Republican leaders are shocked--shocked!--to find out that their 2016 presidential nominee launched a vicious campaign targeting Judge Gonzalo Curiel as "a Mexican" who is "a hater of Donald Trump." In response to Trump's repeated, racist attacks against the presiding judge in the Trump University fraud case, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could muster only, "I'm […]

So the debasement of the Party of Lincoln has come to this. While short-fingered Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump sought to reassure Americans by declaring "I guarantee there's no problem" with his schlong, his nearest GOP rival Ted Cruz (R-TX) nevertheless told all who would listen that "I have no desire to copulate with him." […]

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) used to sit on the Texas Supreme Court. But the second-ranking Republican in the Senate seems much more comfortable in his current role as Majority Whip. And he once again showed on Tuesday, Cornyn has no problem cracking the whip at federal judges and judicial nominees provided, of course, they were […]

With the 2016 election season now well underway, now is a good time to test your knowledge of modern presidential history. Which of the following events do you remember? (a) In fall 2002, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi invited French President Jacques Chirac to address a joint session of Congress to warn the American people against […]

In the immediate aftermath of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell (R-KY) unveiled another unprecedented tactic in their once-unimaginable campaign of obstructionism. The GOP's immaculate rejection of any Court nominee in the final year of Obama's presidency isn't just belied by Supreme Court history. As it turns […]

Within the next six months, the United States Supreme Court may well overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling which recognized a woman's right to choose an abortion. In Whole Woman's Health v. Cole, the Court will decide whether the state of Texas has placed an "undue burden" on women's access to abortion services by […]

Former neurosurgeon-turned-2016 GOP White House hopeful Ben Carson raised some eyebrows last week with his declaration that gun control enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler and the annihilation of European Jewry in the Holocaust. But no one who has followed "the biggest fan of Nazi metaphors in politics" should have been surprised by Carson's grotesque […]

Of all of the Republicans' manufactured controversies during the Obama presidency, one less-remembered episode may be the most telling of all. Unable to prevent three-fifths of the Senate from voting to confirm Elena Kagan as the newest Supreme Court Justice, Republican in May 2010 denounced Obama's nominee for declaring that the Founding Fathers' three-fifths of […]

As the Confederate flag is coming down, calls for states to nullify federal laws are going up. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton advised county clerks, magistrates and justices of the peace they may opt-out of performing same-sex marriages the United States Supreme Court legalized nationwide on Friday. As it turns out, Paxton isn't just […]

From its inception, America's history has often been the product of the changing balance between compelling but conflicting national ideals. The federal versus the state, "rugged individualism" versus collective action for the public good, the separation of church and state, and isolationism versus crusading globalism are just some of the pendulum swings that have defined--and […]