Over the past week, the continuing implosion of the Republican Party produced another bumper crop of jaw-dropping conservative gaffes and goofs. GOP infighting over the dismal realities in Iraq, Alberto Gonzales' PurgeGate scandal, and a fresh batch of right-wing rage combined to deliver new innovations in conservative rhetorical psychosis. And in recent days, White House […]

For those who missed Alberto Gonzales' act of self-immolation before Senate Judiciary Committee on April 19, the Attorney General is set to offer an encore performance during Thursday's hearing about the purged prosecutors before the House Judiciary Committee. As MSNBC, Politico and TPM Muckraker are all reporting, Gonzales will offer the House virtually the same […]

A sure sign of the GOP desperation over Iraq is ever-increasing Republican propensity to rhetorically reduce the conflict to the realm of the normal. With casual analogies to American sports, business, shopping, and history, Republican leaders try to conflate the Iraq chaos and carnage with the commonplace and carefree. Theirs isn't the "banality of evil," […]

By now, Americans should have grown accustomed to the Bush administration's opposition to Plan B. But as it turns out, the ideologues of the Republican Party not only oppose Plan B for American women. They oppose Plan B for American troops mired in the civil war in Iraq That's the message from House Minority Leader […]

During last night's episode of Bill Moyer's Journal, host Bill Moyers interviewed Jonathan Miller, creator of a three-part series titled "A Brief History of Disbelief" to be aired on PBS stations beginning this week. Or perhaps "some PBS stations" would be a better description. As it turns out, many PBS affiliates are apparently choosing not […]

If anyone had any lingering doubts about the unique role of Google as a social, cultural and political force in the United States, a Friday appearance by John McCain at its company headquarters should put them to rest. The special forum hosted by CEO Eric Schmidt let GOP White House hopeful McCain bring his views […]

In last night's Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library, former Massachusetts Mitt Romney added Osama Bin Laden to his rapidly growing list of flip-flops. By alternately downplaying or emphasizing the importance of capturing Bin Laden as political circumstances require, Romney finds himself in good company - with President Bush. On Thursday, Romney-turned-Rambo declared that […]

Arriving just in time for tonight's Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library are the first sneak peeks of the Gipper's soon to be released diary. While Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and the rest vie to claim the mantle of "Reagan Conservative," you can contemplate Ronnie's insightful private admissions such as "getting shot […]

On Thursday, the White House confirmed that President Bush will veto Congressional hate crime legislation extending protected status to victims of attacks based on gender and sexual orientation. The announcement comes as no surprise. After all, it was his bizarre discussion of hate crimes that almost derailed the election of candidate George W. Bush in […]

Judging from the latest deluge of egregious gaffes, blunders and banality from the conservative chattering class, Stephen Colbert was certainly right that "reality has a well-known liberal bias." President Bush's wildly unpopular war funding veto, the continued entropy in Iraq, George Tenet's revisionist history and the rhetorical mishaps of 2008 GOP hopefuls combined to produce […]