Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006 Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and... In...

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain away the erosion of conservative values and the nation's problems? Easy. Blame George W. Bush.

An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

President Bush has a goal broader than even the fight against terrorism: restoring the federal structure.

Although saying he has no plans to run for president in 2008, former vice president Al Gore has nonetheless left the door ever so slightly ajar. It's a good bet that door will swing open a good bit wider come next May.

Bush 'prepares emissions U-turn'

I began writing a post in response to this truly ridiculous Op-Ed by John Yoo in this morning's NYT -- in which Yoo gleefully celebrates every authoritarian transgression of the Bush administration, from torture and pre-emptive wars to endless invocations of presidential secrecy, the issuance of "hundreds of signing statements" declaring laws invalid, and even what Yoo calls the President's assertion of his power to "sidestep laws that invade his executive authority" (what we used to call "breaking the law") (emphasis added in all instances). But then I thought better of it, because, at this point, anyone who fails (or refuses) to recognize that the President does not have the power in our system of government to violate laws by invoking national security concerns is never going to recognize that. Yoo's Op-Ed is so flagrantly frivolous

Why is President Bush so determined to engage in torture?

As long-time readers of Whiskey Bar may recall, that was my pet nickname for the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA -- the unloved, unwanted, unmourned and completely unsuccessful agency assigned the job of running Iraq after the 2003 invasion. My own personal favorite fuck up was when the CPA couldn't even get its own name right on its own web site, and thus informed the world that it was the Coalition Provincial Authority -- no doubt to demonstrate its intention to turn Iraq into the Canada of the Middle East. But that was an example of ruthless Prussian efficiency compared to the CPA's performance of its other responsibilities, such as fixing the power grid, getting the oil flowing, rebuilding the health care system, etc. etc. etc. Aside from the Pentagon, no single entity did more to give us the Iraq we know today. And they'd

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Prior to the war, the administration stressed that the United States needed to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and had connections to al-Qaeda. None of that turned out to be true. Now, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has introduced a new rationale for the invasion of Iraq, high gas prices. From a radio interview

So, wow. Who knew that simply having breasts in the presence of a former president could turn into such a disgusting spectacle of sexism, vapidity and downright meanness? Way too much time has been spent on this, so this will be the only post I write on it. As Althouse and her ilk backpedal and try to claim that this whole thing started because they wanted to know why a feminist blogger would meet with Clinton given his history with women, I would just ask that people not forget what this was really about. It was a nasty personal attack—one that’s ridiculously indicative of the way that young women are treated, especially by conservative assholes. While Althouse repeatedly says that this wasn’t about attacking my appearance and my behavior as assumed by one photo —I’d just like to remind folks of the

During an appearance on C-SPAN, columnist Robert Novak was asked about his television viewing habits. Novak said, “somebody mentioned the Jon Stewart program, I’ve never seen that in my life and I will go to my grave never having seen it.” Asked why, Novak said, “I don’t see any reason for it. It’s a comedian,

I've been a little loathe to enter the furor over Ann Althouse's repulsive smear of Jessica, if only because Althouse's point was so self-evidently cruel and unfair that it seemed unworthy of further publicity. But PZ Myers' post reminds me...

A review is said to cite illicit surveillance including an attempt to plant message-tracing software on a journalist’s computer.

Since 2001, the health-care industry has added 1.7 million jobs. The rest of the private sector? None

Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will host a fundraiser for Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., at the mayor's Manhattan town house, Lieberman's campaign announced Sunday night.

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.