHIP Cutbacks In August, the Bush administration fired a shot across the bow of those advocating the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Last week, New Jersey Governor John Corzine fired back. First, a little background. Last month, the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed separate packages adding an additional 3.3 million children to the 6.6 million already insured under the program covering low income families. The White House, hoping to block the expansion of the popular S-CHIP program, retaliated... more Posted on September 17, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	"Return on Success" Added to Official GOP Iraq Talking Points In his speech to the nation Thursday night, President Bush unveiled the latest official White House talking point on Iraq. Destined for regurgitation from reliable Republican mouthpieces is "Return on Success." That business sounding jargon from our first - and failed - MBA president is designed to reassure the American people that after our troops fight them there, they can come home here: The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is "return on success." The more successful... more Posted on September 14, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Ted Olson and Bush's Maximum Confrontation Strategy Today's New York Times reports that former Solicitor General Ted Olson has emerged as President Bush's leading choice to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. That Bush might tap the controversial Olson, a key player in the 1990's Arkansas project targeting Bill Clinton and the man who helped win the 2000 Florida recount at the Supreme Court, should come as no surprise. It's just another part of George W. Bush's strategy of "maximum confrontation" guiding the remainder of his presidency.... more Posted on September 12, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	9/11, the Politics of Fear and the Culture of Grief On this sixth anniversary of the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 9/11 has come to symbolize two uniquely American political failings. First, in ritualistic observances around the nation, Americans will come together not in common resolve for shared sacrifice, but to perpetuate a culture of grief. Worse still, secure in his Pakistani safe haven, Osama Bin Laden even at large continues to serve the political purposes of the current and prospective occupants of the... more Posted on September 11, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Required Reading for Petraeus, Crocker Testimony With the long-awaited surge progress report from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker due beginning today, Perrspectives has updated its Iraq Document Center. The repository includes the latest news, statistics, key reports and other essential materials surrounding the Iraq war and its run-up. For more background to assess the Petraeus and Crocker testimony, the Iraq Document Center includes several recent reports concerning progress in Iraq, the state of the Iraqi security forces, and the stability of the Al Maliki... more Posted on September 10, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	"Virtually Impotent": Bin Laden or Bush? In the wake of the newest video from Osama Bin Laden, Bush homeland security adviser Fran Townsend feebly attempted to discount the importance of the still at-large Al Qaeda leader. Trapped in his mountain redoubt, she said, Bin Laden is "virtually impotent." But with the man he wanted "dead or alive" securely ensconced in his Pakistani safe haven and directing a reconstituted Al Qaeda network, it is President Bush who is looking impotent indeed. To be sure, the American intelligence... more Posted on September 9, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Bremer Letters Show Bush OK'd Disbanding Iraqi Army On Sunday, I detailed Bush biographer Robert Draper's stunning portrait of the President asleep at the switch as the disastrous May 2003 decision to dissolve the Iraqi army moved forward. As the New York Times relayed, a nonchalant Bush told Draper "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen" and " Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'" As Tuesday's New York Times now suggests, Coalition Provisional Authority viceroy L. Paul... more Posted on September 4, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	NYT: Bush Slept as Iraqi Army was Disbanded As I wrote this morning, today's New York Times offered a dismaying portrait of President Bush obsessed with his legacy - and potential financial windfall - after leaving office. But even more disturbing was the discussion of the Iraq war and the administration's calamitous 2003 move to disband the Iraqi army. When it came to perhaps the pivotal decision of the war, America's first MBA President simply acted like an absentee landlord. The American project in Iraq may well have... more Posted on September 2, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Replenish the Ol' Coffers: Bush on Life After the White House Some ex-Presidents grow in stature after their departure from the White House. Others are diminished by it. In a disturbing New York Times profile Sunday, President George W. Bush left little doubt which will be his destiny after exiting the Oval Office. In a series of interviews with author Robert Draper, Bush confirmed that the banality - and venality - that defined his presidency will characterize his post-presidency as well: First, Mr. Bush said, "I'll give some speeches, just to... more Posted on September 2, 2007 \| Comments (13)

