DAVID CORN

It is never good for a politician to have to defend his credibility.

The Lies of George W. Bush

Increasingly, campaigns treat the fact-checkers not as arbitrators who must be heeded, but as participants in the ever-roiling political tussle.

I think Hillary Clinton has a lot of lee way to go, either direction, and to probably most likely try to fudge it and get both parts of the party into talking points.

Before the election, I reported on a story about a counterintelligence officer from another service sending reports to the FBI saying that his sources in Russia were saying that Moscow tried for years to cultivate and co-opt Donald Trump. I'm not saying that happened. I'm saying I hope the FBI took a strong look, because it is really hard to believe that a president-elect would be so callous in how he approaches this issue and so dismissive of the seriousness of it.

Breitbart is sort of an ill-defined, loose-knit collection of a wing of the conservative movement. What do they do? The rant against immigration, Muslims, multi-culturalism, political correctness. But what they want, a lot of them, is a white America.

The one foreign policy issue that Donald Trump took a stand on was that he was against the Iraq war. Even though it wasn't true, he kept saying again and again and again.

The Republican base is not reflective of the whole country.

Netanyahu is partnering up with Boehner to kick Obama in the teeth and sabotage one of the president's top diplomatic priorities. He is essentially telling American Jews to get lost: 'I have no regard for the president you support and no regard for your own political needs and desires.'

This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent.

Rush Limbaugh is not the arbiter of what's good taste or what American opinions or morals should be.

Bush and his commanders in the war on terrorism are willing to waste non-terrorists to kill terrorists. Right or wrong, that is not caring about the dignity of every life.

I do think John Kerry has tried awfully hard to work with Russia and others to have a lasting, significant cease-fire.

I think Donald Trump should be delegitimized for many reasons. And his response to this hacking is also cause for delegitimization. But to say we should move on, when the bedrock of American democracy, the sanctity of our elections, has been messed with, just raises suspicions. His denial of it happening or its seriousness shows that there is something really amiss from his end of it.

When Hillary Clinton was in the Clinton White House as first lady, the left - the right accused her of being wide eyed radical lesbian feminist and in some issues, like welfare reform, she pushed back against the new .

This is the problem with foreign policy - talking about foreign policy in a political context. Politics is binary. People win and lose elections. Legislation passes or doesn't pass. And in foreign policy often what you're doing is nuance and you're trying to prevent something worse from happening. It doesn't translate well into a political environment.

Bush and Cheney were not misled by flawed intelligence; they used the flawed intelligence to mislead.

Coming from Donald Trump, who pushed the racist birth conspiracy theory for years against Barack Obama, I think Barack Obama has been very much a gentleman. And he has a lot of reason to just not even bother to deal with Trump.

Jon Bolton is the neocon's neocon. He was a hawk straight down the line. He wanted to bomb Iran five, six years ago before the Donald Trump election!

Obama has not accomplished a key mission: sell his own successes and keep his own (political) troops fired up and ready to go.

The question I have is out of all these commencement speeches that are happening, what's the really worthwhile advice that a 21, 22 year old person will walk away from the speech and say, I can apply this maybe five years, 10 years later. How many speeches actually push the button like that, other than yours?

I still am mystified about why Donald Trump is out there tweeting praise of Vladimir Putin, and still kind of denying and dismissing whether the hacking happened or the seriousness of it.

As the heated debate continues, it will be important that nonproliferation experts play a critical role in the discourse. Science-based statements, not snarky sound bites, should be the weapons of choice.