Like the spotted owl or the Pacific sea otter, Black Republicans are something of an endangered species. This week, a select group of African-American conservatives and their GOP allies showed why. On Monday, the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) debuted ads declaring that Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan and that Martin Luther King Junior […]

Virginia Senator George Allen has once again confirmed the wisdom of the old aphorism that when stuck in a hole, stop digging. Just days after the "Macacagate" episode highlighted Allen's neo-Confederate proclivities, his ham-handed response to revelations of his Jewish ancestry put Allen in hot water. During his September 18 debate with Democrat Jim Webb, […]

There's an old saying that a gaffe is what results when a politician inadvertently tells the truth. By that standard, then, the Republican Party must be confessing its deeply held beliefs when it comes to race. After all, despicable racial slurs like Arnold Schwarzenegger's lecture on black and Latino blood and George Allen's MacacaGate are […]

With the arrest of fugitive polygamist Warren Jeffs, conservatives have once again returned to one of their favorite lines of attack against same-sex marriage rights. As Tucker Carlson put it during his September 1st MSNBC show, "I'm merely asking the obvious question, why not get rid of the discrimination against polygamists too?" Call it the […]

Just days after Senator George Allen's MacacaGate scandal, the Republican Party continued to offer a cornucopia of egregious gaffes and uproarious utterances. In Montana, Senator Conrad Burns lived up to his recent claim that he could "self-destruct in one sentence." Just weeks after attacking out-of-state firefighters who came to the aid of Montana, the Senator […]

In a welcome change of course, the Bush administration ended its stonewalling of over-the-counter sales of the Plan B emergency contraceptive. After five years of outright deception and promises broken, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Barr Pharmaceuticals its blessing to proceed with OTC sales to women 18 and older. As Perrspectives reported two […]

Virginia Senator and 2008 GOP presidential hopeful George Allen continued to burnish his neo-Confederate credentials this week. During a reelection campaign event in front of an all white audience, Allen singled out Jim Webb campaign volunteer and U.S. citizen S.R. Sidarth as a "macaca." In his apology, Allen feigned ignorance of the meaning of the […]

This week's revelations surrounding the UK terror plot targeting U.S. bound airliners once again focused attention on the phenomenon of "homegrown terrorism." As with last year's 7/7 "Underground Bombers," the Heathrow suspects are virtually all British residents, with most UK citizens and many second-generation Pakistani immigrants. And just as in the aftermath of last November's […]

President Bush's cynical efforts to block over the counter sales of the emergency contraceptive Plan B have taken on almost comic proportions in recent days. But kowtowing to the radical right on Plan B has come at a steep price for Mike Leavitt, George Allen and other Republicans in the administration and Congress. The Senate […]

Massachusetts Governor and '08 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney showed his true colors in Iowa this weekend. Effortlessly using the racial slur "tar baby" to describe the Boston Big Dig project, Romney joined White House press secretary Tony Snow on the long list of Republicans who by design or by blunder traffic in the language […]