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After a week of enduring the crossfire over the relative benefits and dangers of the deeds of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, I am left wondering whether this has been good or bad for our nation. The answer depends on the lens we use for viewing America and the world. I belong to two groups that are not large enough. The first is the portion of America that is very, very serious about fighting terror. I have not forgotten 9/11 or the fact that its hatchers would love to do it again. Stopping them has been an all-consuming pursuit for our...

The unfolding story of the Obama administration monitoring not just telephone records but Internet usage has drawn media coverage with adjectives like "astonishing." No doubt about it, even the pro-Obama press acknowledges it is a scandal. Still, it is laughable that the media would label him a "dictator" or discuss the "I word." That's not what greeted George W. Bush at the end of 2005. Just eight years ago, journalists openly discussed tyranny and the possibility of impeachment. On Newsweek's website on December 19, 2005, Jonathan Alter went ballistic: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license...

It would be nice to write a column in praise of President Obama for his vigorous conduct of the war on terror -- to praise his willingness to look for "dots" to connect amid all the electronic noise of the communications web. It would be pleasantly nonpartisan to observe that some conservatives are being hypocritical -- denouncing Obama for surveillance of millions of Americans while they were content to permit President Bush to do similar things without protest, just as many liberals are doing the reverse. Three glaring obstacles stand in the way: One is the memory of the casual...

In the course of his rambling monologue on national security policy delivered at the National Defense University, President Obama gave only glancing attention to the most significant military undertaking of his term in office -- the Afghanistan war. The president scarcely ever mentions Afghanistan except to note that Bush's war there was "paid for with borrowed dollars." The word Afghanistan is nearly always mouthed in the context of "winding down" or "ending" our commitment. And, of course, because Obama still cannot help himself, he again chastised his predecessor for supposedly "shifting our focus" and prosecuting a war in Iraq. Perhaps...

The ice seems to be cracking beneath Attorney General Eric Holder's feet. When asked by NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory Sunday if Holder is going to "stay in the job" given the leaks investigation scandal, former NBC Night News host Tom Brokaw replied, "Boy, I think it’s tough to see how he does" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Brokaw: 'It’s Tough to See How' Holder Keeps His Job TOM BROKAW, FORMER NBC NIGHTLY NEWS ANCHOR: I talked over the weekend to a very, very senior ex-intelligence official from United States government, and he laughed. He said, "Look,...

Former President George W. Bush questioned the political motives of lawmakers behind the immigration bill making its way through the U.S. Senate during an interview with the Huffington Post’s Jon Ward this week.Bush suggested that some in Congress pushing the legislation may be more concerned with winning votes than truly resolving the nation's immigration woes.Ward described the former President’s mindset as a “desire not to criticize the GOP” but offering a “warning about the party's mad dash for immigration reform.” “I think the atmosphere, unlike when I tried it, is better, maybe for the wrong reason,” Bush told Ward. “The...

"I think the atmosphere, unlike when I tried it, is better, maybe for the wrong reason. The right reason is it's important to reform a broken system. I'm not sure a right reason is that in so doing we win votes. I mean when you do the right thing, I think you win votes, as opposed to doing something that's the right thing to win votes. Maybe there's no difference there. It seems like there is to me though." —George W. Bush on immigration reform, according to the Huffington Post.

CRAWFORD — Former President George W. Bush needed little help to blaze a trail Friday for 14 veterans mountain biking with him through open prairies, slick ravines and steep canyons. That’s because he brought the third annual Warrior 100K Ride — a three-day mountain biking trek to honor service members injured in Afghanistan and Iraq — to the well-worn paths at his Prairie Chapel Ranch outside of Waco. But even as Bush welcomed the wounded warriors to his home to thank them for their service, he made clear that his mission to help veterans extends well beyond the trails that...

Director J.J. Abrams' 2009 prequel to the dusty Star Trek property got the space saga out of mothballs and back on the pop culture radar. Star Trek Into Darkness resumes the franchise's penchant for futuristic allegories to modern times. Well, if you consider the Bush years the state of today's foreign policy debates.The '60s series never bludgeoned viewers with its mission statements, and the Star Trek sequel similarly embraces razzle dazzle over speechifying. Abrams is too keenly focused on ambitious action sequences, those maddening lens flares and the bond between the ship's crew that made those prior voyages such a...

Having once had the highest approval rating going back to Truman, George W. Bush left office with an appalling 34 percent approval rating – the same as Jimmy Carter. He could not attend the Republican Party’s 2008 National Convention for fear of hurting the party’s election chances. With the recent opening of his Presidential Library, Bush’s approval rating hit a seven-year high of 47%, but that was downplayed as a trend of Americans looking on their presidents more fondly after they’ve left office. And intense disapproval of Bush’s handling of a number of issues, including the war in Iraq and...

