There is a child's game all Americans know called Simon Says. Consecutive commands are shouted by a leader to a group with the legitimating prefix, "Simon Says." "Simon says raise your right hand; Simon says jump up and down; Simon says wave your arms; Simon says nod your head;--wave your...

Something sickish happened on Wednesday night.

Network news has had a long slide into the vulgar conveyance of rumor. But who, among all who witnessed on TV the drawn-out swindle of the O.J. trial and the Lewinsky scandal and the Clinton impeachment, who that marked the abject surrender of the...

The trap could not have been more tightly woven. On Tuesday, March 11, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the resignation of Admiral William Fallon, the head of Central Command and the top-ranking military officer in the Middle East.

Fallon was the superior of General David Petraeus. Today, with Fallon gone...

Last week saw an event in our politics so giddy that we have yet to absorb its implications. Hillary Clinton, flush from her "comeback" in Ohio, told reporters that John McCain inspired her confidence on foreign policy; McCain had certainly "crossed the commander-in-chief threshold." She herself had crossed it, too,...

Try to force those two words together.

On October 4, 2007, Colonel Morris D. Davis resigned as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, and he has devoted considerable time, ever since, to giving his reasons why. Confessions extracted from defendants under torture were to be admitted as evidence at...

President Bush recently sought to convey, through the curious medium of a Fox News interview, his assurance to the nations of the Middle East that America harbors no imperial design:

"We won't have permanent bases," Bush told Fox News television in the interview conducted at his retreat at...

Testifying on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to admit that the president had broken the law when he ordered the surveillance of domestic calls without a warrant. In an emergency, Mukasey seemed to be saying, all authority is absorbed into executive authority. It followed,...

Let us recount the figures. Out of a nation of 26 million, two and a half million are refugees in Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and Turkey. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, and more than two million forced to flee their homes within Iraq. The middle class:...

"The thing we ask ourselves these days is, 'What will the Americans do next?'" This was said in 2004 by a London editor of wide experience; how strange for an American to hear! For, though gently spoken, the words suggested the horror of a Colossus; a feeling evidently shared by...

On Tuesday, December 18, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate combined to give President Bush $70 billion to carry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into next summer. Only 23 Democrats and one independent supported an amendment by Senator Feingold that would have required the safe redeployment of troops from...

He said he didn't know the...

A friend at a dinner party on the East coast found herself in an argument in which she was the only person opposed to torture. The other invitees, all graduates of favored preparatory schools and Ivy League colleges, worked in the law, investment banking, urban planning and the arts. They...

On Thursday night, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general.

The 53-40 majority included all the Republicans present and six Democrats who crossed over. Love of power, privilege, and punishment express the soul of the Republican party today.

The Democrats are a sadder story. When...

Last night's Democratic debate marked the first time a number of candidates have spoken sanely and frankly about the Cheney-Bush design for a world war. Tim Russert asked each candidate to "pledge" to prevent Iran from developing the capacity to make a nuclear weapon. A mindless and demagogic request, and...

Midway through the Frontline documentary Cheney's Law, which aired last Tuesday on PBS, a reporter summarizes a judgment the vice president conveyed to listeners in hiding in the hours after the bombings of September 11. "We will probably," he said, "have to be a country ruled by men rather...

The heart of the Bush philosophy, "The rules don't apply to me," could never have been put into practice without the Cheney corollary: "Tear up the rules, do what you want, and hide it." Iran will be their last field of exercise together.

Once again the president and vice...

Yesterday, by a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment in support of military actions against Iran. This is the second such endorsement of the president by a senate majority in just three months. In July, the Lieberman amendment to "confront Iran" passed with the far stronger...

The senators should address General Petraeus from a stance of respectful equality and distance. He is good at his work, but his profession differs fundamentally from theirs. He is a military officer. They are lawmakers. They have a civic obligation to compare all the available sources of evidence before...