Sign #45,396 America has a sick political system: Christine O’Donnell, one of the most embarrassing Senate candidates in recent memory, has her own political action committee, ChristinePAC. She just won’t go away. And — gasp! — she’s targeting liberals: O’Donnell, who wrote that her losing campaign sent “shockwaves” throughout the nation, said in an e-mail to supporters Tuesday that her group will look into the groups “funded with one million...

It’s like the Arizona shooting, and the aftermath with all the talk of violent political rhetoric, never happened: State Sen. Scott Beason said he’s been flooded with phone calls since saying at the end of comments on illegal immigration Saturday that Republicans need to “empty the clip, and do what has to be done.” Beason said he was not urging violence against immigrants, but using an analogy. “I did say that but it was completely taken out of context,” said...

(By the way, this is part of the ongoing “Elephant Dung” series over at my place. If you’re curious, and like to read about Republicans attacking each other, check it out.) The right has had a hard time figuring out where to stand on the situation in Egypt. Or, rather, it has had a hard time coming up with a unified position, simply because there isn’t one, what with some conservatives backing Mubarak (and U.S.-friendly dictatorships generally), some of them because they support...

With a popular, pro-democratic uprising in full swing, and with their economy facing disaster, Egyptians took to the streets in huge numbers yesterday in Cairo. In a country ruled for decades by a brutal authoritarian tyrant, it was simply extraordinary. The outcome of the uprising has been unclear, but change seemingly was at hand. And then it came. With the writing on the wall, President Hosni Mubarak, who has lost both popular and military support, finally announced that he would not stand for...

Right-wing Republican Rep. Mike Pence, trickle-down conservative, theocrat, Tea Party fave, and one of the GOP’s most partisan leaders in the House, announced last night — to the sort of triumphal fanfare usually reserved for ticker-taped astronauts (no, not really) — that he will not (repeat: not) be running for president in 2012 and may instead run for governor of Indiana: Pence’s decision not to seek national office in favor of a likely run for governor of Indiana is a...

I haven’t yet commented on Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, nor on the Republican response, but, then, what more is there to say? TNR’s John Judis thinks it was President Obama’s best speech as president. I do not agree, though I’m hard-pressed to name a better one. Not because I thought his SOTU was all that great but because he hasn’t exactly given many memorable speeches as president. Content-wise, I suppose a lot depends on what you think of Obama’s...

So you think Jared Lee Loughner is just some crazy dude who acted purely out of his own derangement, and that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence had nothing at all to do with it? I think that’s ridiculous, but, regardless, what’s clear is that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence are very real and very dangerous. And however much that socio-political context may have influenced Loughner, it is certainly influencing others, driving them...

Politico: Sarah Palin reached out to Glenn Beck over the weekend, and Beck read some of their email exchange on his radio show this morning. “Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are felling the same heat, if not much more on this,” Beck wrote. Beck expressed concern about Palin’s safety, and urged her to hire the same Los Angeles-based security firm that he uses. The rhetoric of both Beck and Palin has been cited by both liberals and some of the mainstream...

In the wake of Saturday’s deadly shooting in Arizona, the assassination attempt on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, with fingers being pointed (justifiably, I think) at the likes of Sarah Palin (and the Tea Party, as well as much of the Republican Party), much of the talk today is about political speech: Do Palin and others deserve any of the blame for what happened yesterday? More broadly, what is appropriate and what isn’t? At Slate, Jack Shafer defends “inflammatory rhetoric...

Think Progress: Rep. Allen West (R-FL), a newly-elected member who has loudly scapegoated Muslims and campaigned on a promise to oppose religious diversity, appeared on Frank Gaffney’s radio program last week. Gaffney, who routinely says that Obama is both a secret Muslim and a member of the “Muslim Brotherhood,” asked West about how the new Republican Congress plans to “take on Sharia as the enemy threat doctrine?” West said that, although he has not spoken with all...

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a genuine American classic and one of the greatest works in the history of literature, American or otherwise, is being re-released in a new, cleansed version that takes out the words “nigger,” as well as “Injun,” the one-word, over-hyped source of controversy that has seen the book, as Publishers Weekly puts it, “disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned...

As HuffPo’s Amanda Terkel is reporting, right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave an interview recently during which he said that the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination against women and gays: In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don’t think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we’ve gone off in error...

Really, Eric Cantor? One of the messages voters sent in the midterm elections was that NPR should be defunded? Other than the fact that federal funding of NPR is relatively minuscule (barely a drop in the budgetary bucket), this is clearly a partisan move. Republicans don’t like NPR, which is for the most part a news organization that aims at objectivity and mature discourse (and hence which doesn’t simply regurgitate Republican talking points and narratives), and, of course, they’re...

