The first anniversary of Barack Obama's historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?

The New York Times lead story yesterday describes how a series of private equity firms managed to repeatedly flip the venerable Simmons mattress company, earning themselves huge profits while the company became increasingly mired in debt and ultimately forced into bankruptcy and massive layoffs, with ordinary investors, employees,...

On August 25th, Hassan Nemazee, a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, was arrested and charged with forging loan documents in order to borrow $74 million from Citibank. He could face up to 30 years in prison. Early media accounts cast the event as an embarrassment for Ms. Clinton involving the...

The New York Times has a surprisingly direct, no-hedging, expose of oil industry shenanigans designed to block climate change legislation. For once, it is crystal clear to readers what is going on -- the oil industry is rallying workers whose (understandable) immediate concerns do not extend beyond continuing to...

I continue to be fascinated by the leaks that are coming out of the Pentagon during the Obama administration. On Wednesday, the New York Times published an article that, in the electronic edition, was headlined "Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S." Pretty ominous. Even more so in...

The Obama Justice Department has just floated a trial balloon to see if it can drop a legal effort to force the Swiss Bank UBS to disclose the names of 52,000 rich Americans suspected of using the bank to evade US taxes. Back in February, the Justice Department sued the...

Sonia Sotomayor is not the only recent Obama appointment. She may be the most significant pick, but she is hardly the most intriguing. To wit, I direct your attention to a short Associated Press item, which appeared in papers including the New York Times, about some of President Obama's...

Earlier in May, the New York Times ran an intriguing piece about William McMasters, the Boston publicist who had helped unmask the con artist Charles Ponzi, after whom the term "Ponzi scheme" is named.

One noteworthy passage, near the end of the article, notes McMasters's frustration at his dealings...

They are really coming. Official investigations of the George W. Bush administration are on the way. Karl Rove and Harriet Miers have just agreed to limited testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which is looking into the seemingly politically-motivated firings of seven U.S. Attorneys. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and...

Just before New Year's, taking a breather from the political exhaust-a-thon and my book launch, I turned to Larry Beinhart's novel, Salvation Boulevard, which Larry had graciously sent over. Glad I did. Larry, a regular on Huffington Post, though best known as the guy who created Wag the Dog, knows...

With the Democrats set to break the White House color barrier, the GOP is attempting to crash the party. In the wake of Chip Saltsman's "Barack the Magic Negro" mini-scandal -- in which the aspiring Republican National Committee chairman sent out a music CD with the titular song to fellow...

The father of the outgoing president likes to note that "we Bushes cry a lot." Well, here's cause for crying out loud.

On Saturday, January 10, the Navy will commission the aircraft carrier CVN-77, to be named USS George H.W. Bush. In a departure from tradition, the ship will be...

Do you know the story behind the Kennedy Assassination, behind Watergate, behind George W. Bush's quick ascension to the most powerful office in the world? I thought I did. It was pretty simple, really. Oswald killed Kennedy, Nixon was an ogre, and W triumphed through a combination of ruthless political...

Watching Oliver Stone's W. spurred me to revisit the director's 1991 film JFK. I wanted to remind myself what an important film Stone could make when he was taking risks, or at least was presenting a provocative interpretation of events that we thought we understood.

JFK remains a deeply...

Is the following individual (A) a Republican, or (B) A Democrat?:

He's a business partner with a close friend of Tom DeLay's and together they work in Washington to represent clients who want to drill in fragile areas of Alaska, put the screws to already beleaguered American creditors, and prevent...

The talk is already about high crimes, about impeachment. It is about a strong constitution versus a strong president, safety versus civil liberties. But the important thing here is not to get caught up in tantalizing blue-sky scenarios before we address some key issues that we need to understand if...

Imagine you’re Karl Rove. You’ve got a possible indictment hanging over your head, and the head of the Veep’s main guy, Scooter Libby, in the CIA agent name leak case. Your Capitol Hill roach-stomper, Tom DeLay, just had his mugshot taken following an indictment for laundering of campaign contributions from...

Warmed-Over Data

It is most certainly a crying shame that one had to get to page A12 of today’s New York Times and then decide, based on the following bland headline, whether to bother to read the article below it: Errors Cited in Assessing Climate Data.

In fact, by...

Can you hear the footsteps growing louder?

Mounting anecdotal evidence suggests that civil libertarians were not exaggerating when they began long ago to worry about prospects for dangerous excess in the ‘response’ to 9/11. If it ever was just about the government poking into our requests for library books...