	Tony Snow's Greatest Hits On Friday, White House press secretary Tony Snow announced he would be leaving his post on September 14. Snow attributed his departure neither to his cancer battle nor the implosion of the Bush presidency. Instead, the highest paid staffer in the Bush White House at $168,000 a year, Snow cited that most Republican of motives as fueling his resignation: money. But while Snow may need "the dough," he may need redemption even more. Asked about his future plans, Snow responded,... more Posted on September 1, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	White House: Bush Deserves "Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations" on Iraq Discussing "accountability" for education results in New Orleans yesterday, President Bush reiterated one of his favorite sound bites, "It's what I call challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations." Alas, not when it comes to the President himself and certainly not when the subject is progress in Iraq. A plea to extend the soft bigotry of low expectations to the President is exactly what the Bush White House requested today in response to the devastating assessment of Iraq progress detailed... more Posted on August 30, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	GAO Dispels Bush's Iraq "Making Progress" Myth Back in July, President Bush in his interim Iraq surge status report claimed progress that even some of his most fervent supporters viewed as pure fantasy. Now, just two weeks before General David Petraeus delivers his White House authored report to Congress, a new analysis from the GAO confirms the assessments of Bush's July delusion. The draft report from the Government Accountability Office paints a much darker picture of the situation in Iraq. On July 12, President Bush again trumpeted... more Posted on August 30, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Katrina: Four Stories of Bush Failure With the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Americans can expect an onslaught of grim retrospectives and even gloomier forecasts for the Gulf Coast. Stories recalling the destruction of New Orleans, the calamitous response of the Bush White House, rampant corruption in the storm's wake and the proposals of the 2008 presidential candidates will flood the web, the airwaves and the printed page. Perrspectives, too, is here to offer its look back on the Katrina disaster and the death of New... more Posted on August 29, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Alberto Gonzales' Greatest Hits Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may have his announced his resignation, but his wrongdoing - and his words - live on. Alternately comically feeble and hilariously ham-handed, Gonzales' pathetic attempts to deceive, dissemble and literally forget his way out of the U.S. attorneys scandal, the NSA domestic surveillance imbroglio, the White House war on habeas corpus and even the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame approached Bush-level rhetorical incontinence. Here, then, are the greatest hits of Alberto Gonzales: "Mr. Comey's... more Posted on August 27, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Gonzo But Not Forgotten: The Crimes of Alberto Gonzales The welcome resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may be long overdue, but it is hardly the end of the story of his wrong-doing at the Bush White House and the Department of Justice. From illegal NSA domestic surveillance, condoning torture and the unprecedented expansion of presidential powers to undermining minority voting rights, the political purge of U.S. prosecutors and lying under oath to Congress, Gonzales' deception, misdeeds and blatant criminality extend well beyond Bush's beloved Fredo. The rumors emanating... more Posted on August 27, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Repeats His Texas War on Children's Health Insurance In Washington this week, the White House renewed George W. Bush's war against children's health care that dates back to his days as Governor of Texas. Just two weeks after the House and Senate each approved major expansions of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), the Bush administration announced draconian new eligibility rules that would trim thousands of low income children from the rolls. But unlike his Texas two-step when he claimed credit for a program he fought tooth... more Posted on August 23, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush, Giuliani Agree on Iraq-Vietnam Parallels In his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today, President Bush offered Americans what can only be called the "premature withdrawal" defense for his endless fiasco in Iraq. Claiming to predict Iraq's future by looking back to Vietnam's past, Bush declared the United States on the brink of victory pulled out too soon and condemned millions of Southeast Asians to the slaughter that ensued. But Bush's desperate act of revisionist history only served to confirm two basic truths. First,... more Posted on August 22, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Rove, Cheney and the Death of the Bush Doctrine Among the more tragi-comic aspects of the departure of Karl Rove is the media's renewed interest in the Bush Doctrine and its three tenets of no safe havens for terrorists, preventive war and democracy promotion. Last Monday, Rove claimed that the Bush Doctrine would live on and be the President's legacy. And this morning, the Washington Post described a frustrated President Bush stymied by what it portrayed as bureaucratic stonewalling of his ailing global democracy project. Lost in this flurry... more Posted on August 20, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Hurricane Dean: Texas Gets Bush's "Florida Treatment" As the category 4 Hurricane Dean barrels towards his home state of Texas, President Bush is trying to "get out front" of the storm's potentially devastating impact. Their state already declared a disaster area, the Lone Star State will not only benefit from the lessons of Katrina; it looks like Texans may get the "Florida treatment." The feverish preparations in Texas show the Bush administration is at least capable of learning some lessons from its 2005 Katrina calamity. Under new... more Posted on August 19, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	White House to Author "Fill Right" Iraq Report for Petraeus Among today's least surprising and most disturbing developments is the revelation from the Los Angeles Times that the Bush White House will author the much anticipated September 15 surge progress report for General David Petraeus. Despite President Bush's frequent claims along the lines of "I'm going to wait for David to come back - David Petraeus to come back and give us the report on what he sees," the assessment will actually be written the White House. As for the... more Posted on August 15, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	The Base Politics of Karl Rove In the wake of the resignation of Karl Rove, most media post-mortems of the architect of the Bush presidency describe his legacy as one of ultimate failure. That is, in the end Karl Rove fell short of his goal to secure a permanent Republican majority monopolizing all three branches of government for the next generation. Instead, he leaves behind a Democratic Congress and an unpopular, enfeebled President Bush. But those accounts fail to capture the enduring dark cloud that Karl... more Posted on August 14, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Flashback: The Karl Rove Whack-a-Mole Contest This morning, the Wall Street Journal delivered the happy news that Karl Rove is resigning effective the end of August. Whether his surprising departure signals he no longer has the stomach to sell President Bush's surge in September or to face endless Congressional investigations over his role in the political purge of U.S. attorneys remains to be seen. Regardless, the departure of one of the great uber fiends in modern American political history can't come a moment too soon. Across... more Posted on August 13, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Bush, Bonds Extend Dubious Records This week, two of the least trusted men in America extended their dubious records of accomplishment. Last night in San Francisco, the steroids-scandal tainted Barry Bonds added to his record home run total by swatting his 757th round-tripper. And this morning in Washington, George W. Bush held a rare press conference before commencing his annual August vacation, a recess which will pad his dismal presidential record for most days off. As the AP reported, after Bush's latest losing battle with... more Posted on August 9, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Democrats Snatch Defeat from Jaws of Victory on FISA With their shocking surrender over President Bush's draconian new FISA law this weekend, Congressional Democrats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They not only had the votes to safeguard American civil liberties and prevent the legalization of past Bush White House criminality. On FISA as we knew it before August 5, 2007, Democrats had the law - and public opinion - on their side. Until President Bush signed the so-called Protect America Act, his regime of warrantless NSA domestic... more Posted on August 7, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	Blogs Left and Right Pursue NSA Leak Figure Within hours of Newsweek's revelation that the FBI had raided the home of former DOJ official Thomas M. Tamm in connection with the 2005 NSA domestic surveillance leak, both ends of the blogosphere have begun a feverish search to learn more about man at the center of the story. On the left, Tamm is portrayed as a not-too-mysterious whistle-blower who posted at sites likes Media Matters and perhaps more clandestinely at TPM Muckraker. And on the right, Tamm is being... more Posted on August 6, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Is the New York Times the Next NSA Leak Target? Just one day after learning the FBI raided the home of former DOJ attorney Thomas M. Tamm in connection with the December 2005 leak of President Bush's illicit NSA domestic surveillance program, conservatives are beginning to clamor for action against another target: The New York Times. Writing in Commentary, editor Gabriel Schoenfeld is renewing his call for the indictment of the New York Times for its December 16, 2005 publication of the NSA story. Perhaps sensing a momentum shift with... more Posted on August 6, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	Payback Time: FBI Raids Home of Suspected NSA Leaker This past week, the Bush administration added insult to injury over its illegal program of NSA domestic surveillance. During the very time Congress was debating codifying President Bush's lawbreaking by revising the FISA law many of his allies had been afraid to publicly challenge as unconstitutional, Alberto Gonzales' DOJ was raiding the home of a former Justice official to identify the person who first brought the illicit program to light. As Michael Isikoff details in Newsweek, a team of FBI... more Posted on August 5, 2007 \| Comments (31)

