When a candidate is down and out in the polls, there’s one tried-and-true strategy that should never be overlooked: an excellent sense of humor.

President Obama is currently starting one last effort for gun control, in his final year in office. Sometime in the next two weeks, he is expected announce an executive order to require more small gun sellers to do background checks, and he plans to pitch that idea and other gun-control measures to the American public at a CNN-televised town hall Thursday.

People forget today that George W. Bush first ran for president as a “compassionate conservative” because it was novel to do so: Most conservatives openly acknowledged that they were pricks by 2000. Like George’s brother Jeb, who wrote in 1995 of wanting society to attach a “sense of ridicule” to single parenting.

Hillary Clinton’s latest financial disclosure confirms that she pulled in $225,500 last year to give a speech plugging a skeezy online-schooling company that Jeb Bush helped run. Because nothing in America unites ideological foes like that sweet sweet college cash.

According to a report released earlier today by the Department of Homeland Security, the alarm at former President George H.W. Bush’s Houston home was broken for over a year before the Secret Service got around to replacing it—despite them knowing about the faulty system for a full eight months.

A lot of people in the United States don't know anything about soon-to-be ex-senator Marco Rubio of Florida, which means he theoretically still has a chance to be president, the same way the Philadelphia Phillies can still theoretically win this year's pennant. It will not last, and it will never have been realistic.

There are 14.7 million registered Hispanic voters in the United States—but only one of them is the WASP scion one of our country's foremost conservative dynasties. Yes: John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, the Connecticut-bred president's son and president's brother (and distant relative to the actual British monarchy) is—according to his voter registration form—Hispanic.

Frances Fragos Townsend spent five years as George W. Bush's key advisor on homeland security and counterterrorism. She's currently a national security correspondent for CNN. And she can't tell the difference between actual news and a joke by the military's answer to The Onion.

Neocons' first move in their renewed offensive against the reality-based community: Get the year of the Iraq invasion wrong.

Twenty-five years ago today, the Bush presidential dynasty officially got its start. And it may not be over yet. Happy MLK Day, everybody! A thousand points of light!

"U.S. officials" tell the Washington Post that Abu Sufian bin Qumu, a Libyan jihadi leader held as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay after the 9/11 attacks, assisted in the attack on an American consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other U.S. citizens.

Healthcare.gov, the website where Americans are supposed to sign up for healthcare exchanges created under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, is buggy as fuck. The exchanges don’t officially take effect until early 2014, but in the meantime signing up for one is somewhere between difficult and impossible.

Last week, hacker Guccifer, revealed more of George W. Bush's newfound love of painting (or method of therapy. Whichever.), releasing six new photographs of his work that ranged from still life to animal portraits.

Remember the George W. Bush years? They almost seem like a bad dream, don't they? Years of terror, and militarism, and war, and unaccountability, and even, perhaps most repugnant, years of torture of foreign prisoners by we, the Americans, the beacons of freedom. Well, the Bush years have thankfully passed. And now, Americans like torture even more.

Former Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon and Watergate co-conspirator Chuck Colson died this weekend. Besides being a criminal and an intolerant far-right evangelical, he's perhaps most famous for saying, "I would walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Dick Nixon."

Prince William and Kate get cuddly. Nicole Richie gets married, elephant in tow. Miley Cyrus soldiers on despite bong-ripping controversy, and Madonna is banned from TV. Sunday gossip round up is a blizzard of titillating details

It is time to check in on American Apparel, our most favorite near-bankrupt beauty-positive spandex-based fashion retailer. Employees are stealing! Employees are emailing us funny stories! And AA is trying to class up its porn!

The latest headlines don't seem to back up Bush's hubris-filled claim, back in May 2003, that the war was won. 'Wave of Fatal Bombings Widens Fissures in Iraq,' for example. Some US troops will pull out in August. [HuffPo]

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the N.S.A.'s covert wiretap program targeting who knows how many US citizens without court approval was (and is!) illegal. Of fucking course it is, come on. But...but...but what if Obama does it?

The former head of Britain's intelligence service says that the three-headed monster known as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld fetishized, and were inspired by, Jack Bauer's torture techniques.