The most interesting snippet from the lengthy cover story on Rush Limbaugh's empire by Zev Chafets in Sunday's New York Times Magazine was a brief quote from Karl Rove. "Rush is an intellectual-force multiplier," Rove told Chafets. "His listeners are, themselves, communicators." I found Rove's reference to "intellectual-force multiplier" pretty...

I was saddened this morning to see the obituary in the New York Times for my fellow historian and colleague, Professor Jules Tygiel. For me Jules was one of those people in one's life and career you happen to cross paths with and something profound and important arises from the...

I always disliked Karl Rove's Republican patronage system that masqueraded as federal "Faith-Based Initiatives." Barack Obama's apparent embrace of this blurring of the line between Church and State, like his stand on the FISA bill and other moves lately, is a disappointment. It illustrates that too few of our political...

In 2004, the Republican Party's "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," acting as a surrogate for the George W. Bush reelection campaign, launched the sleaziest, most despicable smears against a veteran's war record ever undertaken during an American presidential campaign. This well-heeled group of extreme right-wing Nixonians who were still smarting...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest, most progressive president of the 20th Century. He also tried to stack the Supreme Court and imprisoned 112,000 Japanese-Americans without due process. Does that mean the country would have been better off without Social Security, labor union rights, and should have stuck with Herbert...

John McCain's top advisor, the Washington lobbyist Charlie Black, told Fortune magazine recently that another terrorist attack in the United States would "be a big advantage" for McCain in the coming election. "Certainly, it would be a big advantage to him," he asserted. On another occasion Black talked up how...

Sometime during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq I remember watching a comedy bit on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that drove home what a big joke the United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq were. The segment featured the UN inspectors, who were at the time charged...

In the fall of 2002, and most dramatically on February 15, 2003, anti-war protesters across the world carried placards reading: "No Blood for Oil!" The American punditocracy sniffed at these displays of dissent and heaped scorn on the peace demonstrators for suggesting that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would...

In January 1998, John McCain signed the now infamous open letter to President Bill Clinton cooked up by the neo-conservative "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC). The letter urged the president to take unilateral military action against Iraq. McCain and his neo-con brethren were literally cheerleading for the United...

I caught a little of a panel discussion on the Charlie Rose Show on the future of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. He had with him the scholars Stephen Biddle and Vali Nasr, as well as the famous New York Times' stenographer for the powerful, Michael Gordon. Vali Nasr made...

I wish sometimes I could stop time -- here in the shade of a magnolia tree at my father's grave site -- the third father's day since he left the temporal world -- my head filled with memories (only memories?) of his profound influence on who I am and who...

Back in 2004, the Republicans attacked the Democratic Party's nominee for president, Senator John Kerry, who married a very wealthy second wife, Teresa Heinz, the ketchup heiress, for being "out of touch" with ordinary Americans. Some right-wing media darlings even called Kerry a "gigolo" implying he married Ms. Heinz for...

President George W. Bush has embarked on his "Farewell Tour" of European capitals. He will meet with heads of state and other national leaders. He will be received cordially and diplomatically and treated like a powerful foreign dignitary. But this European trip better be Bush's last trip across the Atlantic...

Representative Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, just finished reading on the House floor a 35-count impeachment resolution against President George W. Bush. Kucinich's lengthy and detailed indictment of this wayward president is the most thorough and powerful case made to date. He outlined a litany of high crimes and misdemeanors and showed...

When John McCain spoke recently before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) he had this to say about Barack Obama: "It's a very clear choice, and whether it be on Iran, or whether it be on Iraq, or whether it be on other national security issues, Senator Obama does...

Robert Kennedy's abrupt removal from the nation's political life left in disarray the new Democratic coalition he was working to build. In August 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the consequences of Kennedy's absence played out. The nationally televised street battles in downtown Chicago between peace demonstrators and...

Read more from Huffington Post bloggers on Barack Obama clinching the Democratic nomination for president

Tonight Senator Barack Obama took American politics to a new level by becoming the first African-American presidential candidate for a major political party in American history. And he spoke tonight at the...

The lengthy primary campaign of 2008 has produced a bevy of tasteless references to political assassination in general, and to Robert F. Kennedy's killing in particular. The former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, made a shameless wisecrack in front of the National Rifle Association about Barack Obama...

John Edwards made famous the theme of "two Americas" on the campaign trail this year: One America consists of the well-off and the prosperous, while the other America falls behind each day under the strains of an economy that rewards wealth and punishes work. John McCain is working his own...

In 2006, those of us who recognized the severity of President George W. Bush's abuses of the United States Constitution were disappointed when the newly-elected Democratic majority in Congress decided to take impeachment "off the table." Today, the House Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Michigan Representative John Conyers, has...