“I became a villain for doing the right thing,” BP chief Tony Hayward said this July in a huge interview, in which he intermittently spoke in the third person, and disclosed that in London strangers send over glasses of brandy to his table. Following suit, successor Bob Dudley complained this month that BP had Read More
Outraged babble and sanctimonious tut-tutting over President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize will pour forth until the very evening he accepts the prize in Oslo, and then for years afterward. His critics are infuriated, they say, because he didn’t earn the prestigious award, or because he didn’t refuse it—or just because those left-wing Norwegians have a Read More
For those of us who worked closely with environmental professionals during the eight years of the Bush Administration, we know that it was a time of declining resources and reduced political support for environmental regulation. It was demoralizing and more than a little scary. Last weekend an excellent piece of environmental reporting by the New Read More
Tom Andrews, a former Democratic congressman from Maine and an early and outspoken opponent of the Iraq War, used his Huffington Post blog last week to ask in frustration: “How is it that someone as widely discredited as Dick Cheney is setting the terms of debate on national security?
The technical Read More
The following is a transcript of notes taken at the interrogation of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. It was released by the C.I.A. at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the president.
1. Ha! Is this waterboard supposed to Read More
The issue of torture and security keeps reemerging in the news, as we debate matters of national survival and our core values. The issue is often posed in the following way: What if a terrorist had information about an urgent threat to American lives and the only way to obtain that information would be to Read More
Barack Obama won't complete his 100th day in office until next Wednesday, but already the reviews and commemorations are pouring in. Obama's has already been the most closely watched and dissected presidency of the media age, but the 100-day mark has been commemorated with similarly intense media analysis for every recent Read More
Just over four years ago, after George W. Bush was reelected by the smallest margin for an incumbent since Woodrow Wilson held off Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, a palpable sense somehow took hold in much of the media that Karl Rove's concept of a "permanent Republican majority" had been realized.
In this climate, it Read More
One of the more intelligent decisions made by the Bush White House was to limit Dick Cheney’s public visibility. He would grant interviews from time to time, but Bush and his strategists – and Cheney himself – recognized that, when it came to selling the administration’s policies, Cheney’s cold and dour demeanor, coupled with his Read More
In considering what role Joe Biden will play in the Obama White House, the most important question hasn’t yet been answered: Does Biden, a veteran of two unsuccessful presidential bids, still want to serve as president someday? The answer to this question will shape every facet of his vice presidency profoundly.
In modern times, the Read More
