The neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville has spurred calls around the nation for the removal of public statues, monuments and symbols venerating white supremacy and the "lost cause" of the Confederacy. Those sites include Capitol Hill, where eight statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Alexander Stephens and five other traitors to the United States were […]

In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Republicans were shocked--SHOCKED--to find that President Trump was providing air cover for neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Declaring "there can be no moral ambiguity," House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted, "White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for." Mitt Romney, the GOP's […]

Defending the indefensible on Tuesday, President Donald Trump traveled back in time to deploy the "both sides do it" talking point to explain the Civil War. Providing air cover for white supremacists, Trump declared "you had some very fine people on both sides," apparently including "many of those people were there to protest the taking […]

What if the South had won the Civil War? Hardly a new question, and it's doubtless one of the most common counterfactual thought exercises in American history. It's also already been recently asked--though not answered seriously--in the 2004 mockumentary, CSA: The Confederate States of America. Nevertheless, HBO is turning to some of the folks who […]

With his choice for Attorney General facing a growing backlash on Capitol Hill, President-elect Donald Trump is circling the wagons in defense of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. On Sunday, Team Trump issued a press release declaring, "Civil rights and law enforcement groups are strongly supporting Sen. Jeff Sessions for Attorney General." Near the top of […]

Former Boston Red Sox pitching great Curt Schilling announced this week that he might run against Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2018. Schilling, previously best known as a bankrupt businessman and collector of Nazi memorabilia who was fired by ESPN despite famously bleeding from wherever in the 2004 American League playoffs, took to the cable […]

The third and final presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump provide a teachable moment on the subject of abortion. Make that many teachable moments. When moderator Chris Wallace asked the candidates their views on so-called "partial birth" abortion bans, Trump declared it's "not acceptable" that women "can take the baby and […]

Over the past few days, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump received the equivalent of a Little League participation trophy. Some in the press lavished praise on the "new Trump" for offering an ersatz apology to no one in particular for nothing specific. Then the man who has the lowest approval ratings from African-American voters in […]

This was the week that some Republicans finally responded to their wake up call about Donald Trump. Or perhaps more accurately, found themselves like the married man at 3 AM who discovers himself naked in a seedy hotel room bed, with his face covered in cocaine and a dead hooker laying motionless by his side, […]

One day after the horror in Munich, German authorities are still assembling a fuller picture of the 18-year-old assailant who killed 9 people in a shopping mall there. With the revelations that the gunman was a seriously depressed loner who had researched past school shootings including Columbine and Virginia Tech, it appears increasingly likely his […]