In a 2008 campaign full of low points, John McCain's deepest descent may have come during his final presidential debate with Barack Obama. Dripping with condescension, McCain used air quotes to mock the concern of abortion rights advocates for the "health of mother." Now two years later, the new Republican majority in Congress is trying […]

As TPM and others reported last week, Planned Parenthood had alerted the FBI that some of its clinics had likely been targeted by right-wing activists claiming to run an interstate sex trafficking ring that involves minors and illegal immigrants. So that the anti-abortion group Live Action and its Andrew Breitbart megaphone Big Government are trumpeting […]

With inexplicable acts of violence as with marriage, Newt Gingrich apparently believes the third time's a charm. Seventeen years after he blamed Susan Smith's drowning of her two young sons on "Lyndon Johnson's Great Society" and 11 years after accusing the "liberal political elite" over the Columbine massacre, Gingrich is using the attempted assassination of […]

In January, the new Hispanic Leadership Network is hosting a forum to showcase the 2012 Republican presidential field. But while the event is well funded by the conservative American Action Network, it is lacking for one thing: the GOP White House hopefuls themselves. If this slap in the face of America's fastest growing voting block […]

In one of the most condescending and paternalistic Supreme Court opinions in recent memory, Justice Anthony Kennedy in April 2007 upheld a federal late term abortion ban on the grounds that "some women come to regret their choice." 18 months later, an exhaustive study of 20 years of research concluded that there is no evidence […]

This spring, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Week and The Grio (among others) pointed to the new crop of African-American GOP candidates and pondered, "2010: The year of the black Republican?" And on Sunday, RealClearPolitics contributor Jack Kelly touted the candidacies of Tim Scott, Allen West and Ryan Frazier as proof of […]

Delaware Republican Senate candidate and Tea Party Christine O'Donnell is out of touch, at least with herself. But not, it appears, with the Almighty. After all, O'Donnell not only claimed that in the Lord's eyes, masturbation constitutes adultery. In 2006, she insisted, "I heard the audible voice of God." Of course, Sharron Angle is far […]

For the families who lost loved ones in the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, the anguish and suffering must be incomprehensible - and never ending. But the compassion, sympathy and respect Americans rightly feel for them cannot obscure the fact that 9/11 was an attack on the United States and all Americans. And the […]

Somewhere in America, a psychology graduate student is doubtless preparing the definitive thesis of the modern conservative mindset. After all, the Bush years produced a cottage industry of analyses on the roots of Dubya's "dead or alive, bring 'em on" macho talk. And now that Sarah Palin has added "impotent" and "limp" to a right-wing […]

On Thursday, NPR offered a tour of the neighborhood around the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan. But while Brian Reed offered a tour of the Starbucks, some Indian restaurants, a tobacconist, a strip club, a Christian Science Reading room, some churches and an Off Track Better OTB) facility near Ground Zero, another battle over […]