The front page of last Friday's edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer included a story headlined "Photographer destroyed photos of soldiers in the act of killing." Before I type even one sentence more, I want to make clear that I have never ever done anything brave enough...

I piled cringe upon cringe Friday -- first because I read Steven Pinker's vivisection of Malcolm Gladwell's new essay collection, second because of what I found when I Googled a flub Pinker wielded against Gladwell.

Reviewing What The Dog Saw for the New York Times, Pinker slapped Gladwell like...

I'm pretty pissed off right now.

It makes less than zero sense to me that Matthew Hoh's resignation as "the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province" seems to be swaying sensible people from Christopher Buckley to Garrison Keillor to Andrew Sullivan. We all, naturally, have heard of...

Today, in the wake of his Nobel peace surprise, President Barack Obama should call Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and ask if he really needs tens of thousands more troops in Afghanistan. Then, in the truest spirit of his new status as a peace laureate, Obama should ask McChrystal what America...

The patriots who have killed off this so-called "public option" for so-called "healthcare reform" need to learn from the mistakes the first President Bush made way back in 1991 when he chickened out and blew his chance to march all the way to Baghdad and dethrone Saddam Hussein.

Unlike...

Even at my most drunk and grandiose, I would not attempt to convince anyone that I'd make a better president than Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arianna Huffington, Mel Martinez, Jennifer Granholm, Henry Kissinger, Andrew Sullivan, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, or Anh Cao.

None of those people can be your president. I can.

Let's start with the Fox News analyst's harsh words about Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier that Taliban forces are holding captive.

Because however bizarre, however stupefyingly premature the Fox pundit's words are, they are something other than what they have become in the re-telling. The faulty re-telling shows how...

Today, just when I found myself musing that we can turn to Abraham Lincoln's exemplary life and leadership to guide us through any dicey situation, I spotted a story headlined "Naked Airline Passenger 'Remembers Nothing'."

We all have our limits. Lincoln's limit is that he left behind...

Senior Israeli officials accused President Obama on Wednesday of failing to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement "freeze."

(source: New York Times, 6/3/09)

JUDGE JUDY:...

If today were any day other than Memorial Day, I wouldn't make it to the end of this sentence without flinging some heartfelt insult at Dick Cheney.

But this day isn't about Dick Cheney, and it sure as hell isn't about my pampered civilian ass. This day is about Americans...

In the first newsroom where I worked, the bosses posted a sign that read "Good writing is clear thinking made visible."

By this measure, David Broder's Sunday column in the Washington Post is not good writing. The column does make something visible, but it's not clear thinking. Broder's thoughts...

My posts sometimes go on a bit.

Tonight will be different. My point is simple: We cannot let Dick Cheney set the terms of America's debate about torture.

The former vice president is calling on President Obama to release more secret documents. Cheney claims Obama is hiding proof that...

History will judge who's more loathesome: the legalistic sociopaths who wrote the torture memos made public Thursday or the apologists and trivializers rising to their defense.

Among this morning's many new inductees into the Hall of Infamy, I hope everyone gets a chance to marvel at David B....

This post by HuffPost's own Jason Linkins got me thinking today about the single most potent force in American politics.

I'm speaking of course of trolls, the Internet's very own peanut gallery.

Trolls, of course, are the reason why Barack Obama lost so decisively to President McCain back in...

The Pulitzer-winning journalist whose 2006 book so thoroughly debunked the "Mission Accomplished" myth of the Iraq war came to my town a few hours ago and asked his audience to face some nasty new diagnoses about Iraq.

Being so fresh from hearing Fiasco author Thomas Ricks speak...

I just posted a comment on The Anonymous Liberal's blog.

I was responding to a blog post responding to a blog post responding to a newspaper piece. If I'd just written the previous sentence before I started on this whole thing, I could have saved myself some time. Never...

Let's assume Bush and Cheney were right -- right to torture, right to wiretap without warrants, right to set up secret prisons where suspects can be held forever without being charged with any crime whatsoever.

Assume all that and more.

I realize it's hard. It's hard for me, too. See,...

American democracy got a gift this weekend: Public radio's This American Life broadcast the latest in its series of deft, dynamic primers on the financial crisis.

"Bad Bank" -- the show's excellent new episode -- is available as a free download. Download it. Then listen. Actually listen. Seriously. What...

I love to prod people to read great books.

In May, a book on Lincoln and his cabinet helped me believe in a dignified end to the Obama-Clinton rivalry. In October, I implored all of you on HuffPost to read more about America's inexcusable nosedive into state-sanctioned torture.

As Andrew Sullivan noted in the earliest hours of the Obama presidency, "it only took propagandist Michael Goldfarb twenty-two minutes" to start blaming Obama for Iraq.

Blogging for The Weekly Standard, Goldfarb -- a former McCain/Palin deputy communications director -- claimed at 12:22 p.m. Tuesday that "Obama...