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Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship...

I want you to read something. It's a snatch of transcript from a Jan. 27 C-SPAN interview with Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., that has received zero coverage in what we think of as the mainstream media. To set the C-SPAN scene, Kanjorski is harkening back to the middle of last September, when, as it happens, John McCain was enjoying his brief lead in the presidential polls and the economy as we knew it was imploding. Here's what Kanjorski said: "I was there when the Secretary (of the Treasury Hank Paulson) and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Ben Bernanke) came...

Speaking of Rice, she seemed to have shifted to the left over the course of the Bush administration, particularly in its second term, when she became secretary of state. Does it really make a difference, then, whether it's Bush running the show or Obama? Sadly from my perspective, there will be a lot of continuity between the Obama and Bush administrations where Middle East policy is concerned - generally on Iran, and specifically on a range of other issues. That doesn't warm my heart. It shows that mistakes were being made, especially during the second term of the Bush administration,...

As the clock ticks down on his presidency, George W. Bush has shown few signs he plans to indulge in the frenzy of last-minute pardons that marked Bill Clinton’s final hours in the Oval Office. But Bush could quickly leap back into the spotlight in the next two days if he issues a blanket pardon immunizing CIA and military interrogators, as well as their bosses, from criminal prosecution over harsh treatment of prisoners from the war on terror. “I’m sure he’s under pressure from some people to issue blanket pardons,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) told Politico. “I don’t think it’s...

Does anybody have text versions of quotes over a timeline exposing the fools and the sages of economic predictions?

The story Much of President Bush's news conference today was a defense of the many controversial decisions of his presidency, it was also reflective, with the president showing a willingness to admit and talk about the serious mistakes made by this administration. But on one topic in particular, he seemed almost entirely disconnected from what really happened: Hurricane Katrina. As someone who spent many days in New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina, I was taken aback listening to the president talk about the government's response.

"No matter what you think of Bush's policies," said a friend of mine at lunch the other day, "you have to admit that he's a decent man. I mean, that's just obvious: He's a good man. Why can't people see that?" Well, some can, some can't. Our 43d president provokes very strong emotions, to say the least. Many people flat-out hate him (and aren't shy about saying so). Some of us - fewer of us - love him. Probably very few people are lukewarm about him. He has been anathematized to an extraordinary degree. "It's a wonder he can get...

Wars. Recession. Bailouts. Debt. Gloom. The unvarnished review of George W. Bush's presidency reveals a portrait of America he never would have imagined. Bush came into office promising limited government and humble foreign policy; he exits with his imprint on startling free-market intervention and nation-building wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [...] Grading Bush's performance has its limitations. History offers a warning about judging a president and his tenure in the moment: The wisdom and decisions of a leader can look different years later, shaped by events impossible to know now. Leaders are entrusted to act in the nation's long-term interests....

George W. Bush leaves office with a job-approval rating that once soared to historic highs, then fell slowly but steadily for five years before settling, in the last couple of years, into lows that no president has ever experienced for so long. The president’s final Gallup approval rating of 2008 is 28 percent; a number like that means some core Republicans don’t approve of Bush’s performance, and even among the many in the GOP who still approve, there are a number who are ready to see the president go. Bush knows that. The White House staff knows it. But the...

admire President Bush. I think he is a good man and I have said so before. But as Bush leaves office he is looking more and more like a deer in headlights.... ...A sound education, a clear and steady mind, real world experience, a moral compass, the ability to listen to and understand conflicting points of view, superior communication skills, common sense and courage are the tools a statesman needs. With the possible exception of education, none of these skills can be taught. They must be lived, learned, and earned.

~snip~ Widely seen as his biggest foreign policy error, the decision to invade Iraq could ultimately prove to have been a masterstroke. Today the world is witnessing the birth of the first truly democratic state in the Middle East outside of Israel. Over eight million voted in Iraq's parliamentary elections in 2005, and the region's first free Muslim society may become a reality. Iraq might not be Turkey, but it is a powerful demonstration that freedom can flourish in the embers of the most brutal and barbaric of dictatorships. The success of the surge in Iraq will go down in...

George Bush, Protectionist by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author) Posted 12/26/2008 ET "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse." Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout to GM, Ford and Chrysler, Bush, by omission, excluded BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai -- though all operate auto plants here in the United States and all are...

The Bush hatred we are seeing in the media today belongs in the long catalogue of human psychopathology -- not rational behavior. The latest version is the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq. Iraq happens to be a hot war zone, in which tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed by hidden bombs. Bush' protective detail had no way of knowing whether an assassinaton attempt was under way, in just the way Saddam tried to assassinate George H.W. Bush, Sr. At the end of his two terms of office, the President flew to Iraq, into harm's way, knowing the dangers,...

With only 26 days left to harangue, mock and bash President Bush, some of our colleagues in the media aren't wasting a day. Bashing ex-presidents, except for the ex-presidents with shrill prominent wives, isn't nearly as much fun as bashing while he's still the real thing. There's method in the gladness at the New York Times, which relieved itself at the beginning of Christmas week with an umpity-thousand word accusation - beginning on Page One and continuing across several acres of newsprint inside - that George W. Bush invented the meltdown of the subprime housing market, which in turn has...

President George W. Bush on Tuesday signed into law a measure intended to help company pension plans and retirees that have been hard hit by the financial crisis. Despite some concerns about the legislation, Bush decided that in the current financial environment the benefits outweighed the problems, the White House said. Generally healthy multi-employer pension plans hurt by the stock market decline would not have to make drastic pension plan contribution increases and worker benefit cutbacks that many companies had feared. A multi-employer pension plan, unlike a traditional single-employer plan, covers workers from more than one company and allows workers...

WASHINGTON – Before leaving for the holidays, President Bush on Tuesday commuted the prison sentence of a drug offender and granted 19 pardons, including one to a man who helped the Jewish resistance in the 1940s. With this latest batch, which includes forgiveness for convictions ranging from gun and drug violations to bank and mail fraud, Bush has granted a total of 191 pardons and nine commutations. That's fewer than half as many as Presidents Clinton or Reagan issued during their two terms. Included in the latest list is Charles Winters, who is considered a hero in Israel. Winters, who...

President Bush signed several bills into lawPresident Bush, First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna Hager travelled to Camp David to spend the Christmas holidays Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

As we observe the scandal surrounding Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, arrested for attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat formerly belonging to President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder, and think of what it portends for the next four years, it causes me to be grateful for the two most important things President Bush has accomplished during his tenure. The first is that there has been absolutely no hint of the scandal, soap opera or three-ring circus that had been a daily suffering under President Clinton. The dignity and the prestige of the office of the presidency were restored, and...

BAGHDAD -- President George W. Bush on Sunday made a farewell visit to Iraq, a place that defines his presidency, just 37 days before he hands the war off to a successor who has pledged to end it

PRINCETON, NJ -- George W. Bush remains popular among conservative Republicans (72% approve of him) despite his low overall approval rating. Meanwhile, moderate and liberal Republicans are as likely to disapprove as to approve of the job he is doing, and Democrats of all political orientations hold Bush in low regard. These results are based on Gallup Poll Daily tracking conducted Dec. 1-9, including interviews with more than 9,000 U.S. adults. During this time, Bush has averaged 29% job approval among all Americans -- reflecting a slight improvement from the 25% approval rating he had at the time of the...