So what better use of taxpayer money and time than for your State Department to make idiotic holiday videos?Acting like an asshat is something of a State tradition year-round, but these annual videos seek to memorialize it. The very broad theory is that these things...
Sources Tell Me… Fake News, Kuwait and the Trump DC Hotel
It is fully normalized now in American mainstream journalism to build an entire story, often an explosive story, around a single, anonymous source, typically described no further than “a senior U.S. official,” or just “a source.”For a writer,...
Peter Van Buren: Freedom’s Just Another Word
Here’s what’s left of democracy in America.We had an election, and the candidate favored by Washington, media, and many business elites did not win. Here’s what happened next.CIA unambiguously but without documentation or evidence presented says, via...
Requiem for the Obama Administration, Trump Edition
The problems many are now predicting under the Trump administration did not start on November 8. The near-unrestrained executive power claimed by the Obama administration will be transferred to the president-elect. Here’s what that means.TortureObama did not...
A Brief History of the Election OMG PUTIN IS TAKING CONTROL OF THIS ARTICLE!!!!!!!!!!!
Media ignore Clinton’s weaknesses and Trump’s strengths for 18 months to epically blow election predictions.No calls for recounts.Clinton concedes.No calls for recounts.Despite over 200 years of the electoral college system, and this being the fifth presidential...
A Media Blacklist, Courtesy of WaPo: Now I’m Afraid for Our Democracy
In most third world societies, when people don’t like the results of an election, they take to the streets. In America, we take to the Internet.But the end result is the same. The system is undermined because we do not like the results it yielded. Accusations of...
The War on the First Amendment Didn’t Start Last Week
For those who woke a week ago to discover the First Amendment is under attack, I lost my job at the Obama/Clinton State Department in 2012 for writing We Meant Well, a book the government did not like, and needed the help of lawyer Jesselyn Radack and the ACLU to push...
Peter Van Buren on Those Damn Emails
In the end, the emails mattered. How much they mattered – how many votes went to Trump, how many would be-Clinton supporters stayed home, how many voted third party – we’ll never know.Clinton supporters were surprised the emails mattered at all,...
American Exceptionalism, Under God: Pledging Allegiance to the Homeland
Among the exceptional things about America is that, along with North Korea, we are one of a very few nations that have our schools begin the day with a pledge of allegiance. Unlike North Korea, however, our pledge also includes a reference to God. We do enjoy...
Thinking Like an Intelligence Officer: Anthony Weiner and Russian Spies
There are many reasons why Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey is interested in the emails on Anthony Weiner’s home computer, emails which may include United States government information pertinent to Hillary Clinton or those communicating with...


