7PM
So it's the last night of this thing. I wonder if the Republicans will burn anyone in effigy tonight. It's really the only way they can top the frothing rage of last night's televised flame war.

7:06PM
The stock market dropped 344 points today. I wonder if...

The Republicans have found their new George W. Bush.

Governor Palin, Governor Bush -- what's the difference? They're almost exactly the same. It's as if the Republicans looked at the real Bush and said, "Aw fiddlesticks. We can top it -- drop the Texas, add Alaska and some non-prescription...

6:55PM EDT
As we get rolling here for the big third night featuring Giuliani, Romney, Cindy McCain and The Sarah Palin Show, it's worth noting that Republican strategists Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy think that the McCain campaign is "over," "cynical," "political bullshit," and "it's not gonna work."...

6:49PM EDT
Hello! I'll be liveblogging the television coverage of the lies and smears -- I mean, coverage of the Republican convention. So far, I've heard Fred Barnes on FOX News ask, "What about Obama's daughter -- daughters?" Huh?

6:51PM
In case you missed last night's convention festivites,...

I'm not sure which was more bizarre today.

Governor Palin saying "nuclear" with the same "nookular" pronunciation as both President Bush -- and former Vice President Dan Quayle who, if you recall, also used to say "nookular." Or FOX News Channel's Steve Doocy suggesting that, heck yeah, Governor Palin...

With a few standout exceptions, the television coverage of the Democratic Convention is so grossly disconnected with the reality on the floor that, if I were more conspiratorial, I'd wonder whether the networks hadn't pre-taped their coverage months ago. Sort of like that SNL sketch in which Dana Carvey...

It's probably time for the Republicans to panic.

Reason the first: despite all of the McCain campaign attacks of the last six weeks and, naturally, Senator McCain's whiteness and military service, the McCain campaign can't, as Pat Buchanan likes to say, "close the deal." He can't overtake Senator Obama...

"It is possible," Gore Vidal once wrote, "for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at...

Senator Obama on Tuesday said of the McBush Republicans, "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." After eight years trapped aboard this dark ride, finally hearing a Democratic presidential candidate publicly and forcefully refer to the Republicans as ignorant liars ought to be enough to coax even...

I'm not sure how he continues to be regarded as a very serious Washington pundit given his obvious history of race-baiting, but somehow he skulks his way onto MSNBC almost every day. Pat Buchanan on Hardball Monday night wondered out loud about Senator Obama: "Is he one of us?"

If...

As we have observed throughout the last several years, the notion of fairness in journalism has been guided by a miscalculated rule that in order to report good news about a liberal or a liberal success, news reporting has to be counterbalanced either with unearned praise for conservatives or trumped...

As we approach the August vacation season, naturally our thoughts turn to President Bush who has a just-a-regular-guy penchant for both five-week paid vacations and participating in unrelated tomfoolery during times of crisis.

This week, for instance, as the stock market spazzed and the price of everything climbed higher; as...

Among our ever growing roster of things to hate and fear, Islamic terrorists are probably the most hated and certainly the most feared. For the better part of this decade, the stated goal of America has been to hunt down and bring terrorists to justice (torture and kill them). Toby...

Senator McCain has famously said, "Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war."

How, then, should we describe a clearly unbalanced presidential candidate who jokes about killing innocent civilians as part of a larger war-mongering foreign policy? "A fool or a fraud" barely cracks the...

The way these last several weeks have shaped up, the dark ride of the Bush years seems as though it's fixing to get darker with every passing, sweltering day.

It's smothering us, yet it remains mostly unspoken probably because we're being presently digested in the belly of it: The...

Holy crap on a stick. Bill Kristol -- who has been so wrong so often that he was somehow rewarded with a job at the New York Times -- might have actually been right about something political. For once. Back on February 17 on the self-satirical FOX News Sunday program,...

While Senator Obama helps flooding victims in Iowa, and counsels hard-working college students who are having trouble managing their growing tuition debt, the McCain campaign, meanwhile, has cracked open the seal on their emergency Feargasm Lock Box and unleashed a terrible mythological force.

With a blinding...

Rest assured, Mr. President, that despite what you told the Times Online today you won't be remembered solely as a war mongering president.

"Look, I think that in retrospect, you know, I could have used a different tone."

Different tone? Ya think?

War mongering is a significant aspect...

It's hip today to step back and allow Senator Clinton some breathing space in order to proceed through the various stages of whatever on her way to eventually -- some day -- conceding this nomination process to Presumptive Nominee Barack Obama. And I'm not exactly sure why the Clintons deserve...

I've been trying to wrap my head around the very serious corporate media's reaction to Scott McClellan's book, so let me know if I've got this straight.

• The Bush administration lied about the justifications for the invasion of Iraq, and each lie was obfuscated by an active propaganda apparatus...