Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.

Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration. Both candidates are embracing, rather...

McCain campaign co-chair Phil Gramm is right: We have "become a nation of whiners." But who is whining more than the bankers that former Sen. Gramm's financial deregulation legislation benefited? The very bankers who now expect a government bailout, such as those at UBS Investment Bank, where Gramm found lucrative...

You can't trust the Chinese. I don't care if you're talking about those communists on the mainland or the other guys on Taiwan; they just won't follow the war-games script that our weapons hawks had counted on. Their mutual passion runs not to matters of tired politics but rather on...

As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling -- but before we are too besotted with ourselves -- might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true...

Remember Curtis LeMay, the Air Force general played to chilling effect by Sterling Hayden in the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove? If you're too young for that reference, you probably don't recall when the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) dominated our military posture toward our Soviet enemy. I bring this...

Why not Hillary? Not my first choice -- Al Gore is -- but I find all of the pro-and-con debate about Hillary Rodham Clinton to be beside the point. She is, as Barack Obama said, likable enough, and the Dems are not likely to pick anyone better.

It is certainly...

Wow, a lot of people must have bought Hummers last week. How else to explain the spike in oil prices? No, I'm not being silly: They are, and by they I mean the gaggle of media pundits and other administration apologists--abetted by some green zealots--who want to explain our energy...

Will the real John McCain stand up? Actually, I don't expect him to, now that he is the Republican presidential candidate, he is pandering to the irrationalities that drive his party. Nor is it likely that the fawning mass media will pressure him to the point of clarity. But I...

Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It's a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of the detailed 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture, issued last week by the Justice Department's inspector...

What's it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush's Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers? Because McCain is determined to ignore our economic...

Ah yes, those torture confessions have proved so useful. That, at least, was the claim of our president in justifying one of the most egregious assaults ever on this nation's commitment to the rule of law. But now comes news that charges have been dropped against the so-called Sept. 11...

In the increasingly unlikely event of a McCain-Clinton election, folks who care about the peace issue would have serious reason to worry. Both of these candidates are inveterate hawks, and what we would be up against is a choice between the neoconservatives and the neoliberals as to who could be...

Would President John McCain forget who made that 3 a.m. call to the special White House phone? I suspect that his aides would not just let him nod off back to sleep, even if they were intimidated by the prospect of one of his alleged intemperate outbursts, but might our...

How proud the Clintonistas must be. They have learned how to rival what Hillary once termed the "vast right-wing conspiracy" in the effort to destroy a viable Democratic leader who dares to stand in the way of their ambitions. The tactics used to kneecap Barack Obama are the same as...

Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? ? As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation's economic and political reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a...

General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then --...

A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you're talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II. Even the...

Would God ever damn America? Is there anything we have done or could do as a nation that might court such severe judgment from an almighty, or is there a peculiar American exemption from God's wrath? The prediction of God's damnation for bad behavior is made in both black and...

That idiotic "what me worry?" look just never leaves the man's visage. Once again there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his...

Tell me again: Why should we get all worked up over the revelation that the New York governor paid for sex? Will it bring back to life the eight U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq that same day in a war that makes no sense and has cost this nation trillions...