	The Secret to Bush's Success? The Angry Man Theory A new study from a Yale scholar tries to explain why the image of a tough Hillary Clinton may not resonate with voters. But the findings, which suggest angry men are rewarded in American leadership roles while angry women are penalized, may do more to explain the unlikely rise of George W. Bush. The study by Victoria Brescoll, "When Can Angry Women Get Ahead," found that Americans will assign greater status - and salary - to angry men, while punishing... more Posted on August 3, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	The 7th Anniversary of Bush's Broken Promise Seven years ago Friday George W. Bush uttered the now broken promise that has come to define his failed presidency. Accepting his party's nomination, Governor Bush promised to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House. But as events continue to show, a more accurate - and ironic - mantra for the lawless Bush White House would be "no controlling legal authority." At the time it was delivered, Bush's acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia was... more Posted on August 2, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	CNN to Add Bush Adviser Laura Ingraham? The disturbing descent of CNN into schizophrenia added a new chapter this week. The network asked Laura Ingraham to temporarily fill in for the outgoing Paula Zahn. As you'll recall, the right-wing radio host's resume includes her 2006 Democratic phone jamming operation. And most recently, as Oliver Willis now informs us, Ingraham served as informal adviser to President Bush. The addition of Ingraham is just the latest example of CNN's intermittent Fox envy. It comes just weeks after giving its... more Posted on August 2, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Giuliani Recycles Bush Health Care Plan While the field of 2008 GOP White House hopefuls continues to distance itself from President Bush, Rudy Giuliani today endorsed the moribund Bush health care plan lock, stock and barrel. And speaking on the eve of the President's looming veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) expansion, Giuliani made it clear he shares the same blighted market-driven philosophy as Bush. In New Hampshire today, Giuliani like Bush made a $15,000 family health care tax deduction to purchase private... more Posted on July 31, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Evangelical Civil War Over a Palestinian State? Sunday's New York Times reports a new fissure within the American evangelical movement. Already increasingly at loggerheads over global warming, evangelicals may be witnessing a new schism over the issue of a Palestinian state. And that means Pastor John Hagee and his end-of-times friends at Christians United for Israel (CUFI) are not happy. On Friday, a group of 30 evangelical leaders sent a letter to President Bush calling for a greater U.S. role in the creation of a Palestinian state.... more Posted on July 29, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	Suppressing Votes - and Science Two stories this weekend presented different faces on the unwavering - and perhaps criminal - zeal of the Bush White House to acquire and maintain power. On Friday, PBS Now reported how a massive Republican "vote caging" scheme targeted minority (read Democratic) voters in key 2004 battleground states. And today, the Washington Post revealed that Bush HHS appointee William R. Steiger blocked the release of Surgeon General Richard Carmona's 2006 global health report for purely political reasons. Suppressing votes and... more Posted on July 29, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	UPDATED: The Bush/GOP Scandal Documents The Perrspectives Bush-GOP Scandal Document Library has been expanded to include the latest news, key reports, document releases and other essential materials surrounding Bush administration and GOP wrong-doing. From the U.S. attorneys purge, illegal NSA domestic surveillance and the Iraq war to PlameGate, torture scandals and the ongoing Jack Abramoff fall-out, it's all there: U.S. Attorneys Scandal Document Center NSA Domestic Surveillance Scandal Center Iraq Intelligence and WMD Document Center Plamegate CIA Leak Resources Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff Scandal... more Posted on July 29, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Fragging Rights The ever more disturbing Pat Tillman saga is predictably stirring rage across the blogosphere. Most just want to know the truth about a seeming White House cover-up that may include the horrible possibility that Tillman was "fragged," that is, purposely killed by his fellow troops in Afghanistan. But while the Tillman affair is spawning conspiracy theories on all sides, it is once again drawing attention to some conservatives' apparent comfort with fragging itself. Over at ThinkProgress, Iraq veteran and VoteVets... more Posted on July 28, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Specter's Latest Hamlet Act This week, Senator Arlen Specter offered his latest performance as Hamlet in the unfolding Alberto Gonzales drama. Just one day after essentially accusing Gonzales of perjury before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter once again backed away from taking action against the Bush administration and instead criticized his Democratic colleagues for "playing politics." As I've written before ("Specter's Failure to Launch"), Specter like Shakespeare's Danish prince simply can't bring himself to avenge the crimes of his king. Something certainly is rotten... more Posted on July 27, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	The Simpsons Explain the Bush Presidency As The Simpsons movie opens this weekend, President Bush is under a withering assault from all sides. White House aides face contempt of Congress charges and Senate Judiciary Committee members call for a special counsel to probe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales while the President's position on the Iraq war grows more untenable.. Which is altogether fitting. As I explained back in April, a 2000 episode of The Simpsons perhaps best explains how the Bush presidency survives because of - and... more Posted on July 26, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Stephen Hayes: Cheney's Favorite Iraq-9/11 Fabulist Now Biographer Predictably, mainstream media discussion of Stephen Hayes' new biography of Vice President Dick Cheney has focused on his "unprecedented access" and salacious details. But while the Beltway is a abuzz about Cheney's decision to take the "cruddy job" of Vice President and Hayes' fanciful tale about a seemingly homophobic Cheney telling Senator Pat Leahy to "f**k yourself", little attention has been paid to Hayes himself. Which is too bad. Because as the history shows, whether the issue is non-existent Saddam-9/11... more Posted on July 24, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Admits Failure of "No Safe Havens" Policy Three weeks ago, news of an aborted 2005 U.S. raid against Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan confirmed the failure of a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine, "no safe havens for terrorists." Now, it would appear, President Bush himself agrees with that assessment. In his Saturday radio address, President Bush tried to spin the new National Intelligence Estimate and its warnings regarding a dangerously resurgent Al Qaeda in Pakistan. But buried among cherry-picked quotes about successes against Bin Laden's organization... more Posted on July 23, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Up or Down Vote: Death of a GOP Talking Point On Thursday morning, July 19th, the beloved GOP talking point "up or down vote" was officially declared dead. Its demise was little noticed in the aftermath of the Senate Republicans' successful all-night filibuster to block the Reed-Levin bill seeking to begin U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. "Up or down vote" was killed by a desperate Republican Party trying to obstruct Democratic accomplishments at any cost in advance of the 2008 elections. And so far, the GOP seems to be getting... more Posted on July 22, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	Bush to Iraq Amputee: "We're Gonna Get Him Some New Legs" Just 10 days ago, President Bush's bizarre sense of humor seemingly reached a new low when he made a 13 year old girl cry during an event in Cleveland. Today, the compassionate conservative returned to one of his favorite past-times, making light of the disabled. This time, the victim of President Bush's childlike callousness was an Iraq veteran - and double-amputee. Surrounding by servicemen during a speech today, Bush recalled his conversation with an Iraq soldier who lost both legs... more Posted on July 20, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	S-CHIP On Bush's Shoulder With his vocal opposition to the expansion of the S-CHIP program to provide health care coverage for more of America's children, President Bush is returning to the same tried and true formula he first pioneered in Texas. That is, Bush initially fought the legislation on ideological grounds before caving to popular pressure and grudgingly accepting some version of the bill. Then, as with the Texas S-CHIP program, the Texas Patients Bill of Right and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit,... more Posted on July 19, 2007 \| Comments (5)

