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Conservatives’ full-on meltdown

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:27:00 +0000

The ugly, funny-if-it-wasn't-scary truth about our right wing overlords keeps emerging as 2012 comes to a close. Last week we learned that House Speaker John Boehner is a pathetic hostage to the Tea Party crazies in his caucus, while the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre shared his delusions at a post-Newtown press conference where he memorably intoned: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" – ignoring the fact that gun "enthusiast" Nancy Lanza was murdered by her own guns, which then slaughtered 20 first-graders and six educator-heroes, plus her disturbed and ultimately suicidal son Adam.

Then over the weekend we discovered that the late Andrew Breitbart's empire of hate is imploding, and the ridiculous Dana Loesch is trying to use the lifeboat of labor law to flee the ship of bullies she once helmed.

The right’s stunning meltdown

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:42:00 +0000

Just when it seemed the meltdown on the right couldn't get any more spectacular, after House Speaker John Boehner's Plan B humiliation Thursday night, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre self-destructed Friday morning. His bizarre self-serving tirade blamed everything but guns for the Sandy Hook massacre last week. He proposed placing an armed police officer in every school.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he pronounced fatuously.

As usual for the NRA, the solution to gun violence is more guns. But finally, Americans are seeing that for the destructive illogic that it is. LaPierre is truly one of the bad guys. We don't need guns to fight him, though, we just need votes. And we need the politicians elected with our votes to stand up for us.

Last June, President Obama told a roomful of donors that if he were to be reelected, "the fever may break" and the Republican Party might return to its common-sense roots. It won't be that easy. Obama and the Democrats can't passively wait for relief from the sickness that claimed the GOP, even though it may seem that the party is self-destructing on its own. They are going to have to fight.

If ballots were bullets

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:00:00 +0000

What if politicians began enacting and enforcing a spate of laws across the country that prevented millions of law-abiding citizens from buying guns in order to stop criminals from getting their hands on weapons? Would Second Amendment advocates remain silent?

That’s what is happening in America in 2012 -- except, instead of keeping millions of Americans from exercising their right to bear arms, Republican legislators, governors and secretaries of state are trying to stop millions of Americans from exercising their right to vote. Yet those who would never tolerate any curtailment of gun rights have raised nary a peep about this assault on voting rights.

Under the excuse of preventing “voter fraud,” Republican state officials are vigorously pushing voter ID laws that will make it harder -- and in some cases, virtually impossible -- for certain citizens to vote. These laws -- which require voters to show a state-issued photo ID that many Americans don’t have and will have great difficulty obtaining -- could bar 3.2 million eligible and legally registered voters from voting in the next election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan think tank.