News that American Captain Richard Phillips was rescued by U.S. forces from Somali pirates must have come as something as a shock to the right-wing noise machine. After all, over the past two days, frothing-at-the-mouth conservatives branded Barack Obama "eunuch-in-chief", "President Pantywaist," and worse, while Newt Gingrich twittered Friday, "The correct answer to piracy is […]

When it comes to conservative politics, it's a very small world indeed. Here in the United States, Pastor Rick Warren canceled an Easter appearance on ABC's This Week after his comic reversal on Prop 8 produced a firestorm of criticism from his allies in the religious right. And while Politico Friday reported a split in […]

While the trumped-up imbroglio over President Obama's invitation to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame continues to simmer, the attitudes and voting behavior of American Catholics belie the manufactured controversy. And as it turns out, a 2003 book of the school's commencement speeches issued by the University of Notre Dame Press shows the political […]

If nothing else, the conservative movement is an irony producing machine. Aided and abetted by their echo chamber at Fox News, on Tax Day next week members of the raging right will gather at so-called Tea Parties around the country. There, the protesters, at least 95% of whom received a tax cut courtesy of President […]

As a downtrodden Republican Party battles to rebound from its November beat-down, one 2012 GOP White House hopeful is rising like a phoenix from the ashes. While Bobby Jindal disgraced himself on national television and the Palin clan became icons for petty crime and failed family values, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is again positioning […]

Despite the Obama administration's 4% increase in the Pentagon budget, Republican leaders and their conservative echo chamber are predictably issuing dire warnings about draconian cuts in defense spending and "disarming America." Of course, critics of Secretary Gates' strategic shift of resources to boost the nation's ability to fight current wars and future counterinsurgencies neglect to […]

Despite the predictable cries of "socialism" and "class warfare" from the raging right, support for President Obama's plan to return upper income tax rates to Clinton-era levels continues to enjoy overwhelming public support. That is one of the headlines from the latest CBS/New York Times poll which showed 74% back a tax increase for households […]

When it comes to foreign policy, George W. Bush was right - once. During the 2000 campaign, then candidate Bush declared the world would welcome America's role if the United States was not arrogant, but a "humble nation." But now that Barack Obama in London, Paris, Prague and now Ankara is practicing to near universal […]

The slaughter of three Pittsburgh policemen by an assailant who "didn't like our [gun] rights being infringed upon" has again highlighted the growing danger from incendiary Republican rhetoric spawning right-wing terror. After all, just days ago, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announced, "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous." Fox News host Glenn Beck warned […]

Barack Obama, in the telling of some Republican leaders and their amen corner in the media, is "declaring war on Catholics." So says former Bush speechwriter turned Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson in parroting the wishful thinking and trumped-up controversy of conservatives in a diatribe this week. Sadly for the right-wing echo chamber, both with […]