	Petraeus and Bush's Coming Iraq Blame Game In the Washington Post today, Dan Froomkin offered readers a preview of the fate that awaits General David Petraeus at the hands of President Bush. Petraeus should prepare for his designated role as Bush's Iraq fall-guy come September because, as Froomkin noted, "he has a tendency to celebrate his generals when they're providing him political cover -- then stick a knife in their backs when they're no longer of any use to him." And as I wrote last December, outsourcing... more Posted on July 16, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Republicans Quiet on Iraqi - and Bush - Vacations Just one day after the Iraqi government received failing marks in President Bush's surge interim progress report, Americans learned that the Iraqi parliament is proceeding with its plans to take off the month of August. But while the American people may be up in arms, President Bush's amen corner is predictably silent. After all, given Bush's own record-setting penchant for vacationing during crises here at home, Republicans are understandably reticent to criticize the absentee government in Baghdad. Judging by the... more Posted on July 14, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	"We're Making Progress" - Bush's History of Iraq In Washington yesterday, George W. Bush encountered what might be deemed the "reverse Chicken Little moment" of his presidency. That is, Americans have simply stopped believing his perpetual claims of sunny skies to come in Iraq. As the President delivered the interim progress report on his Iraq surge, he was greeted with dropped jaws and incredulous stares across the political spectrum. It wasn't just anti-war stalwart Jack Murtha calling Bush "delusional." On Friday, Bill O'Reilly told his former Fox News... more Posted on July 13, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Nixon Presidential Library Fraud Ends As Bush's Begins With each day, the Bush presidency more and more resembles the disgraced tenure of Richard Nixon. This past week alone brought dubious assertions of executive privilege, new revelations of domestic surveillance and civil rights violations, similarly dismal poll ratings and even a presidential pardon. And now, it seems, the disturbing Nixon-Bush parallels extend to their presidential libraries. As the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and others reported today, federal archivists officially took control of the Nixon Presidential Library in... more Posted on July 11, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	CIA: Resurgent Al Qaeda Now at Pre-9/11 Capability On Saturday, Americans learned that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2005 cancelled a major U.S. raid into Pakistan designed to decapitate much of Al Qaeda's senior leadership. Now, a new CIA assessment details the steep price the U.S. is paying for President Bush's failure to enforce his mantra of "no safe havens." U.S. intelligence analysts, the AP reports, have concluded Al Qaeda has "rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the 2001 terrorist attacks." This... more Posted on July 11, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Politics and Crime at the FDA On the same day that former Surgeon General Richard Carmona told Congress about the politicization of his office by the White House, a bizarre story from China served as a reminder of other past Bush wrong-doing at the FDA. The Beijing government punished the former head of the Chinese Food and Drug Administration for approving bogus medicine in exchange for cash. Which sounds like President Bush's former FDA chief, Dr. Lester Crawford. As you may recall, Crawford mysteriously resigned in... more Posted on July 10, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Iraq Surge Wins Rave Reviews For the Bush administration, the marketing of the "surge" in Iraq more and more looks like an ad for a Hollywood flop. In this case, the box office numbers are in and the film is a dismal failure. And yet a small but reliable group of friendly critics continues to offer rave reviews for "Iraq: The Surge." No doubt, the tidal wave of bad news this week confirms Bush's Iraq escalation has achieved Ishtar-level disaster status. A mandated interim progress... more Posted on July 10, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Like Father, Like Son Karl Marx famously remarked that historical events occur twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. In the case of President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence, Marx had it half-right. Americans are reliving George H.W. Bush's 1992 Iran-Contra pardons, with the same tragic consequences for the rule of law in the United States. All that's missing in 2007 is the convenient death of one of the principal conspirators. As Digby, Jane Hamsher and Kagro X... more Posted on July 8, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	The Pakistan Raid: So Much for "No Safe Havens" Sunday's New York Times offers an explosive story of an aborted 2005 U.S. raid into Pakistan, a special forces operation designed to "snatch and grab" Ayman Al Zawahiri and other senior Al Qaeda leaders. The story, following July 2006 revelations that the CIA had previously disbanded its Bin Laden unit, gives lie to one of the central tenets of the so-called Bush Doctrine: no safe havens for terrorists. The Times piece details Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld running roughshod over then... more Posted on July 7, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	UPDATED: The Bush-GOP Scandal Document Center The Perrspectives Bush-GOP Scandal Document Library has been expanded to include the latest news, key reports, document releases and other essential materials surrounding Bush administration and GOP wrong-doing. From Plamegate and the Scooter Libby commutation, the U.S. attorneys purge and illegal NSA domestic surveillance to Iraq intelligence manipulation, torture scandals and the ongoing Jack Abramoff fall-out, it's all there: Plamegate CIA Leak Resources U.S. Attorneys Scandal Document Center Iraq Intelligence and WMD Document Center NSA Domestic Surveillance Scandal Center Tom... more Posted on July 7, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Fred Thompson, Nixon Watergate Mole Back in May, I contrasted the Watergate legend of Fred Thompson with his current role as a fundraiser and spokesman for the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund. As a Republican counsel to the Senate Watergate committee, Thompson famously asked Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield if there were listening devices in the White House. In 2007, he asked President Bush to pardon Libby, a convicted felon and former Cheney chief-of-staff. As it turns out, Thompson's staunch defense of Plamegate mole Scooter Libby... more Posted on July 5, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	The Consistent Inconsistency of George W. Bush Enough has been made by this (and virtually every other center-left) blog about President Bush's outrageous endorsement of his administration's law-breaking and ongoing obstruction of justice with the Libby commutation. But it is worth remembering that this is merely Bush being Bush, consistent in his own inconsistency. That is, a gleeful vengeance towards criminals occupies a high place in George W. Bush's pantheon of values. Just not as high, as we all should long have since known, as rewarding personal... more Posted on July 4, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Libby and the GOP's Criminalization of Politics Defense As Scooter Libby awoke this morning to find God in his heaven and all right with the world, his apologists were fast at work in regurgitating the trusty Republican "criminalization of politics defense" to fend off criticism of President Bush's shocking endorsement of law-breaking. Of course, that's what the conservative movement has been reduced to. Whether the scandal involves the outing of Valerie Plame, the misdeeds of Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, or the U.S. attorneys purge, we can always... more Posted on July 3, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Neither Right Nor Legal: Bush Commutes Libby's Sentence As expected, President Bush chose loyalty over the rule of law and commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby. While Vice President Cheney's former chief-of-staff still must face a two year probation and a $250,000 fine, the President sent a clear but cowardly message that breaking the law in the service of his agenda is the expectation in the Bush White House: "I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.... more Posted on July 2, 2007 \| Comments (5)

	DOJ Wins Mississippi White Voter Suppression Case In May 2006, Perrspectives detailed the one of the few efforts by the Bush Department of Justice to fight election bias. In a tragi-comic inversion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the DOJ argued that the African-American Democratic Executive Committee chairman in Noxubee County Ike Brown led an effort to suppress the vote of white residents. As it turns out, on Friday a federal judge agreed that white voters were subjected to discrimination based upon their race. Given the... more Posted on June 30, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Ashcroft Contradicts Gonzales' Testimony on NSA Program Last week, Perrspectives detailed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lying under oath regarding the Bush administration's internal debate over the legality of its NSA domestic surveillance program. Now, former Attorney General John Ashcroft in closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee confirmed that Gonzales once again lied to Congress. House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) summarized Ashcroft's description today of the discord within the Bush administration: "It is very apparent to us that there was robust and enormous debate... more Posted on June 21, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Red States Opposing Employee Free Choice Act Need It Most In Washington this week, the Senate will take up the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Passed by the House 241-185 in March, EFCA would make it much easier for unions to organize. Predictably, red state Republican Senators backed by an alliance of business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will likely prevent the measure from coming to a vote. Which is too bad. After all, from wages and benefits to job opportunities and collective bargaining rights, it is... more Posted on June 20, 2007 \| Comments (8)

	EXPANDED: The Bush-GOP Scandal Document Center The Perrspectives Bush-GOP Scandal Document Library has been expanded to include the latest news, key reports, document releases and other essential materials surrounding Bush administration and GOP wrong-doing. From the U.S. attorneys purge, Plamegate, and illegal NSA domestic surveillance to Iraq intelligence manipulation, torture scandals and the ongoing Jack Abramoff fall-out, it's all there: U.S. Attorneys Scandal Document Center Iraq Intelligence and WMD Document Center Plamegate CIA Leak Resources NSA Domestic Surveillance Scandal Center Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff Scandal... more Posted on June 19, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	The Death of the Bush Doctrine That wheezing sound you may have heard this week amid the chaos in Gaza, the carnage in Baghdad and the conflict in Lebanon was the final gasps of the Bush Doctrine in its death throes. Just two years after the President and his neo-conservative allies basked in the glow of their self-proclaimed moment of triumph, the Bush Doctrine of no safe havens for terrorists, American preventive war and democracy promotion is discredited, discarded - and dead. The ruins of the... more Posted on June 16, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Gonzales Lies to Congress. Again. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has lied to Congress - again. Raw Story is reporting that despite Congress' passage of the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007, Gonzales has once again used the interim hiring authority for U.S. attorneys rescinded by that bill. Sadly, this is precisely what Gonzales promised Congress - under oath - he would never do. During his January 18th testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, misled the Senate about the critical importance of a hitherto... more Posted on June 14, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Bush Steals Clinton's Applause in Albania In Albania this weekend, President Bush learned that there is at least one place on earth where he is still welcome. Massive crowds and adoring throngs in the primarily Muslim nation came out to greet the President in Tirana to thank Bush for his support of independence for their ethnic brethren in Kosovo. But in this as in so many other areas, George W. Bush is only to happy to accept applause intended for Bill Clinton. Sadly, back in 1999... more Posted on June 11, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	How to Make the Stem Cell Bill Veto-Proof Just two days after the third anniversary of the death of Ronald Reagan, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill easing restrictions on stem cell research favored by his family. But with President Bush promising to once again veto what he called "a recycled old bill," Democrats will need a new strategy to win one for the Gipper. As I wrote back in April, all the stem cell bill needs is a name change - and a little help... more Posted on June 8, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	The Libby Sentence: Burning Questions For one day at least, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world. In Washington, Judge Reggie Walton sentenced former Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby to serve 30 months in prison and pay a $250,000 fine for his perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame affair. But while that issue of meting out justice to one of the perpetrators of the outing of a covert CIA operative and the selling of the Iraq war was... more Posted on June 5, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Misreading History: Bush, Korea and Endless War in Iraq Once again, President Bush confirmed he is no reader of the history books. Just days after a scathing report from the Senate Intelligence Committee detailed how the Bush administration ignored the CIA's dire warnings of sectarian strife and civil war in post-Saddam Iraq, the White House pointed to South Korea as a model for the American military presence in Iraq. The prospect of a multi-generational commitment of U.S. forces to support the government in Baghdad not only raised the specter... more Posted on June 3, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	UPDATED: Bush-GOP Scandal Document Center The Perrspectives Document Library has been expanded to include the latest news, key reports, document releases and other essential materials surrounding Bush administration and GOP wrong-doing. From the U.S. attorneys purge, Plamegate, and illegal NSA domestic surveillance to Iraq intelligence manipulation, torture scandals and the ongoing Jack Abramoff fall-out, it's all there. Some of the latest developments and additions to the Perrspectives Document Library: U.S. Attorneys Scandal Document Center Despite Alberto Gonzales' vow to "sprint to the finish line," the... more Posted on June 3, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Bush's AIDS PR Scam On Wednesday, President Bush once again turned to AIDS for air cover in the battle for global opinion. Facing the prospect of universal condemnation by the international community for a wildly unpopular American policy, President Bush tried to change the topic and buy some global goodwill by announcing massive new U.S. AIDS funding. This time, Bush is trying to deflect criticism of American global warming policy in advance of next week's G8 summit. In 2003, of course, his problem was... more Posted on May 31, 2007 \| Comments (5)