I’m not a big fan of Steny Hoyer, quasi-leader of the Blue Dogs, and I’d prefer to see someone else back up Nancy Pelosi as minority whip, but Pelosi’s move to keep Hoyer in the #2 spot and make James Clyburn, his chief rival for minority whip, “assistant leader” is simply brilliant. It ensures peace, albeit tenuous, and continuity. And while there’s something to be said for fresh blood after a big electoral loss, Pelosi did a fine job as Speaker, is poised to...

There’s a movement afoot to give Nancy Pelosi the boot, to remove her as Democratic leader in the House. Even the Times has gotten in on the action, editorializing (somewhat persuasively): Nancy Pelosi has been an extremely effective speaker of the House for four years, shepherding hundreds of important bills toward passage and withstanding solid Republican opposition. Her work in passing health care reform and strong ethics oversight achieved what many thought was legislatively impossible....

As he said on 60 Minutes Sunday night: I think first and foremost, [the election] was a referendum on the economy. And the party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming and where a lot of folks are still hurting. The bad economy doesn’t fully explain what happened, of course. There were many other factors in play. I’m sure I don’t have to rehash them here. But it was the economy that fueled the anti-incumbent sentiment that swept much of the country...

I just wanted to let you all know that I and my team of bloggers over at The Reaction are live-blogging tonight’s election results/coverage. We’ll be at it until the early-morning hours with frequent updates, sometimes every couple of minutes. Apocalypse now? Live-blogging the 2010 midterm elections We all lean Democratic, and tonight looks to be a fairly miserable night, but do stop by (and keep checking back) if you’re interested — and feel free to join in by adding your...

For what it’s worth, I’ll offer my own predictions when I start live-blogging the election returns at my place this evening, but, for now, here’s a taste of where things stand: – Prognosticator (sometimes extraordinaire) Charlie Cook is predicting “a Democratic net loss of 50 to 60 seats, with higher losses possible,” far more than the 39 needed to take control. In the Senate, Republicans will pick up 6-8 seats, with Democrats now doing better in California (Boxer),...

There was much ado yesterday about reports that Bill Clinton had tried to get Democrat Kendrick Meek to withdraw from the Florida Senate race and throw his support behind Republican-turned-independent Charlie Crist in an effort to beat Republican Marco Rubio. Crist is even saying that he talked to Meek and “several people” at the White House about it. Clinton has confirmed that he did urge Meek to withdraw. What is not clear, though, is whether Meek did in fact agree to drop out, twice,...

Ken Buck, the Colorado Republican who thinks that gays are like alcoholics, said last year that he objected to a fundamental principle of American constitutional democracy: I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution. Now, he rightly noted that the Constitution bars “a religion that’s sanctioned by the government,” but, in his view, that “doesn’t mean that we need to have a separation between government...

Contra Frank Rich (in an otherwise good column) and others, FDL’s Blue Texan makes a great point about the Teabaggers (one that many of us have made but that the media are generally ignoring, as it contradicts their narrative). It’s not all about the economy, stupid: Anyone who thinks the Teabaggers’ unhinged “anger and bitterness” will subside in the face of an improving economy really needs to take a closer look at objective polling on the Teabaggers and review the...

Angle continues to outdo herself. The Las Vegas Sun‘s Jon Ralston has the latest — and it’s a doozy of a whopper: If this isn’t Sharron Angle, the great revisionist historian, in a nutshell, I’m not sure what is. In the video clip at right [ed. note: click on the link above to see the clip], you not only can see the GOP U.S. Senate nominee telling a group of Hispanic children at Rancho High School that images of Latinos in her ad that are clearly Latinos may not be....

Alaska blogger Jeanne “AKMuckraker” Devon has obtained “internal emails” that, in her view, “provide the most conclusive evidence to date that Palin will be running for president.” Specifically, a September e-mail from Todd Palin to Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford, and Palin and Miller attorney Thomas Van Flein states that Sarah’s earlier endorsement of Miller for Republican nominee (over incumbent Lisa Murkowski) shouldn’t...

Yes, believe it or not, World War I is finally about to come to an end — even though there’s already been a II and neocons are angling for a III. From Britain’s Telegraph: The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies. The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another. Germany...

Yes, they’d be bad, really bad, for the economy if extended. Ezra Klein: CBO Director Doug Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee [yesterday] and dropped something of a bombshell. Extending the Bush tax cuts, he said, will “probably reduce income relative to what would otherwise occur in 2020.” The reason is simple: Debt. Elmendorf doesn’t deny that tax cuts stimulate the economy. But they don’t stimulate it that much, he says, and over the long run,...