After the shooting is over in Haditha, Iraq, a Marine corporal named Ramirez takes a few seconds' break behind a Humvee to vomit copiously on the unpaved road where his unit has just been ambushed by an "improvised explosive device" (IED), or homemade bomb. He comes back out into the roadway, where another Marine seems briefly worried about him. "You OK, Ramirez?" he asks. More...

In early 2007, The Nation published an extraordinary speech by Bill Moyers. In "A New Story for America," America's media conscience wrote of how "voters have provided a a respite from a right-wing radicalism predicated on the philosophy that extremism in the pursuit of virtue is no vice." Newt Gingrich, architect of the hit job on America--better known as "The Contract With America" --was a key figure of right wing extremism. Or as Moyers called Gingrich and his hearty band --"Ravenous predators...masquerading as a political party of small government, fiscal restraint and moral piety..." More...

May 8, 2008 | From watching the coverage of the 2008 race, you'd think that the Democratic Party has never been down this road before -- divided along racial lines, mired in a bitter personal battle, seemingly incapable of repairing the divisions in time to defeat the Republicans. More...

Last week's decision by the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board was an important election law ruling. But it was also much more. In today's column, I will discuss at least three noteworthy aspects of the opinions handed down by the Justices that reveal significant features of the emerging Roberts Court. More...

Americans are taught to expect their elected leaders to be relatively honest. But it wasn’t always like that. In the mid 1800s, people joked about political candidates who claimed to have been born in a log cabin that they built with their own hands. This jibe was spurred by William Henry Harrison’s false claim of a log-cabin birth in the 1840 presidential campaign. More...

Starting early Wednesday morning and continuing through the evening news, the conventional wisdom of television’s political pundit class shifted hard against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s continued viability as a presidential candidate. More...

No one expects commercials to be word-for-word accurate -- not even ads from the U.S. military.  But a new Air Force commercial, about the perils of an attack in space, does more than stretch the truth, a bit.  It snaps the truth into tiny little pieces, experts and former officers say -- violating the laws of physics and common sense, while flying in the face everything that's known about the world's constellation of satellites. More...

After 16 years, the Clinton era may be coming to an end, presenting Democrats with a historic but potentially wrenching transition and a challenge to Senator Barack Obama as he seeks to reconcile a deeply divided party. More...

AFTER A ROUGH patch, the confident, eloquent Barack Obama was back Tuesday night, proclaiming victory in North Carolina and, all but explicitly, in the Democratic nomination contest as well. More...

Strapped homeowners could refinance into government-backed mortgages and states would get money to deal with foreclosed property under Democrats' housing aid plan. More...

Who will tell her it’s over? Which member of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle will have the courage, the self-abandonment, the capacity for suicidal valour in a greater cause, to walk into that propeller? More...

It was bad enough when Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain decided to engage in some petty pandering by calling for a suspension of the federal gas tax over the summer. What they suggested would reduce needed tax revenues and hamper efforts to combat global warming. And it would fail to deliver lower prices while giving oil companies more money. But neither senator is actually running the country, so it might be tempting to chalk it all up to campaign pandering.

Unfortunately, their demagoguery is growing into a real problem, setting off a chain reaction of “me too” proposals across the country to suspend state gasoline taxes, which tend to be much larger than the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal levy. If the pandering spreads, it would go a long way in setting the nation’s energy strategy in precisely the wrong direction. More...