	Richardson, Hispanic Organizations Fail the Gonzales Test It's no surprise that the ongoing controversy over Alberto Gonzales' role in the purging of U.S. prosecutors has revealed the limitless intent of the Bush administration to convert the Department of Justice into an appendage of the Republican Party. What is more surprising - and deeply disappointing - is the unwillingness of leading Hispanic figures and organizations to take on one of their own. With his hesitation to call on Attorney General Gonzales to resign, Democratic presidential hopeful Governor Bill... more Posted on May 29, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Fred Thompson: Watergate Hero Turned Plamegate Villain As Republicans await with baited breadth the signal that former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is jumping into the 2008 presidential race, more ironic revelations concerning the politician-turned-actor continue to surface. As it turns out, the Watergate hero who helped reveal Richard Nixon's Watergate cover-up is now helping Scooter Libby facilitate his Plamegate smoke-screen. To follow Thompson's evolution from nonpartisan truth seeker to Republican shill, take a trip back to the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973 and 1974. As I rediscovered... more Posted on May 25, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Politicizing Crime Among the least surprising developments arising from Monica Goodling's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee was the reflexive use of the "criminalization of politics" defense. Not by the witness, that is, but by Republican members of the committee themselves. That is to be expected. After all, whether the scandal involves Tom Delay, the outing of Valerie Plame, Jack Abramoff, or the U.S. attorneys purge, we can always count on the GOP to recast its rampant criminality as mere political disagreement.... more Posted on May 24, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Monica Goodling's Immaculate Conception In her testimony today before the House Judiciary Committee, former DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling joined Alberto Gonzales, Kyle Sampson and Paul McNulty in disclaiming any role in the creation of the infamous list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. It should comes as no surprise that the graduate of Regent University law school would have us believe the list so central to the prosecutors purge appeared magically, untouched by the hands of man. Call it Immaculate Conception. Goodling... more Posted on May 23, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	UPDATED: U.S. Attorney Scandal Resource Center With Monica Goodling's testimony underway, the Perrspectives U.S. Attorney Scandal Resource Center has been updated. For all the latest news, document dumps, email archives, hearing transcripts and other essential materials in the political motivated firings of U.S. attorneys, see "The U.S. Attorney Resource Center."... more Posted on May 23, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	When Bush Comes to Shove: Specter's Saga On Sunday, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter repeated his familiar pattern of feigned independence from the Bush White House. Appearing on CBS' Face the Nation, Specter announced his expectation that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would resign in the face of a looming no-confidence vote in the Senate. But as I wrote in February, whether the issue concerns the political firings of U.S. attorneys, the illegal NSA domestic surveillance program, presidential statements or the Valerie Plame leak, Arlen Specter's initial outrage... more Posted on May 21, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Armageddon as Foreign Policy: Dobson, Bush and Iran While Jerry Falwell has passed from the scene, many of his fellow End-of-Times evangelical allies still enjoy unfettered access to and dangerous influence over President Bush, especially when it comes to Iran. As Focus on the Family head James Dobson reported on his radio show on Monday, he and a group of evangelical leaders met with Bush at the White House to discuss policies towards Tehran that keep all options on the table. As I wrote last year, that includes... more Posted on May 16, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	The Bedside Manners of Alberto Gonzales and Newt Gingrich While likely GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in April called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign over his "mishandling" of the U.S. prosecutors purge, it turns out the two men have a lot in common. As we learned on Tuesday, when it comes to pressuring the gravely ill, Gonzales and Gingrich share the same bedside manners. During his testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey detailed then White House Counsel Gonzales' visit to... more Posted on May 16, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Encore Performance! Gonzales as Sgt. Schultz For those who missed Alberto Gonzales' act of self-immolation before Senate Judiciary Committee on April 19, the Attorney General is set to offer an encore performance during Thursday's hearing about the purged prosecutors before the House Judiciary Committee. As MSNBC, Politico and TPM Muckraker are all reporting, Gonzales will offer the House virtually the same disastrous prepared statement he offered the Senate last month. In addition to the tomorrow's expected endless repetition of "I don't recall," the hapless Attorney General... more Posted on May 9, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	No GOP Plan B for Iraq By now, Americans should have grown accustomed to the Bush administration's opposition to Plan B. But as it turns out, the ideologues of the Republican Party not only oppose Plan B for American women. They oppose Plan B for American troops mired in the civil war in Iraq That's the message from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). On Sunday, Boehner stood by President Bush's surge strategy, proclaiming "We don't even have all of the 30,000 additional troops in Iraq... more Posted on May 7, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Iraq Mad Libs Watching President Bush deliver his promised veto of the Iraq supplemental funding bill yesterday was akin to a bad game of Mad Libs. The President predictably demonstrated his resolve by filling-in the blanks in his speech by resorting to his repertoire of worn-out Iraq talking points, such as "surrender date" and "handcuffing the generals." Now you can play Bush Iraq Mad Libs at home. Laugh for hours with family and friends as you construct your own after-the-fact bogus war rationale,... more Posted on May 2, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Iraq Benchmarks and Bush's Double-Standard on Accountability For an administration that claims to place so value on "accountability," the Bush White House once again exempted itself and its allies. On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice announced that President Bush would reject any Iraq funding bill that included benchmarks for the Al Maliki in government in Baghdad. As it turns out, that free pass for Al Maliki not only flies in the face the President's own words from January, but contradicts the "accountability" talking point comically present... more Posted on May 1, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Mission Accomplished: 4 Years of GOP Iraq Talking Points On Tuesday May 1st, the United States will mark the fourth anniversary of President Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. But as the carnage continues and the war funding debate rages, President Bush and allies in the conservative amen corners can only offer the American people new and recycled talking points to sell his catastrophically ill-conceived war without end. Here, then, is a look back at four years of wartime marketing gone bad. What follows below is by no... more Posted on April 29, 2007 \| Comments (5)

