Those facts? The intimation, through a graphic featuring Jared Loughner, that vitriolic rhetoric from the right-wing is the proximate cause of the Tucson murder spree — and will be the cause of future violence, as well. Radley Balko: It’s a powerful image. I saw it at the gym on a number of muted televisions, and it stuck with me. It’s also complete bullshit. […] This is just an egregious assault

TEA Partiers? That’s so last month. The GOP establishment will take it from here: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republican leaders are launching a new effort Thursday to reach out to Hispanic voters. The Hispanic Leadership Network is meant to help Republicans and conservatives listen to the Hispanic community and, in the process, figure out how to win more of their votes. Hispanic Republican candidates had some big

“EPA vetoes water permit for W.Va. mountaintop mine”: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is making good on a 9-month-old threat and revoking a permit for West Virginia’s largest mountaintop removal mine. The agency said Thursday that Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County would cause irreparable damage to the environment. The nearly 2,300-acre operation would bury 7 miles of streams. EPA says it would likely hurt downstream water

And they’ll decide when a human right is violated, thank you very much. Adam Bitely: Speaking on Wednesday, Bob King the President of the UAW, announced that it would be aggressively moving forward on organizing workers at Honda, BMW, Toyota, and Hyundai, among others. Seeking to come off as a benevolent representative of the typical “disenfranchised employee”, he informed the automakers that he seeks to be a friend and not

Or, put another way: if conservative speech is hate speech, civility itself is (at least partially) defined as the social rejection of conservatism and classical liberalism. It is a call for the very kind of “shunning” Paul Krugman says he desires, albeit couched in the language of reconciliation. Halibut, says I.

…was noted here last night in the comments: […] you’d think Lowry would’ve known exactly how this was going to play out. Obama and his handlers essentially orchestrated a minor Sister Soldjah moment. It was planned this way. We know this because yesterday Obama was on the phone with Sheriff Dufus commending him for his fine (dirty) work, which in castigating the Tea Party (YAY!) and right-wing radio (YAY!) set

Just to recap what we’ve learned today: the phrase “blood libel” is, per a host of “reasonable” people in the media and in public office who have reached an interpretive agreement, objectively anti-Semitic — regardless of the intent behind its usage — when not deployed in a particular pre-vetted context, or by a particular identity group who has claimed ownership of the phrase and have the requisite authenticity to use

Yes. The Tuscon “rampage” did that. Not Democrat and media attempts to tether the tragedy to talk radio and the TEA Party, this generation’s version of the “angry white males” who skulked about being all angry and white in the 90s. — And which angry white males, incidentally, happened to rear their ugly, hate-filled heads — and were ubiquitous objects of media scrutiny and analysis — in the run-up to

Harsanyi: My only contribution to the crumbling discourse, it seems, is believing in the tenets of classical liberalism. That, in and of itself, is a sin. This leaves the person with two choices: revise your viewpoint or shut up. Which, of course, is the point. The always-civil Jacob Weisberg of Slate was more forceful in this regard, claiming that, “At the core of the far right’s culpability is its ongoing

Sarah Palin: “America’s Enduring Strength” from Sarah Palin on Vimeo. I’d have gone with fuck you, you cynical cunts, we’re not going anywhere, so you’d better get used to it, but I can understand how a Christian might go a different rhetorical direction.