Russ McBee

I've often thought that President Bush probably read ''The Trial'' and ''1984'' at some point and mistook them for how-to manuals. Today's signing of the FISA bill tends to support that theory. On the heels of yesterday's capitulation by the Senate on telecom immunity and warrantless spying, President Bush wasted no time in signing this abrogation ...

In addition to the 47 million Americans with no health insurance, the ranks of those considered underinsured are growing at an alarming rate. A new study by the Commonwealth Fund has found that the number of Americans with inadequate health insurance coverage mushroomed from 16 million in 2003 to 25 million in 2007. That's a jump of 56 percent ...

As if we needed another reason why McCain would be a horrid president: If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released ...

This is hilarious: A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center. Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more ...

The pending House appropriations bill that would provide ''emergency'' funding for the continued occupation of Iraq is certain to draw a veto from the White House (and how much longer is this five-year-old occupation going to be falsely labeled an ''emergency'' so it can be funded off the books, outside the normal accounting of the ...

John McCain's ''Pander To Anyone I Can Think Of'' tour has made a particularly shameless stop in New Orleans. In the still-devastated Lower Ninth Ward, the poorest and most heavily damaged area of the city, McCain had the gall to say this: ''Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way it's been ...

General David Petraeus gave one of his patented dog-and-pony shows before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, in which he suggested that the administration's failed strategy in Iraq should be given even more time to continue failing: Telling Congress that progress in Iraq was “fragile and reversible,” the top American commander ...

I'm shocked, shocked I say, to learn that John McCain seems to have fibbed a little bit about his dealings with Vicki Iseman, the lobbyist he allegedly didn't sleep with, and her client, Lowell Paxson. After the New York Times story appeared last week which outlined some shady dealings between McCain, Iseman, and Paxson's broadcast company, the ...

The New York Times story and this Washington Post story on the cozy relationship between John McCain and the lobbyist Vicki Iseman have resulted in a predictable deluge of manufactured outrage from the right wing noise machine. ''Manufactured'' is exactly the correct word: the story isn't just about McCain's relationship with a much younger woman; ...

On the subject of waterboarding, here's John McCain, who was tortured by the North Vietnamese, last October: Waterboarding is a form of torture no matter how it is done and should be a prohibited among U.S. military interrogation practices, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said today, taking issue with GOP rival Rudy Giuliani’s ...