	Surviving All Scandals: President Bush as Mr. Burns With each passing day, the scandal-plagued Bush White House more and more resembles a 2000 episode of The Simpsons. During a check up, the nuclear power tycoon Mr. Burns is informed by his doctor that "you are the sickest man in the United States. You have everything." (See a video clip here.) But the doctor reassures Burns that the news isn't all bad and that he will survive because "all of your diseases are in perfect balance." And so it... more Posted on April 26, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	The Suffering of Laura Bush & Bubble Boy Among the more enduring mysteries of the current American political scene is the continued popularity of First Lady Laura Bush. For the third time in just under a year, Mrs. Bush insulted our troops and their families. Appearing on the Today Show, the First Lady offered the American people this shining nugget of detachment and tone-deafness: "No one suffers more than their President and I do." Laura Bush's shocking callousness today is hardly her first offense. As Perrspectives reported back... more Posted on April 25, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	Gonzales and Bush's "What is Right" Ethical Standard Among today's least surprising developments is President Bush's latest expression of support for his embattled Attorney General. Despite Alberto Gonzales' near-death experience before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, the President proclaimed that his long-time friend "increased my confidence." What is even less surprising, of course, is that George W. Bush continues to make a mockery of his cynical campaign 2000 pledge to ask "not only what is legal but what is right." As you'll recall, candidate Bush presented himself... more Posted on April 23, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	President Bush, Confidence Man With the exploding scandals at the Justice Department and the World Bank enveloping his administration, President Bush voiced "full confidence" in Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz this week. But as history has shown, there is no more certain confirmation of the criminality, ethical-wrong doing or imminent departure of a Bush team player than the President's expression of confidence in him. By that standard, the prospects are not bright for Attorney General Gonzales and World Bank president Wolfowitz. On April 19,... more Posted on April 21, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Gonzales' Sgt. Schultz Defense In his testimony regarding the U.S. attorneys scandal before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once again offered his Sgt. Schultz defense. Like the bumbling German guard in Hogan's Heroes, Gonzales essentially claimed "I know nothing, nothing!" Sadly, his own recent statements show that while Gonzales may be similarly stupid, he is not ignorant. The Attorney General's recent op-eds show his dilemma. While claiming to have played no role in the evaluation of the fired attorneys,... more Posted on April 19, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	The GOP War on the Doctor-Patient Relationship From the moment he entered the White House, President Bush proclaimed the "doctor-patient relationship" the centerpiece of his policies when it comes to Americans' health care. Just not, as it turns out, for American women. As today's Supreme Court decision upholding the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act shows, President Bush and his Republican allies don't care much at all about the doctor-patient relationship when it comes to women's reproductive health and safety. A quick look back shows that "protecting... more Posted on April 18, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Gonzales' Dueling Op-Eds In anticipation of his make-or-break testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday regarding his role in the partisan purge of U.S. attorneys, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took to the pages of the Washington Post to save his neck. But by contradicting his own March 6th USA Today op-ed, Gonzales may have simply tightened the noose. In his April 15 Washington Post piece ("Nothing Improper"), Gonzales resorts to the dual defenses of revisionist history and hazy memory. President Bush's... more Posted on April 15, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush's Key Role Revealed in Iglesias Firing On Sunday, the Albuquerque Journal published an explosive article detailing the critical roles of President Bush, Karl Rove and New Mexico Senator Pete in the sacking of U.S. attorney David Iglesias. Alberto Gonzales' apparent opposition to Iglesias' ouster and the timeline of events leading up to it suggest President Bush was being less than truthful about his own role in the prosecutor purge. Back on March 13, President Bush brushed aside questions about the exploding scandal and the possibility of... more Posted on April 15, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	U.S. Attorneys and the Visible Hand of the Federalist Society Among the revelations contained in the latest DOJ document dump is the central role of the Federalist Society in entrenching the permanent Republican majority among the ranks of the U.S. attorneys. As FireDogLake, ThinkProgress and others have reported, membership in the Federalist Society was crucial to a favorable ranking by the Gonzales team entrusted with purging the USAs ranks of those not "loyal Bushies." But as Perrspectives detailed back in the spring of 2005, the conservative Federalist Society is the... more Posted on April 13, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	How to Override the Bush Stem Cell Veto With Harry Reid's stem cell research bill headed to a Senate vote this week, Congressional Democrats and President Bush are on the brink of yet another confrontation. But while the White House is promising to repeat its 2006 veto, the ending can be different this time. All the Reid legislation needs is a name change - and a little help from Ronald Reagan. The failure to override President Bush's veto in 2006 shows that broad bipartisan backing in Congress, aggressive... more Posted on April 10, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Tommy Thompson and the Bush Kiss of Death On Wednesday, former Wisconsin Governor and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson joined the increasingly crowded field in the 2008 Republican presidential race. But thanks to his enabling role in President Bush's Medicare prescription fiasco, Thompson's White House prospects were already dim even before last week's announcement. Like Michigan's John Engler and New Jersey's Christie Todd Whitman before him, Thompson is yet another new wave Republican Governor of the 1990's whose rising star was snuffed out by the reverse... more Posted on April 8, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Michael Chertoff on Clean Skin and Homegrown Terrorism Among the loyal hacks who permeate the Bush administration, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has been one of the most reliably banal. So when Chertoff described the threat to the United States from so-called "clean skin" terrorists, most liberal bloggers understandably assumed this was just the latest example of that brand of casual conservative racism that brought us the "tar baby" slur from Tony Snow, Mitt Romney and John McCain. But, for once, Chertoff might deserve slightly more credit than... more Posted on April 4, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	Gonzales, Doan and the Republican Diversity Defense "Diversity" is one word that is rarely associated with the conservative movement in general and the Republican Party in particular. From immigration and affirmative action to redistricting and minority voting rights, the lily-white GOP and its amen corner advocate a monotone, melanin-free vision for America. But when it comes to efforts by Republicans Alberto Gonzales and Lurita Doan to convert their federal agencies into entrenched partisan redoubts of the GOP, the right has been very quick indeed to turn to... more Posted on April 1, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Keith Ellison, Syria and the Coming Conservative Smear Today's announcement that a Congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet with Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad during a four nation Middle East swing was sure to raise the ire of the White House. But because the bipartisan group includes the Muslim Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, the predictable conservative catcalls of treason are also almost sure to follow. During the visit, the delegation will visit Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Israel, where Speaker Pelosi will address the Knesset.... more Posted on March 30, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	NBC's Williams Nails Gonzales on His Catch-22 In a surreal interview today with Alberto Gonzales, NBC's Pete Williams highlighted the shifting sands underneath the Attorney General's increasing untenable position. With a single question, Williams revealed Gonzales' Catch-22 in the firings of U.S. attorneys: he cannot claim to both have played no role in the evaluations of the fired attorneys and know that their sackings were the result of performance issues: Williams: To put this question another way - if you didn't review their performance during this process,... more Posted on March 26, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Cornyn Threatens Judges, Protects Gonzales When it comes to defending the criminal wrong-doing of the Bush administration, few Republicans in Congress circle the wagons better than Texas Senator John Cornyn. With the exploding scandal over the firings of U.S. attorneys threatening the White House, Cornyn has come to the assistance of fellow former Texas Supreme Court justice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. How ironic then that the same John Cornyn who defends "the Judge" now was the same man who two years ago excused violence against... more Posted on March 25, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Specter's Failure to Launch Watching Republican Senator Arlen Specter challenge Bush administration wrong-doing is like witnessing a failed rocket launch. After the initial furious explosion of hot air, Specter almost immediately loses momentum and never breaks the dark gravitational pull of planet Bush. Specter's performance Thursday during the Senate Judiciary Committee's debate over issuing White House subpoenas in the firing of U.S. attorneys was certainly no exception. After the testimony two weeks ago of six of the fired prosecutors, Specter joined the bipartisan chorus... more Posted on March 23, 2007 \| Comments (5)

