Yes, there are bigots in both parties — and some fully deserve the “awards” they receive. P.S. There is NO excuse or justification for this kind of bigotry.

So. Today is the anniversary of a voice silenced by hatred. Martin Luther King was assassinated this day 44 years ago. Martin King, denounced hate. I love Martin. Mainly because he left in his Letter from Birmingham Jail the four points to overturn injustice time and again… and the foremost was “self-purify” ourselves before we go making demands. THis– self purification before demands–...

Today marks the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968, even as a racial uproar does violence to his memory. The gulf between reactions to his death then, universal public grief, and that of Trayvon Martin tells much about how America has changed in those years. Even when still alive, Dr. King’s preaching of peaceful protest was being challenged by angrier voices of Black Power and Black Panthers. Yet, in his...

GOP presidential candidate Santorum made the wrong kind of headlines a few weeks ago when he spouted the wrong kind of information on euthanasia in the Netherlands. Among the claims he made were these: That 10 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands are due to euthanasia. That half of those deaths — or five percent of all deaths in the Netherlands — are people who are euthanized involuntarily. Santorum...

First, Rick Santorum displayed his ignorance and managed to insult an entire country when falsely claiming that in the Netherlands euthanasia makes up ten percent of all deaths, and that forced euthanasia accounts for five percent of all deaths there. Santorum also said that people are euthanized involuntarily because they are old or sick and further claimed that elderly people in the Netherlands don’t...

Updated below. Oh My Gosh! There’s been a HOSTILE TAKEOVER of the GOP. So imagine the shock when conservative justices repeatedly spouted views closely resembling the tweets and talking points issued by organizations of the sort funded by the Koch brothers. Don’t take it from me. Charles Fried, solicitor general for Ronald Reagan, told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein that it was absurd for conservatives...

Once in a while there is a song in American musical theater that “has it all.” And it’s not easy getting it all. A song in a musical can have great melody, but trite lyrics. Or the lyrics can be good but the melody is poor or thin (my main complaint with the recent works of the highly popular Stephen Sondheim). Or the lyrics and the melody are great but performance is weak or perfunctory. “I...

Mr. Richey Rich plays cowboy on his blog and on NPR I didn’t have to wait long. On Wednesday, I wrote (Putting the ‘cad’ in and taking the ‘bra’ off of ‘Abracadabra’): Hocus pocus: Abracadabra. And another “profile” of a shadowy post-Citizens United figure [Bill Maher] who’s ponied up $1 million is completed. I can’t hardly wait for that there Foster Friess piece [on National Public...

First of all, it’s a metaphor. Whether you believe in an actual devil or a metaphorical one is a matter of complete indifference to this blog. Focus, people. The breaking news is that Keith Olbermann has been fired from Current TV. Since details are sketchy, everybody already knows everything that there is to know about it (particularly and predictably, the Righties, who are crowing and gibbering at their...

How extreme have Republican Party members become? For Switzerland’s News, columnist Patrik Etschmayer writes that the ongoing Republican narrative about women, contraception and abortion sounds a lot like the way farmers talk about their livestock. For the News, Patrik Etschmayer writes in small part: A bill that was debated in the Georgia Assembly is called HB 954, and its purpose is to prohibit women...

The Democrats lately have been declaring that Republicans are waging a “War On Women.” Kathleen McKinley notes that this meme appears to have backfired badly against Democrats. She notes that Obama’s poll numbers have only gone down sharply ever since the so-called “War On Women” began. She further notes: There is no way to know all the reasons women jumped off the Obama wagon,...

At the 11th hour, Republican leadership reached a compromise on Georgia’s controversial “fetal pain” bill. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, HB954, appeared to be derailed after the Senate “practically gutted” the bill on Monday. But, like the zombies in The Night of the Living Dead, the bill came back to life and “passed with just minutes remaining in the 2012...

Are reports that Iranian influence in Iraq is growing by the day, true? According to columnist Abdullah al-Etabi of Iraq’s Sotal Iraq, the Iraqi people find the assertions of Iranian President Ahmadinejad that the two countries have a ‘common enemy’ offensive, and he painstakingly outlines why Iran and Iraq do not share a common enemy, and the many ways in which the interests and values of...

The murky story about the American kidnapped by an Iraqi militia loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtad al-Sadr has yet to breath its last breath. Is Washington too embarrassed to admit that the man taken captive last year and released last week by The Promised Day Brigade, Randy Michael Hultz, is an American soldier? According to this news item from Iraq’s Sotal Iraq, the Brigade, an armed wing of the Sadrist...

UPDATE III: The same newspaper that was attacked by Senator Santorum — through one of its reporters — says this morning that “taking heed of criticism, Santorum tones down attacks.” Meet a “more subdued Santorum” here. Will his new-found mellowness be too little, too late? UPDATE II: And one more nail in the coffin: According to the WaPo, “U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), considered...

I receive several opportunities a month to do book reviews.  I turn most of them down in spite of the fact it means I won’t get a free book.  I almost decided against reviewing We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran but eventually agreed.  After reading the first few pages I knew I had made the right decision. We Heard The Heavens Then by Aria Minu-Sepher is the story of the last few years of...

UPDATE II: See the New York Times version of the sparks flying here UPDATE I: Apparently the spark is not gone — at least not with Santorum. Santorum generated quite a few sparks on Sunday in a mini-confrontation with New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleni. When asked by Zeleni, “You said Mitt Romney is the worst Republican in the country. Is that true?” a sparkly Santorum lashed back “Stop...

A sad, troubling ending from story from El Cajon, CA (near where I live). A Muslim woman found beatened nearly to death drowned in her own blood with a note saying: “Go back to your own country.” Read the details via AP and then watch the wrenching video of her daughter’s message — which is worth a “ditto.” The sad ending: A woman from Iraq who was found beaten next to...

Buoyed by his victory in Puerto Rico, attributed to the Senator’s penchant for standing by his principles and telling it like it isn’t, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum intends to continue to speak his convictions from his heart, from his gut and from his foot-in-mouth. Since he has Louisiana all sewn up, there is really no need to alienate motivate the voters there. Nevertheless, in the final...

Has the scientific method lost all relevance to conservative Republicans in America? The question is not new. But now, according to this editorial from Switzerland’s News, a scientific study conducted by researchers at Yale University shows that not only doesn’t the U.S. right put much stock in what is known as ‘scientific fact,’ but more educated Republicans are just as resistant to...