(Photo by Larry Downing/Reuters.) If there's one phrase I will always associate with George Bush, one we've heard a gazillion times, and one that epitomizes the intellectual chasm this President has built between himself and the country, that phrase is the one that begins with "It's important for [everyone

  (Photo found at STiTP.) Yesterday, MSNBC reported via Reuters and AP continued fighting in the Shi'ite city of Najaf between US forces and members of the Mehdi Army, the 60,000 man militia loyal to Muqtadr al-Sadr. The reason for this specific skirmish is disputed, but US forces claim they

  (Image via Salon.) Gee, that Bob Woodward fellow knows a lot of interesting stuff. Like things that, had he reported them earlier, might have stopped a war, or changed an election. Woodward's latest late disclosure consists of statements by the late President Gerald Ford that Ford strongly disagreed with

  While the President considers how best to sell the country on escalating the Iraq war, and Democrats like Joe Biden try to figure out how to counter that strategy, it would be nice if someone could identify the good guys from the bad guys. Who, exactly, is our enemy?

(Photo by AFP/File/Paul J. Richards.  You can almost feel the mist in this shot, can't you?) I get an e-mail Tuesday morning asking if I can cover a couple of early morning posts or so, and I reply, "okay." But I’m worried, because I can never write when asked to

President Gerald Ford died last night, at the age of 93. From the Washington Post: Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., 93, who became the 38th president of the United States as a result of some of the most extraordinary events in U.S. history and sought to restore the nation's confidence in

  Happy Birthday, Jesus. It’s your day, so I looked up some of the really good things you said, just to remind folks why today is important. “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4) [We made a lot of people mourn this year, but we've

While Washington debates whether surging additional troops into Iraq is either feasible or wise, it’s possible we've been distracted from the main event. With strong White House encouragement, Iraqi politicians have been busy at home trying to put together a grand bargain that could transform the US debate, realign the

  Wednesday's Iraq news pretends that is is not about Iraq. As Christy posted earlier, the President yesterday told reporters that he has asked Secretary of Defense Gates to develop proposals for increasing the size of the Army and Marines to relieve the "stress" (Bush said he hasn't heard the

The news from Iraq today is focused as usual on increasing violence, with a new Pentagon report revealing that attacks in Iraq are now at record levels. The New York Times coverage is here. Meanwhile, the President can’t seem to get agreement from his Pentagon Chiefs to the neocon’s troop