Purging Prosecutors—It’s an ugly trend. Democratic control of Congress hasn’t stopped the Bush administration from continuing to remake the courts and refashion the rule of law in its ideological image. In recent months, eight U.S. Attorneys have been asked to resign by the Justice Department in an unprecedented purge of the nation’s top law enforcement […]

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It’s an argument as old as the movies themselves: what obligation does Hollywood have to history? When filmmakers claim they are depicting a real event, do they enjoy complete dramatic license? Are they free to create fictional characters, compress time, conflate some events and erase others, invent dialogue, and put real people in fictional situations? […]

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Wanted: A Foreign Policy—Since the Bush administration decided to abandon its doctrine of pre-emptive military force in the wreckage and rubble of Iraq, conservative hawks have begun labeling President Bush “weak,” “soft,” and “Clintonian.” The cover of Time heralded “the end of cowboy diplomacy.” The establishment journal Foreign Affairs echoed this with “The End of the Bush Revolution.” All […]

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Full Court Press—The Supreme Court’s last week of the summer began with decisions upholding the death penalty in Kansas, overturning strict campaign-finance laws in Vermont and largely approving Tom DeLay’s redistricting power-grab in Texas. Conservatives seemed to be getting everything they wanted from the new Roberts-Alito court until the end of the week. Then the […]

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Hold the Hybrid—A picture may be worth a thousand words, but three pictures can provide priceless publicity. That’s why Senate Democrats recently held a press conference at a local Exxon station a block from their offices on Capitol Hill, where gas is $3.10 a gallon for regular unleaded. It doesn’t help that Exxon’s outgoing CEO […]

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