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Articles by Charles Kaiser | Email the Author

Above the Fold: The Pentagon Capers

The mainstream media are silent on the Pentagon’s repudiation of its own report

This week the Pentagon took the highly unusual step of withdrawing a report issued by its inspector general one week... More

Above the Fold: Ross Report Revisited

Kaiser on Stelter, Ross, and the 2007 CIA waterboarding interview

Brian Stelter reports on page one of The New York Times today that newly disclosed torture memoranda show how an... More

Winners & Sinners

Kaiser on Shane, Maddow, Kaplan, and more

Winner: The New York Times's Scott Shane. Just four months after remarks of F.B.I. director Robert Mueller were published on... More

Above the Fold: Know-Nothings at the NYT

Times waterboarding story reports, demonstrates ignorance of history

“There is no history of ethnic conflict in Iraq.” – former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, explaining to Congress... More

Above the Fold: Waiting in the Lobby

The Obama administration needs to rethink its blanket “no lobbyists” policy

Although FCP doesn’t agree with everything the Obama administration has done, especially in its defense of state secrets, never has... More

Above the Fold: Memos of (Mis)understanding

For the torture memos, too, sunlight is the best disinfectant

Barack Obama acted intelligently and courageously yesterday by making the Bush administration’s torture memos public, despite the strong objections of... More

Above the Fold: Beltway Journalism, “Swallowed by an Hourglass”

It’s long past time to expand the spectrum of Sunday-show punditry

The more things change, the more Beltway punditry stays the same. If only the voters could change the composition of... More

Winners & Sinners

Kaiser on Danner, Poniewozik, Rove, Vanity Fair, and more

Winner: Mark Danner, for another brilliant piece about torture in the New York Review of Books: “Torture is at the... More

Above the Fold: Our Financial Follies

Black and Born prove it yet again: we need to regulate the regulators

Last week, William Black, a former investigator of the Savings and Loan scandal, went on Bill Moyers Journal and repeated... More

Winners & Sinners

Kaiser on Vanity Fair, Ed Henry, and Colbert

Sinner: Vanity Fair, for running an article by Mark Bowden about Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. that was so filled with elementary... More

Above the Fold: Colin Powell, American Coward

The general continues to debunk the myth of his own greatness

At just about every crucial juncture in his career, Colin Powell has failed his country, and himself. This sorry record... More

Winners & Sinners

Kaiser on Goldberger, Cohen, Greenwald, Wolff, and more

Winner: Paul Goldberger, for a beautiful meditation in The New Yorker on the baseball stadiums just completed for the New... More

Above the Fold: The Torture Report

Mark Danner rakes Guantánamo’s muck

When the history of this era is written more honor will be attached to Mark Danner than to most other... More

Winners & Sinners

Kaiser on Jon Stewart, Nathaniel Frank, David Gates and more

The Biggest Winner: Let’s be clear: Jon Stewart is the best interviewer on television, because he is the toughest, the... More

Above the Fold: The Whole Truth About Torture

Is it “unfair” to single out Bush’s torture advisors for prosecution?

The story by Charlie Savage and Scott Shane on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, about the “fallout... More

If cable is dying, why is it still making so much money?

The story behind one of the best business models in the country

What TVGuide.com watchlist data reveals about the season’s new dramas

“What was once genre is now the Zeitgeist”

Josh Barro, the loneliest Republican

What to make of the 28-year-old columnist’s contempt for the GOP—and its would-be reformers

Obama as the Green Lantern

Dowd and Fournier and countless others who have launched similar complaints are asking, “Why aren’t we getting what we were promised?”

This is water

David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon commencement speech as a short film

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