Andrew Sullivan attempts to mount a defense of President Obama’s record from the standpoint of achieving liberal objectives. But on some key items, he gets the President’s record and positions wrong, even backwards.

As historian Jay Feldman describes in his brilliantly researched and artfully written new book, Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, there have indeed been a great many things wrong with this country specifically with respect to government attacks on civil liberties. Feldman pulls together a jaw-dropping historical catalogue of 20th Century examples where the United States government not only trampled the Bill of Rights, but did so while whipping up class warfare, xenophobic hysteria, and political mob violence, all on the pretext that war or the threat of war necessitated the abrogation of liberty.

Hot Coffee, the fast-paced, info-packed exploration of tort reform exposes the real story behind Stella Liebeck, who sued McDonalds after being badly burned by spilled coffee, an incident which wrongly entered the collective consciousness as a prime example of a “frivolous” lawsuit. First time director Susan Saladoff, a civil litigator with 25 years of experience, uses the McDonalds coffee case as the starting point and from there builds a strong case that tort reform, binding arbitration and non-economic damage caps subvert justice and benefit big business.

That giant sucking sound you hear today is the sound of jobs being outsourced as President Obama signs into law three free trade deals; South Korea, Colombia and Panama. According to the Economic Policy Institute, passing the Korea Free Trade deal will likely cost this country 159,000 jobs.

A pattern is clearly forming. The Obama administration is using multiple federal departments to curb or significantly cripple the medical marijuana in the states were it was legalized by the voters. This recent move is not only another direct violation of Obama’s campaign promise to respect state’s medical marijuana laws, but the Obama administration’s is now more aggressively anti-medical marijuana than even the George W. Bush’ administration ever was.

Lost Decades looks at why the explosion of debt happened through the traditional lens of supply-and-demand. It examines the motivations and situations of people on both side of this debt. Why did demand for debt increase in the United States? The first reason Chinn and Frieden identify is the huge deficits run during the George W. Bush years. These are the trillions spent on the Bush tax cuts, the expansion of Medicare part D and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that weren’t paid for.

This would not be the first time that the political and policy shops bicker inside a White House. But what’s the claim here? That there was a rash move to make a solar energy investment for political reasons without assessing the risk? Then you have to blame the Bush Administration, which started the loan process with Solyndra as far back as 2006 as part of a previous energy bill.

Hasn’t America suffered enough under ambitious Texas governors who were cheerleaders and (probably) dressed up in jackboots? Didn’t this country pay our dues under the yoke of pretend cowboys who like executing people?

Remember when Little Georgie B wanted to get rid of Social Security and replace it with private stock investments? That would have been a really bad idea today.

Which is worse?