Does any journalist who is not an overt shill for the right actually believe that Republicans are pushing voter ID laws because they’re concerned about  voter fraud? No, of course not. And for good reason. Voter fraud simply isn’t a problem in this country. Studies have definitively debunked the voter fraud myth time and again. In Pennsyvlania, [...]

Two recent books about national security have incited an overwrought kerfuffle about leaks. But what they should have done is provoke a vigorous debate about the startling policies they describe, and the many things that remain unknown. I reviewed the two books — “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power“, [...]

Were they the least bit interested in exercising any oversight at all into the war that American soldiers are still fighting and dying in — and that Chinese bond buyers are still providing the cash for — members of Congress wouldn’t have to go very far to find some excellent questions. Congress’s own think tank [...]

Criminally investigating the kinds of leaks that are the bread and butter of national security investigative reporting is a noxious overreaction by hyper-controlling government officials who don’t want us to know what’s being done in our name. Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that he has assigned two U.S. attorneys to lead criminal leak [...]

As President Barack Obama was flying into Afghanistan on Air Force One for a few hours of speeches and ceremonies on Tuesday, Sgt. Nicholas Dickhut was flying back in a box. Dickhut, a 23-year-old from a small town in Minnesota, was killed in a firefight on Sunday in southern Afghanistan,  just hours after calling his [...]

President Obama had a message to journalists in his talk at the ASNE convention on Tuesday. (Here’s the transcript.) That message in a nutshell: The center is not the midpoint between me and the Republicans. It’s where I am. “This bears on your reporting,” he said. And he explained: I think that there is oftentimes [...]

Yesterday, I sent an email to Politifact editor Bill Adair, expressing my horror over his group’s decision to designate “Republicans voted to kill Medicare” as the “lie of the year.” (See, for an exegesis of that misbegotten choice, Steve Benen, Paul Krugman, Jamison Foser, Charles Pierce, Jason Linkins, et. al.) “Take it back quickly and [...]

Reporters covering the mad bipartisan scrum to reach some sort of agreement on federal deficit reduction have been painstakingly recording every detail of rhetorical posturing, noting every political up and down — and missing the real story. They’re not questioning the underlying assumptions, which make this whole exercise a counterproductive farce. Dean Baker, the co-director of [...]

Two years ago last week, President Obama announced that he would send more, not fewer, troops to Afghanistan. He also raised an awfully good question. “Many people in the United States — and many in partner countries that have sacrificed so much — have a simple question: What is our purpose in Afghanistan? After so [...]

House Speaker John Boehner last week sent President Obama a  statement signed by 150 self-described economists (most of whom you’ve never heard of) calling for immediate spending cuts in the name of job creation. “To support real economic growth and support the creation of private-sector jobs, immediate action is needed to rein in federal spending,” [...]