In assessing the actions of the CIA and, in particular, the program euphemistically called, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, context is important. Nowhere is that historical context more evident than in an April 2007 interview CBS News Anchor Scott Pelley conducted with former CIA Chief George Tenet. Tenet was unusually candid and direct about the situation the United States faced after September...

A five-year Senate Intelligence Committee investigation examining the Central Intelligence Agency’s role in interrogation tactics against detainees involved in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 was released today and the evidence is damning. “Based on 6.2 million pages of documents,” TIME magazine reports (Dec.9), photos and other CIA files, the report presents evidence that the agency’s interrogation methods were brutal and...

On November 8, Dennis Wagner, writing for The Arizona Republic, reported that the Veteran’s Administration, charged with the healthcare needs of American veteran soldiers since 1917, “has been under fire since April, when Arizona whistle-blowers set off a national furor by exposing mismanagement, falsified data, delayed medical care and a broken ethics system.” Wagner points to many changes that have...

After learning of the death of Jo Ann Harris yesterday, I felt a great sense of loss at someone who was the definition of integrity. A former assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division under then-Attorney General Janet Reno, Harris was not only the first woman to head that post, she was also an uncompromising fighter to...

Washington politics has become a bad opera – tedious, score-settling bad opera where each side reacts like a soccer player who falls to the ground, grabs a body part and moans loudly so the official will call a foul. On June 16, the New York Times writes that “The Ways and Means chairman, Representative Dave Camp… wrote a letter to President Obama...

“I don’t believe you.” Why anyone, in their right mind, would want to head anygovernment agency in today’s hyper-partisan world is beyond my understanding. Just look at what you have to stare-down when you’re sitting before a congressional committee. On December 23, 2013, John Koskinen was sworn in as the new IRS commissioner after being confirmed by the Senate three days earlier....

After the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizen’s United allowed for nearly unlimited and unidentified donations to political campaigns in 2010, a number of new groups applied for tax-exempt status. On February 16, 2012, Democratic Senators Al Franken, Chuck Schumer, Jeff Merkley and Michael Bennet wrote a letter to Douglas Shulman urging the then-IRS commissioner to investigate social welfare organizations “engaged in a...

To understand the root cause of the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, context is important. With the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, corporations and non-profits were permitted to contribute to political campaigns. In the case of certain non-profits, they could donate provided they did not contribute more than 49 percent of their...

In countless letters to his wife and partner, Abigail, John Adams poured out his heart and his mind. Abigail was not just a sounding board for his political conscience; she was his moral compass in every way. Adams, 90, and Thomas Jefferson 83, while gravely ill, wanted very much to live to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of...

In a move that surprised many, last week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office cancelled six federal trademark registrations for the name the Washington Redskins, ruling that the name is “disparaging to Native Americans.” In an story authored by Travis Waldron for ThinkProgress, a liberal blog (June 18), the Patent board said, “We decide, based on the evidence properly before us,...