OK

Why do we always make our enemies into seven-foot, three-hundred pound, geniuses trained to fight like Bruce Lee and Jason Bourne combined?  Does anyone really think that it is that hard to coord

One of Trump’s favorite lines is that Hillary has been in public life for 30 years and still hasn’t prevented him from skating by without paying taxes, hasn’t solved racism, hasn’t done whatever charge crosses his petty, little mind at the time. ...

A longer view can be helpful when dealing with tragedy.  1776 saw Washington chased off Long Island, up Manhattan, across New Jersey, and into Pennsylvania.  Fort Washington was lost.  Fort Lee ...

We have a history of confusing the imposition of one’s religion on others with religious liberty. Witness the “War on Christians,” which is Fox’s way of saying that Christians no longer ...

The recent seizure by Iran of two small, American naval vessels was an unfortunate incident made more unfortunate by the conflicting explanations we thus far have been given.  However, excepting that,

The 2nd of May, 2016, marked five years since Navy SEALs caught up with Osama bin Laden.  That prompted a number of articles on the current state of al-Qaida.  The gist was that, though no longer preeminent, al-Qaida still is a player and is undergoing...

During the action, tonight, by Democrats on the floor of The House of Representatives, Speaker Ryan called for behavior “that reflects positively on the dignity and the decorum of this house.” It occurs to me that Rep. John Lewis sitting on the...

Kos says he wants us to fight .  Given some of the comments to his post, I assume that many on this site took that to mean “with each other.”  Here’s a different approach. Trump won for all ...

On TPM EDBLOG, Josh Marshall writes that the health-care goalposts were moved while Republicans weren’t looking. “The problem is that over the course of seven years Republicans have essentially accepted the premise of the ACA: which is to say, the...

Former Minnesota Governor and former Republican Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty tonight was on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell . The discussion turned to gun control, and ...

I am no fan of either Chris Christie or Donald Trump.  Then again, I don’t like any of the Republican candidates.  However, give credit where it’s due.  Christie and Trump got Marco Rubio exactly righ

NBC poll: 50% of Republicans, 73% of young Republicans see Russia as an “ally” or “friendly” Had this poll been taken before the primaries, my guess is that Republicans overwhelmingly ...

Russia attacked our sovereignty and continues to do so.  That is the unanimous conclusion of the nation’s intelligence agencies.  Semantic wrangling about which legal terms apply or don’t is half a century out of date.  Cyber warfare is warfare.  A...

This has been an adventurous year for Republicans: they discovered the middle class. The annual Koch jamboree even discovered the poor. Republican candidates in tonight’s debate discovered and ...

Millennia after we emerged from the cave, we cling to the paintings on its walls: modern man turning to sympathetic magic to better the hunt.  We've traded the cave for massive cathedrals and pretenti

The Democratic presidential nominee has been chosen: in effect, in essence, for practical purposes, however you want to put it.  My candidate, Bernie Sanders, has acknowledged as much.  I hope he keeps going to influence the platform.  I hope he keeps...

At the Democratic Convention, President Obama noted that people outside of this country don’t understand what’s going on in this election.  Well, neither do I.  And neither does anyone else, from what I can tell.  I’ve been trying to figure out why...

Thomas Paine, having helped transform a mutiny over taxes into a revolution in the principles of government, said, “An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.”  Since then, the wars that define us as a nation have been about...

Maybe not fully, not yet, but  the differences, stark as they may be, are of magnitude, of potency, not of kind.  So much of what Trump has said and done shouts at us that, secretly, he would be Hitler.  So, never having paid any price for his...

(as distinct from the recent kindergarten lunch-table food fights). Forget Hillary v Sanders. Forget all the others, individually. O'Malley came the closest to nailing at the end. Just think ...

Somewhere around 10,000 years-ago, the last of the so-called saber-toothed cats disappeared from what would become the fossil record. Humanity breathed a collective sigh of relief. Somewhere ...

Donald Trump said today that having the government track Muslims in this country is a good idea, and that a national data-base to register them would require little more than good management.  He also

If you recognize yourself here, www.theonion.com/... it might be time to reassess your approach to governance.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, along with the rest of South Carolina’s congressional gang, voted against federal aid to New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy literally devastated large swaths ...

There are at least two categories of science deniers.  One is faith driven: the earth is 6,000 years old and evolution is a lie from hell.  In a competitive world of constantly evolving technologies,

I put up a post earlier about the demographic profile of those who are susceptible to recruitment by terrorists.  It was less about terrorists, though, than about Trump.  His earliest supporters, it turns out, share that demographic profile.  For those...

