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Remember "Baghdad Bob," the Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf? Even with Iraqi forces in a full rout and American Marines just blocks away Baghdad Bob would completely deny the presence of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capitol. Watching MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," on September 24 was reminiscent of Baghdad's Bob's press conferences. Olbermann asked Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, also an MSNBC political analyst, how "the GOP" would convince the public that the health care system "is not really in crisis" and that it does not need to be a priority compared to Afghanistan. Turning right to page three of...

This is vital, because it reveals just how bad a card Cheney has to play in protecting himself from being prosecuted as a war criminal. The CIA inspector general's report found no evidence that torture had given any information that would not have been found using legal and moral means. Even one of the legal architects of the torture program, Steven Bradbury, had to concede that much: "It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo...

Here are some excerpts from a pile of crap dropped by this drooling half wit and my responses: "I spent the better part of an hour earlier today scanning the various sites and blogs to try and understand ... tea parties are about. I have to say I'm still befuddled. Hey dummie these demonstratioons are American responses to unAmerican government. It's a protest of the bank bailouts orchestrated by Bush and now Obama.... So because Bush gave us some bailouts we should watch while comrade Obama nationalizes industry after industry? It's a protest against tax hikes. But there have barely...

An under-reported event took place at the end of last month. A leading Republican candidate went to address the evangelical Global Pastors Network in Orlando, Florida. The network is a large group, aiming to set up 5m churches worldwide in the next decade. Its leaders believe the apocalypse is coming soon and that their efforts at evangelisation might help accelerate the moment of rapture, when good Christians will be whisked to heaven to meet Jesus. None of this is particularly noteworthy. The fastest growing theme in American evangelicalism is the pre-millennialist movement, while Left Behind, the fictional books dramatising the...

IF there's a certain schizophrenia in the rhetoric of senator Hillary Rodham Clinton these days, it's intentional. There she was last week, at a predominantly black congregation, lambasting Republicans. She lamented that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has been "run like a plantation ... And you know what I am talking about". Republicans as slave holders? Now that's inflammatory. Then only days later we saw the other side of Clinton's split political personality, a neo-conservative one: "I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the...