As I've noted before, the distance between the incendiary rhetoric of the Republican Party and anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-government and above all anti-abortion extremism is a growing ever shorter. With Sunday's murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, that disturbing dynamic deserves deeper examination. After all, while even arch-conservative Attorney General John Ashcroft once deemed such […]

That Republicans are apoplectic about President Obama's "date night" in New York is pathetically predictable. That the GOP and its conservative water carriers remain silent about George W. Bush's record-breaking presidential vacation time is less surprising still. To be sure, some will quibble with Obama's decision to fulfill his pledge to his wife that they […]

On Friday, the New York Times profiled a group of Harvard Business School students who have taken an "MBA oath" to act responsibly and "serve the greater good." The ethical pledge of "responsible value creation" can't come too soon for America's future business leaders. After all, a February 2009 Marist poll found that in the […]

Back in 1995, Newt Gingrich famously concluded menstruation rendered women unfit for combat roles in the military. Now just two days after Gingrich branded Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor "racist," convicted Watergate felon and right-wing radio host G. Gordon Liddy agreed that both of Newt's arguments disqualify Sotomayor. Period. After echoing Tom Tancredo's slander that […]

Earlier this month, George Washington University professor and New Republic legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen turned to anonymous sources in a blistering - and controversial - attack on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's judicial temperament. Now just days after the raging right predictably made Rosen's smears a centerpiece in the battle against Sotomayor, the mainstream media is following […]

You know things are bad for the conservative movement when John Cornyn comes to the defense of Sonia Sotomayor. On Thursday, the Texas Senator called rejected as "terrible" charges from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich that Sotomayor is a "racist." Coming from a man who casually condoned threats against American judges, Cornyn's […]

48 hours after announcing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor "appears to be racist," Republican Tom Tancredo today blasted her association with the National Council of La Raza, deeming the organization "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." As it turns out, of course, the GOP itself has a long tradition of reaching out […]

During his confirmation hearings in 2005, Chief Justice John Roberts introduced the sound bite that is now the predictable companion to Republican outrage over "judicial activism." "Judges are like umpires," Roberts analogized, adding, "Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them." Now as Senate Republicans seek to derail President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor […]

Back in 1998, Arizona Senator John Kyl was one of 28 Republicans to oppose the nomination Sonia Sotomayor to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. But while he was one of the most ardent voices demanding an "up or down vote" for President Bush's judicial selections in 2005, since November Kyl has been threatening to […]

In the run-up to President Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame last week, few of his opponents were as outspoken as William A. Donohue. After all, the face of the Catholic League compared Obama to Klansman turned conservative politician David Duke and denounced the President as "someone who supports selective infanticide." But now that Obama, […]