The toxic and putrid combination of early 21st century hate/demonization politics and the language of outright violence continues to escalate: Parishioners leaving the Faithful Word Baptist Church in the East Valley Sunday carried not just their Bibles, but guns as well. Pastor Steven Anderson said he and his congregation have received death threats after a controversial sermon earlier this month. “Guns are a great deterrent,” said Anderson. “We haven’t had any violence...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Here’s CBS live streaming video of Ted Kennedy’s funeral: Free TV : Ustream

Even Camelot Needed Health Care by Michael Winship Toward the end of George McGovern’s failed presidential bid in 1972, I was helping advance a bus trip for vice presidential candidate Sargent Shriver. The final weekend of the campaign, his caravan would start in New Hampshire and work its way down the Eastern seaboard, holding rallies along the way and winding up in Washington, DC, just before Election Day. As we spoke with mayors whose cities would be visited, the draw wasn’t...

It’s barely political debate or discussion any more — it’s pure polemics and varying degrees of demonization.

I mean, REALLY. The bottom line is that even with U.S. politics’ steady decline into demonization over the past decades, the bar is being lowered each day. There’s always the “Oh, I didn’t really mean it that way” afterward – but the bar is being lowered in political discourse in public and on the airwaves, seemingly each day. It can be argued that the bulk of people don’t use this kind of rhetoric but the number who don’t see it as irresponsible whether...

It’s soooooo much easier to just sit back and believe the politically-anchored assertions made on talking (and screaming) head radio and cable talk shows, but T.R. Reid, writing in the Washington Post, says it is not quite that simple.

It you’re unhappy with the info and facts presented so far on President Barack Obama being born in the United States, why not start a new debate about…his foreskin? h/T Hinessight

Former Vice President Dick Cheney issued a statement today that is yet one more chapter in the ongoing battle of Cheney versus the Obama Administration — and precision accuracy — again. The issue: the administration’s decision to appoint a Special Prospector to look into specific allegations of torture under the Bush administration. The second issue: the release of CIA info which Cheney is suggesting completely vindicates him…which others say really does not. The third issue:...

A search warrant affidavit filed in Houston says that Michael Jackson had lethal levels of Propofol in him when he died — a development that is bad news to Jackson’s doctor Dr. Conrad Murray. The AP reports that the L.A. Coroner now says Jackson’s death was a homicide:

Does it add up — or not?

Will the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber — an action that sparked howls of outrage in Scotland, among many in Great Britain and particularly in the United States — topple the Scottish government? It appears that it could well lead to a ‘regime change” in Scotland: Scotland’s government faces a fight for its survival as the furor over its decision to free the Lockerbie bomber escalated last night. Opposition parties north of the Border are preparing to hold a confidence...

Is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in political trouble in his homestate of Nevada? A new poll suggests he is: It’s the highest stakes ever for a Nevada election, and former boxer Sen. Harry Reid is on the ropes early. Either Republican Danny Tarkanian or Sue Lowden would knock out Reid in a general election, according to a recent poll of Nevada voters. The results suggest the Democratic Senate majority leader will have to punch hard and often in order to retain his position as the most...

Yes, it is possible: read this which doesn’t rule it out. Also be SURE to read the fourth paragraph: it is totally written from the viewpoint of someone immersed in the talk radio political culture (Hannity is as likeable as Ronald Reagan? Which Ronald Reagan did he SEE I will ask as a then-Democrat who voted for Ronald Reagan). It’s unlikely that many independent voters, moderate Republicans or centrist Democrats or former Ronald Reagan Democrats would agree with those statements. Hannity...

“Hi, my name is Arlen Specter and I’ll be here all week. Tell your friends!” Well not quite…but he DID do a real, laugh getting set at the Improv. Don’t believe it? JUST WATCH THIS: Of course politicians of both parties do comedy all the time. It’s called “campaign promises.” FOOTNOTE: It’s great to see a politico have fun (particularly someone his age) and be so well-received by an audience much younger than him. Expect some news articles and...

By most accounts, Afghanistan’s Thursday election was a model of democracy. But now the Taliban has made good on a threat and cut the fingers off two voters: An Afghan election monitoring group says Taliban insurgents have made good on their threat to chop off ink-stained fingers of voters. Meanwhile, international observers are rendering a tentative verdict on the electoral process, calling Thursday’s balloting generally positive and democratic. Two voters in Afghanistan’s Kandahar...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein (who did superb work when he was on the Los Angeles Times). He analyzes polls showing that Barack Obama and the Democrats are being steadily weakened by the healthcare reform battle, then writes: As the prospects for bipartisan agreement in the Senate fade, the need for Obama to unify Democrats will increase. Right now, though, he is losing Democrats from both wings of the party, even as independents soften and conservatives...

A roundup HERE.

A quickly emerging question on the political scene is now this: are the Democrats going to do it again? Are they really going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? It certainly seems like it’s headed in that direction. Although events — and political takes — in our increasingly hyperactive political culture can suddenly change the calculations, it seems several factors are at work. But the bottom line is this: all talk of a new Democratic majority now seems so outdated..so.yesterday…as...

Former Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge in an upcoming book will make an allegation that seemingly will confirm to many what Bush administration critics have long suspected: the administration’s attempts to raise color terrorism alerts smelled political to him. The New York Times reports: Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, asserts in a new book that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national threat level just before the 2004 election...

The only convicted bomber in the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing which snuffed out the lives of 243 passengers and 16 crew — and killed 11 people on the ground — has been released in Scotland on compassionate grounds since he is terminally ill. The bombing was a massive tragedy and a harbinger of the new Age of the Terrorist that was to come — and there are already signs that the release will be highly controversial. CNN: The only man convicted over the Lockerbie bombing is to...

Rep. Barney Frank batted down a heath care reform protester who not only asked him a question suggesting he supported a Nazi policy (Barack Obama’s healthcare reform) but also held a Hitler-like doctored photo of Obama. And Frank did what a politician needed to do: confront this toxicity of polemics head on: The Los Angeles Times’ Tim Rutten deals with the issue of the legends about Obama and demonization in this must-read column. But here are some key paragraphs at the end: It would...

So what’s the endgame in Iraq? Skillful foreign policy decision makers will think through the various scenarios and be ready for them. George Friedman, in a Stratfor Intelligence Report article on RealClearWorld looks at some of them. And his key conclusion: whatever happens, Iran must be factored into it. Here’s just a small part of the piece, the ending: The American strategy in this matter has been primarily tactical. Wanting to leave, it has promised everyone everything. That is not...

In the morass of new and old media, a big media story has been breaking — or, rather, a story that would have once been a big media story. It’s not as big as it once would have been — and isn’t being played up the way it would have been even 5 years ago — because the subject of this story has gone from being a powerful media giant to more of a weakening relic from bygone big media glory days. Readers’ Digest, an institution that carved a unique and venerable niche...

Conservative columnist and former CNN “Crossfire” creator and host Robert Novak who had the nickname “The Prince of Darkness,” has died of cancer at age 78. Novak’s columns were sometimes controversial, but one fact could not be denied: he was an old-school journalism guy who did his homework and had sources and didn’t just do columns just containing his own opinions. His conservatism was his world view prism but when you read a Novak column you knew he had done...