Gossip is like heroin, especially in the South. Behind closed doors, the woman they called Flipper expressed romantic yearnings about the man named Keith. That was too delicious a morsel not to be shared by email among staffers in the U.S. Attorney's office in Alabama. Funny how those silly remarks...

Taking his cue from Lincoln, who said "you can fool some of the people all of the time," political guru Dick Morris wants to extend his personal brand. His new pitch is the perfect complement to his latest tome, Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals...

"G-7 Leaders Agree on Principles To Confront Crisis, but No Joint Plan," The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2008

Right now restoration of financial confidence isn't everything. It's the only thing. So for the time being, we can forget about Troopergate, hecklers at McCain rallies and the latest...

"Is this video a lie?" wrote someone in response to my last piece on HuffPost. No, "lie" is an inadequate description. I uploaded the video link, seen by two million people before me, and gasped at the artful perversion of history. It was like a post-millennium version of...

When Barney Frank corrected him, Bill O'Reilly threw a tantrum in front of 5.6 million viewers. Then things got interesting. The next day, the Washington Deputy Managing Editor at Fox News uncovered a new angle on the financial crisis. Bill Sammon alleged that Congressman Frank had escaped blame for...

So what happened? What caused the Wall Street melt down this past week? My friends asked me to point them to a cogent explanation, but I couldn't find one. So this is my stab at it, in a very simplified format.

Writing Down AAA Mortgage Exposure

This year, banks, insurance...

What kind of guy would write, "Here's what the law says," when everyone else in the media read the actual words, which say the opposite? Somebody who can't read? A pathological liar who wants to get caught? Somebody who lacks the capacity to feel embarrassment or shame? A magazine editor...

Joe Biden forgot the lesson his mother taught him as a child. He recalled how, "when I got knocked down by guys bigger than me -- and this is the God's truth -- she sent me back out and said, 'Bloody their nose so you can walk down the...

"For the eighth consecutive month, the nation's employers shed jobs, 84,000 last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday." The New York Times, September 6, 2008

"As President, I will enact a Jobs for America economic plan that creates jobs." John McCain, September 5, 2008

The six-word banner above the CNBC logo said it all.

"AMERICA"S OIL CRISIS: THE NUCLEAR OPTION," framed a bogus media narrative and a phony Republican talking point. A couple of clueless reporters pushed it further.

Enrin Burnett: "We do get nearly 20% of our...

A psychologist friend of mine once explained to me his clinical technique. "I always listen for they [his patients] aren't talking about," he said. "Because that's where the action is." That rule of thumb works if you want to understand the political prosecutions by Bush's Justice Department in Alabama. Focus...

When Lou Dobbs lied, Bill Schneider played along.

Dobbs: "We have to consider what else happened in the markets and that is precisely as most of the experts had suggested, once the executive ban on oil drilling offshore had been lifted, we have seen a huge decline of approximately...

"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it." Condoleezza Rice, August 13, 2008.

Oh really? What will Rice do to make sure Russia does not get away with it? And who...

"Is this another skeleton in the Democratic closet that Barack Obama must struggle to overcome?" David Gregory on the revelation of John Edwards' extramarital affair.

OK, so now we know the new ground rules. The private life of John Edwards, who currently neither seeks nor holds public office, is...

Who decided to indict Governor Don Siegelman and his co-defendant, Richard Scrushy? It's a simple question deserves a direct answer, since the legality of the prosecution may depend on it.

For Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin, the answer is, "It depends." It depends on which type...

There she goes again, dancing around some inconvenient truths. Arianna catalogued her track record of hypocrisy. Let me add in one little smoking gun.

US News: If a federal journalism shield law were in place three years ago, how would it have affected your case?

Judith Miller:...

Before commencing deliberations, jury foreman Sam Hendrix began each day with his fellow jurors by holding hands and saying a prayer. They prayed for the defendants, including former Governor Don Siegelman, who had been indicted for bribery and government corruption. "We didn't want to crucify people," Hendrix told the Auburn...

How many troops do we have to replace the ones deployed in Iraq today? You can make a good case the number is zero. But any stab at answering the question punctures the fantasy that the surge is an unalloyed success. And our reluctance to even consider the question tells...

There were two reasons why the Truth-O-Meter at CQ Politics gave a "FALSE" rating to John McCain's "drill here, drill now" proposal for reducing oil prices: supply and demand. The impact on supply, achieved years after oil companies greenlighted any new development projects, would be at most

[Please refer to Addendum below regarding information published by the Wall Street Journal on June 12, 2008.]

John Dickerson took the bait. As did Josh Gerstein the New York Sun. Both overlooked the disclaimers embedded in the text, and presented somebody else's speculation as demonstrable fact. And suddenly, there...