“Stop Watching Us”: Who Get Pardoned?

The maligned Warren Harding commuted Eugene V. Debs’ prison sentence and then invited the socialist anti-war felon to join him for breakfast in the White House. Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, who otherwise might have landed in Leavenworth. George H.W. Bush pardoned...

What Would Richard Holbrooke Say?

Yesterday would have been uber-diplomat Richard Holbrooke's 72nd birthday. He died December 13, 2010 while on the job as our top envoy to Afghanistan, and one can't help thinking that whatever 1960's idealism still existed in terms of making that country a better...

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Weakness

90 Days, 90 Reasons is a project conceived by author Dave Eggers to rekindle young(ish) America's romance with Barack Obama. Each day features a post by someone you might have seen in movies or heard on NPR. Today's post is by Reza Aslan, "an internationally acclaimed...

Kevin Drum on Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich

Kevin Drum advises those who want a noninterventionist, pro–civil liberties candidate to ditch Ron Paul and look elsewhere. I grew curious about what Drum had to say about the two least interventionist, most pro–civil liberties Democrats who ran for president in 2008....

Kevin Drum: Not a Crackpot

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones has some fatherly advice for all you idiots: Bottom line: Ron Paul is not merely a "flawed messenger" for these views. He's an absolutely toxic, far-right, crackpot messenger for these views. This is, granted, not...

Damn You, Ralph Nader and Katherine Harris!

Of all the daily affirmations liberals tell themselves, none soothes me more than the one about how an Al Gore presidency would have spared us the Iraq War. Why, wasn't Al suitably smug about Dubya's "cowboy" act in 2002? Didn't Michael Moore open Fahrenheit 9/11 with...

Was it the promise or was it the SOFA?

On Friday, October 21, 2011, Mr. Obama, invoking one of his campaign promises, announced the complete withdrawal of all U.S. Troops from Iraq by "the [Christian] holidays." Over the weekend, he and his media arm further spun the story, claiming the deadline...