It’s time to push back hard and unrelentingly against Trump’s latest big lie: that the media is biased against him.  That has become his and his peoples’ response to everything.  It must not ...

Whatever conservatism once may have been, it is no longer.  Modern American conservatism is evil.  There is no other word for it.  The proof is the tax crime that conservatives are about to pull off and for which they have sold their souls to their...

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson produced, somewhat optimistically, a draft constitution for Virginia.  It in, he writes, “All persons shall have full & free liberty of religious opinion ….” In 1783, in yet another draft constitution for...

I believe in unions. They stand for the dignity of working men and women. They are all that stand between workers and exploitation. If you work for a living, you should be pro-union. But unions ...

Governor John Kasich of Ohio is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and he desperately wants to be seen as the sane clown in the Republican car.  That has not worked out.  However

Ted Cruz responded to the Brussels atrocity with “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods ….”  Donald Trump jumped in to say that he was completely on board with that, but it was little more than a sad effort to hide t

Julian Borger, writing for the Guardian, gives a travel log for the Trump-Russia dossier.  I have not seen it laid out so clearly anywhere else, so, I have excerpted a few of the more interesting stops along the way.  “By July, the...

Renounce them and remove them: Bannon, Gorka, Miller, Sessions, and Trump.  That should be the new mantra of Democrats.  None of these pieces of wretched, human detritus belongs in a twenty-first century White House.  Demand that people choose: basic...

Donald Trump’s appearance beside Vladimir Putin, following their hastily put-together, one-on-one “summit,” was a disaster for this country and our democracy.  Trump stood next to a dictator who wants nothing so much as to destroy the West and who has...

The last Republican debate was closer to a substantive discussion than were their previous debates, which is sad considering that it wasn’t all that close.  More typical was the amount of time spent a

I just watched Rick Perry on CNN defend Donald Trump for attacking the parents of Captain Humayun Khan.  His claim was that The Donald was justified in attacking this family because they used a partisan event to attack Trump for no reason other than...

After watching a few interviews, today, it seems clear that Trump’s people have been told to double down on the “Hillary started the birther movement” lie.  It also seems that many of you ...

After yet another gun atrocity, I noted to a friend that we are the only, the only, advanced country in which this happens, thanks to Republicans.  He noted that the same was true of our refusal to provide universal healthcare coverage.  I said,...

I watched Joe Biden, this morning, speaking to union guys in Ohio.   I normally try to be as substantive as possible in posts, but this speech struck me as hard as any I have ever heard – and I’ve been around for a while — so I wanted to get the...

Trump is a clown, a dangerous one, but a clown.  He looks at Putin and imagines himself wielding total power.  McConnell looks at Putin and exercises what power he has.  McConnell’s imitation is weakened by having to feign respect for our democracy,...

At some point, Democrats and unions went their separate ways.  I wanted to know when and how.  This is the second post in a series telling that story.  The first can be found here. Whatever Happened to Unions?                                   ...

Remember the GOP, the party of “Let’s get government out of your healthcare decisions”? If you thought Republican commitment to your personal freedom, choice, and privacy would stand guard also against corporate intrusions, Republicans would like to...

Current speculation seems to be turning against the prospect that Trump will fire Special Council Robert Mueller.  I believe he will: maybe this week or next, maybe later, as things close in.   After all, what price has he paid for unashamed,...

Our very own Very Stable Genius wants to avoid a government shut down because the “worst thing is what happens to our military,” and we “just about never needed our military more than now.”  Never.  A spokesman says that the Very Stable Genius “wants...

Writing in the Washington Post, James Hohmann has given a sharply pertinent example of the importance of historical context.  He wrote about Donald Trump’s ignorance in dredging up scandals and conspiratorial fantasies from Bill Clinton’s presidency. ...

I’ve been trying to figure out why House Republicans, in a closed meeting, on the evening of a federal holiday, against the advice of their own leadership, would gut the Office of Congressional ...

I'm tired of hearing our lazy, superficial, incompetent press talk about Donald Trump having tapped into an angry electorate spoiling for dramatic change. A mid-October, NBC News/ Wall Street ...

The Great Recession of 2008 was caused by the Republican devotion to unfettered freedom – for corporations.  During a decades-long retreat from prudent regulations, marked by speculation joy-rides, ad

I just heard a television pundit, one I respect, say that Hillary cannot improve her negatives so she may as well continue to attack.  I won’t argue with attacking Trump, but I think it’s simplistic to say that she cannot improve her negatives. Let...