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 […]

Read more

Editor’s note: Margie Burns is an investigative writer who has reported for us in the past on election fraud, Bush family post-9/11 war profiteering, and the right-wing neocons who promoted the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Burns teaches at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and she has recently been sitting in at the federal perjury trial of Vice President […]

Read more

Remembering Molly—We know that a great many of you first subscribed to the Spectatorbased on the recommendation of Molly Ivins, the iconic liberal columnist and humorist who, as you no doubt know, died on January 31 after a long fight with cancer. Molly got to know our longtime editor Ben A. Franklin back in the days […]

Read more

Quick Out of the Blocks—In a mode of efficiency unusual on Capitol Hill, especially among Democrats, the new majority passed their first 100-hour package of legislation in just 42 and a half legislative hours, according to the official clock on the House floor. Although the Associated Press counted 87 hours, it was hard to argue […]

Read more

In recent elections, reform-minded Americans have had their usual doubts about the manifestly undemocratic and clunky Electoral College, and a completely new set of deep doubts have arisen about how accurately the electronic voting systems have recorded the wishes of voters. There has also been some justifiable concern about how partisan election officials have purged […]

Read more