By the accusation of liberal bias ... the institutions that conservatives revere - the military, corporate America, organized religion, and the powerful conservative groups themselves - will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence.

So was it a political mistake for Obama to put so many eggs in the health-care-reform basket? Well, a negative decision from the Supreme Court will certainly make it appear so.

By the accusation of liberal bias ... the institutions that conservatives revere - the military, corporate America, organized religion, and the powerful conservative groups themselves - will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence.

The war on terrorism was a bait and switch operation.

Ironically, tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and unwelcome evidence is actually President Reagan's true legacy, as I noted in 'The Nation' back in 2000, before the current right-wing mania for President Reagan gained its full force.

If bloggers are to improve our public discourse - helping busy and usually uninformed people make sense of the world - it is necessary to use some sort of standard with which to judge their reliability. Perhaps the answer (strictly advisory) is a body of their peers. Perhaps not.

Americans continue to suffer from a notoriously short attention span. They get mad as hell with reasonable frequency, but quickly return to their families and sitcoms. Meanwhile, the corporate lobbies stay right where they are, outlasting all the populist hysteria.