	The "Sentence Scooter" Contest Winners Perrspectives is pleased to announce the winners of the "Sentence Scooter Contest." Two weeks ago, we asked readers to provide a fitting sentence for Mr. Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff convicted on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. And what could be more fitting than to mete out metaphorical punishment to one of the architects of the Iraq war during this week, the fourth anniversary of the invasion.... more Posted on March 21, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Bush Iraq Irony Watch: "A Clean Bill Without Strings" At this point in his dismal tenure, virtually any statement emanating from President Bush is dripping with irony. Today's speech marking the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is no exception. For even as the President lambasted Congressional Democrats about the need for "clean" Iraq war funding bill "without strings" attached, it is the Bush White House which continues to rely on such hidden provisos in its political purge of prosecutors and manipulation of the federal budget. In his... more Posted on March 19, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Top 10 GOP Sound Bites, "Mistakes Were Made" Edition The Bushboard List of Top 10 GOP Sound Bites has seen another shake-up at the top of the charts. With the exploding U.S. attorneys scandal, the Scooter Libby verdict and the debate over Iraq war funding, a new crop of Republican talking points is zooming up the rankings. Topping the charts is the Gonzales-Bush smash hit "Mistakes Were Made" from their tribute album to the former federal prosecutors, Eight is Enough. With the conviction of Dick Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby... more Posted on March 15, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Top 10 Reasons Gonzales Must Go In the wake of his tortured press conference yesterday, politicians and papers across the nation are calling for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. But despite the flood of revelations that the White House and Gonzales' Department of Justice authored a plot to purge U.S. attorneys for purely partisan political advantage, President Bush is standing by his man. Alberto Gonzales must resign. But his departure is required not merely because of his ham-fisted and duplicitous role in the firing... more Posted on March 14, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	The Link: GOP Purging Prosecutors - and Voters The exploding U.S. attorneys scandal threatens to engulf the White House with the revelations that the Bush administration as early as February 2005 contemplated sacking all 93 prosecutors. But today's stories in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the LA Times reveal more than a White House determined to enforce loyalty to President Bush and entrench partisan Republican hatchet men throughout the DOJ's ranks. Simply put, the Bush White House planned to systematically drive down the turnout of... more Posted on March 13, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Corporate Treason: Halliburton, Dubai and Iran With Sunday's announcement of its headquarters relocation to Dubai, Halliburton completed its transformation from mere war-profiteer to corporate traitor. The motivations for the move are simple: death and taxes. Shifting its corporate headquarters not only allows Halliburton to shaft American taxpayers. It enables Dick Cheney's old firm to comfortably expand its large and growing business with Iran and other declared terrorist enemies of the United States. The company, which raked in $2.3 billion in profits on revenue of $22.6 billion... more Posted on March 12, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	NEW: The U.S. Attorney Scandal Documents For the latest news, hearings, legal filings and other essential documents on the Bush administration's politically motivated prosecutor firings, visit Perrspectives U.S. Attorneys Scandal Document Center. The U.S. Attorneys Document collection includes: A complete archive of the latest news articles on the prosecutor firings, including updates on planned Congressional hearings and Alberto Gonzales' decision to reverse course on the White House's threat to legislative revision of the Patriot Act. Access to transcripts of recent Congressional testimony by the fired prosecutors,... more Posted on March 9, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	The Last Throes of the Bush Presidency For an already embattled White House, March 6, 2007 may have officially marked the last throes of the Bush presidency. In court rooms and Congressional hearings, in Iraq and in the polls, the Bush administration was deluged with a torrent of breaking news, all of it bad. Start with Tuesday's conviction of former Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby on four counts of obstruction and perjury in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. In revelation after revelation, the administration's duplicity in... more Posted on March 7, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Enter the "Sentence Scooter" Contest! The jury in the CIA leak trial of Scooter Libby has spoken. Now it's your turn. Enter Perrspectives' "Sentence Scooter Contest." You get to play judge and pronounce a fitting sentence for the incredibly guilty Mr. Libby, convicted on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. You'll not only have fun, you could also win a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate for your trouble. The rules are simple. Use the Comments Form... more Posted on March 6, 2007 \| Comments (74)

	Conservatives 527, John Kerry 0 The campaign 2004 indignities continued this week for Senator John Kerry. On Tuesday, Kerry's Foreign Relations Committee confronted Sam Fox, the President's nominee for ambassador to Belgium, also a Bush "Pioneer" and a $50,000 contributor to the Swift Boat Vets in 2004. And on Wednesday, Kerry learned that the Federal Election Commission slapped a record $750,000 fine on Progress for America, a conservative 527 group which spent almost $30 million on President Bush's reelection. The Fox confirmation hearings proceeded uneventfully,... more Posted on March 1, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Bush's Shaq Attack On Tuesday, President Bush welcomed Shaquille O'Neal and his 2006 NBA champion Miami Heat teammates to the White House. Appearing with the 7 foot center in the East Room, the smiling President said of O'Neal: "Standing next to Shaq is an awe-inspiring experience." The President, however, may have been somewhat less inspired had he known about Shaq's comments about him just two days earlier. Reacting to questions about his selection to the NBA All-Star game despite starting only 10 games,... more Posted on March 1, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	The Beautiful Minds of the Bush Family On the Larry King show Monday, First Lady Laura Bush demonstrated that the Bush family's legendary compassion deficit is contagious, if not genetic. Even as daily attacks in Iraq climbed to an average of 230 last month, Mrs. Bush casually dismissed the suffering of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike: "Many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody." This shocking detachment is just the... more Posted on February 28, 2007 \| Comments (4)

	Romney, Cheney in Deep with Iran Investments In a high profile effort to bolster his credibility on national security, 2008 Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney last week called on New York to divest its pension fund of any holdings in firms doing with business with Iran. But as it turns out, it is Mitt Romney's former employer with the ties to Tehran. And as you'd expect, Dick Cheney's Halliburton is in deep as well. Following the lead of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Romney began... more Posted on February 26, 2007 \| Comments (6)