Sure, it was just one of those tongue-tied moments we've all experienced. But if it had been George W. Bush mispronouncing the name of a world leader who is very much in the news, imagine the field day the MSM would have had with it. At his press appearance with British PM David Cameron today, aired on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, President Obama was seen pronouncing the name of the Syrian dictator Bashir Assad as "Bassar Ashad." PBO pauses before pronouncing, seeming to sense he's about to get it wrong, but deciding to press ahead. There's another priceless moment: when...

Remember the scandal of “the 16 words”? If you do, you’ve probably been inside the Beltway too long, literally or figuratively. Most of what Wilson said was later proved to be grossly exaggerated, or simply false. But that didn’t stop Democrats and partisan media from devoting years to conspiracy-spinning and attempts to pin political and criminal responsibility on Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. A decade later, we have the right’s answer to Joe Wilson: Benghazi. The common thread here is not just the climate of intense partisanship in which media and politicians from the left dismiss what...

In an interview with AlterNet this past week, America’s most well-known left-wing intellectual slammed President Obama for his inexplicable “attacks” on civil liberties in the forms of various laws expanding upon the executive powers set forth by President George W. Bush. Speaking with the liberal blog’s Mike Stivers, Chomsky expressed dissatisfaction with the current president’s record on civil liberties: “I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I...

NewsBusters readers know Ellen Ratner as the perilously liberal news analyst typically offering the left-wing views on Fox News Watch. On Thursday, Ratner published an article titled "George W. Bush Has Saved More Lives Than Any American President" that is guaranteed to shock the heck out of you as it angers folks on her side of the aisle: "George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, is the real American hero in Africa," she amazingly began. "Take it from me, a liberal Democrat who voted for Obama twice." After discussing her knowledge of the problems on that continent, Ratner continued her praise...

A beautiful day in Dallas - fair skies, temps in the high 60s - thousands of people came out to witness something that is so uniquely American that I'm not certain it survives translation into other languages. The dedication of a Presidential library is not a regular or usual event. There are only 13 such libraries in the Presidential library system. The first was Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the most recent is George W. Bush. Other private or non-profit organizations house the collected papers and memorabilia from previous Presidents but now the process is more systematized. The way these work -...

"Life is service to the end." At the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the former president said this in a video lead-in to his live remarks. As most of the analysts on television news shows were talking about his "legacy" in the past tense, and former staff members were nostalgic and emotional, Bush was looking forward. It was, appropriately, a library-like atmosphere. The former president's words were reflective, and had the advantage of not being received in a hyper-political context. Bush talked about the "purpose of public office" in a democracy. It's "not to fulfill personal ambition."...

As President Obama joined four ex-presidents for the dedication of a facility honoring his immediate predecessor, comparisons were unavoidable. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were teenagers during the depression. The childhoods of Bill Clinton and the honoree, George W. Bush, spanned the 1950s. Generational and political differences jump out from any perusal of these five presidencies. But on a cool, sun-splashed morning in Dallas, there was harmony all around for the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. But as soon as the kind words of the morning were concluded, I dove back into the messy remains of...

DALLAS — Shortly after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, a fellow reporter who’d covered President George W. Bush all eight years told me she’d had enough of the travel and stress and strain of the White House beat, that she was moving on. We reminisced about all the places we’d been, all the crazy days and wild nights, all the history we’d seen — first hand. Just before we said our goodbyes, I asked her if she’d miss covering President Obama. “Not at all. He’s an inch deep. Bush is a bottomless chasm, a deep, mysterious, emotional, profound man....

At the beginning of a live interview with former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer wondered about the motivation behind Bush's presidential library: "So many difficult moments, so many controversial decisions you made. Some of them cost you dearly in terms of popularity. Is one of the ideas here...to force your critics to take a second look?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] As the three of them toured the museum, Lauer highlighted an exhibit on the war on terror and noted how "it includes what was...

On Wednesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe -- formerly of Newsweek -- claimed that President Bush "ignored all the warnings about al-Qaeda wanting to attack the homeland" before 9/11 as he mocked Republicans for praising Bush's record of preventing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil after the 9/11 attacks. As he alluded to Republicans criticizing President Clinton for not handling al-Qaeda more aggressively during his presidency, Wolffe asserted: You couldn't just say that 9/11 came out of nothing. It wasn't a total surprise because, in their narrative, Bill Clinton and, by extension, all Democrats somehow lost...