	Newsweek: Off-Script on Iran Last week, Perrspectives documented the controversy and contradictions surrounding the administration's case to provide Iranian meddling in Iraq ("Fool Me Once: Bush and Iran"). Today, Newsweek provides more of the backstory in "Straying from the Script." While there is evidence of Iranian weapons and agents in Iraq, JCS Chairman Peter Pace and Centcomm commander William Fallon disagreed with military briefers claiming the "highest levels" of the Tehran regime had authorized the activities. The resulting confusion led to rhetorical gymnastics from... more Posted on February 22, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	UPDATED: CIA Leak Trial Resource Center With closing arguments underway in the trial of Scooter Libby, Perrspectives has updated its CIA Leak/PlameGate Resource Center. The PlameGate document repository features all the latest Libby trial news, legal documents, timelines and other essential materials surrounding the Bush administration's outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame and its politics of payback against Joseph Wilson. Everything you need to follow the PlameGate saga is there. The latest articles cover closing arguments and new revelations about the Libby-Cheney relationship, as well... more Posted on February 20, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Bush's Bin Laden Fantasy I have long argued that for conservative Republicans, the only impeachable offense George W. Bush could ever commit would involve video evidence of him and Dick Cheney engaged in the throes of neo-con love-making. Now, just two days after his major address on the deteriorating situation against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, there are new revelations of a different Bush homo-erotic fantasy, this time with Osama Bin Laden. In a review of a new biography of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli paper... more Posted on February 19, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Fool Me Once: Bush and Iran As the debate over Iran's involvement in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq heats up, the Bush White House is facing a credibility gap of historic proportions. Four and a half years after mangling the old saying himself, President Bush's Iran saber-rattling is suffering from the same "Fool Me Once" syndrome he bungled in September 2002: "There's a lot of talk about Iraq on our TV screens, and there should be, because we're trying to figure out how best to... more Posted on February 13, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	The Taxman Doesn't Cometh Monday's New York Times offers an analysis of the latest front in the partisan class war, the battle to collect unpaid taxes. The plot of this morality tale is predictable. On one side, Democrats seek to capture up to $100 billion in tax fraud to help fund their "paygo" budget plans. On the other, the GOP hopes to continue its gutting of the IRS and perpetuate the transfer of audits - and tax burden - away from the wealthiest of... more Posted on February 5, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Denies GOP Treason Label for Democrats A chastened President Bush ventured into enemy territory on Saturday to address the annual gathering of House Democrats. Obliterated in the November elections and facing both abysmal poll numbers and open rebellion over Iraq within his own party, the formerly fierce Bush with tail between his legs feigned a spirit of bipartisan cooperation: "I welcome debate at a time of war and I hope you know that. Nor do I consider a belief that if you don't happen to agree... more Posted on February 4, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Groundhog Day: Iraq, Iran and the NIE After months and months of delays, the long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq was delivered to Congress today. It is altogether fitting that the NIE crawled out from Langley on Groundhog Day. After all, like Bill Murray in the film Groundhog Day we've experienced this unsettling process of murky reports from the intelligence community before. And we're certainly in for at least six more weeks of conflict in Iraq. Wary of repeating George Tenet's 2002 NIE rosy portrait of American... more Posted on February 2, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Top 10 GOP Sound Bites, Emboldened Enemy Edition The building bipartisan opposition to the President's proposed troop surge in Iraq and the crickets-chirping reception to Bush's abysmal State of the Union address have led to another dramatic shake-up in the list of Top 10 GOP Sound Bites. The President's hard-charging counterattack has moved two right-wing talking points up the charts. The new #1 is the thrashing "Embolden the Enemy," performed by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Robert Gates and Tony Snow, with guest vocals from Joe Lieberman. Jumping all... more Posted on February 1, 2007 \| Comments (5)

	Hagel and Bush's Bay of Pigs Moment With Senate debate on competing Iraq resolutions set to begin this week, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has emerged as the bete noire of President Bush and his remaining Republican allies in Congress. But while his ferocious opposition to the "Alice in Wonderland" surge in Iraq marks him now as a White House foe, back in 2005 Hagel offered Bush some sage advice that should have made him the President's best friend. The story of Chuck Hagel's wise counsel in June... more Posted on January 28, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Top 10 State of the Union Highlights For those who had the good fortune to miss his 2007 State of the Union address, President Bush just offered the American people a stunning profile in rhetorical obfuscation and political comeuppance. Domestically, his seeming move to the middle on energy, immigration and health care may have alienated his own base while offering some prospect for deals with the Democrats. (Jim Webb's Democratic response is available here.) But in foreign policy and the war in Iraq, President Bush's language was... more Posted on January 23, 2007 \| Comments (5)

	Bush State of the Union Archives With the 2007 State of the Union address now one for the history books, you can access the full text of this and all six prior Bush SOTU speeches in the Perrspectives Document Library. Details on new White House policy proposals are available here. The text of Senator Jim Webb's Democratic response is available here.... more Posted on January 23, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	GOP Quotes of the Week, Libby-SOTU Edition As George W. Bush prepares to deliver his 2007 State of the Union address, the President and his amen corner in suffered through another week of rhetorical distress. With the GOP in rebellion over the President's "surge' in Iraq and the CIA leak trial of Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby underway, Bush in succeeding weeks might look back fondly on his current 28% approval rating. Here, then, are the latest Quotes of the Week: "I will not be sacrificed so Karl... more Posted on January 23, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	SOTU Preview: 10 Things to Watch Tuesday's State of the Union Address should offer Americans compelling viewing. After the GOP's electoral disaster in November and the resounding thud that greeted the "surge" in Iraq, the 2007 SOTU can be said to officially mark the last throes of the Bush presidency. In anticipation of tomorrow night's presidential flight of fantasy, here are 10 things to look for in the 2007 State of the Union: 1. An Unhealthy Vision As his Saturday radio address made clear, President Bush... more Posted on January 22, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	China Rising, America Adrift This week's startling revelations regarding Beijing's successful test of an anti-satellite weapon provided just the latest evidence of China's growing geo-strategic challenge to the United States. And as I first wrote almost three years ago, the Bush administration seems rudderless in the face of rapidly rising Chinese economic power, military might and diplomatic strength. For sure, the size, sophistication and aggressiveness of the Chinese military pose a direct threat to American hegemony, especially in the Pacific. The Chinese ASAT test... more Posted on January 21, 2007 \| Comments (3)

	GOP Flashback: "No Civil Liberties When You're Dead" What a difference a year - and electoral disaster - makes. As Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the Bush administration's illegal NSA domestic spying last February, Republicans Senators rushed to the defense of the President and his program. Fast forward to yesterday's announcement by Gonzales that the White House was backing away from wiretapping without FISA court warrants and the GOP's histrionics seem all the more comical. As Perrspectives detailed last year, President Bush's amen corner on Capitol Hill offered... more Posted on January 18, 2007 \| Comments (2)

	Gonzales: New FISA Role for Domestic Spying In what may be a major reversal of course, the Bush administration may yet submit to the rule of law regarding its illegal NSA domestic spying program. The AP is reporting that Attorney General Gonzales notified Senate Judiciary Committee leaders Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) that the Justice Department will once again submit wiretap requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Courts. "As a result of these orders, any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the... more Posted on January 17, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	The Plame CIA Leak Resource Center With the CIA leak trial of one-time Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby beginning today, the Perrspectives Document Library has all the resources you need to track the investigation and court room battle. The PlameGate CIA Leak Resource Center features all the latest breaking news, key legal documents, detailed timelines and more surrounding the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame and the Bush White House effort to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson. It's all there, from Bush's infamous 16 words, the... more Posted on January 16, 2007 \| Comments (0)

	Understanding the White House's Iraq Vocabulary While a fierce battle over President Bush's "new way forward" in Iraq is being joined in the halls of Congress, an even more ferocious war of words is taking place to win the hearts and minds of the American people. Among Democrats, Republicans and the media at large, a rhetorical conflict to control the marketing of the Bush message on Iraq is well underway. From almost the moment the Iraq Study Group report landed with a thud on the President's... more Posted on January 15, 2007 \| Comments (1)

	Required Reading for Bush's Iraq Speech Wednesday President Bush is now scheduled to deliver his "new way forward" in Iraq in nationally televised address on Wednesday, January 9th at 9:00 EST. Ironically, Bush's coming strategy of "surge and purge" features troop increases he previously rejected, benchmarks for the Iraqis he hitherto scoffed at, cleansing the military leadership of the generals Bush once promised to listen to, and a $1 billion infusion of U.S. taxpayer funds for Iraqi jobs program. In preparation for President Bush's latest prime-time departure... more Posted on January 8, 2007 \| Comments (2)