While Western alarmists often depict Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as a shadowy organization with terrorist ties, the Brotherhood’s ideology actually has more in common with America’s Republican Party than with al-Qaida. Few Americans know it but the Brotherhood is a free-market party led by wealthy businessmen whose economic agenda embraces privatization and foreign investment while spurning labor unions and the redistribution of wealth.

A Republican Party that prides itself on order is looking chaotic. That unsettling observation comes after seeing another GOP Presidential frontrunner fall from grace, as Rick Perry plummets from 41% support among primary voters a month ago to 18% in this past weekend’s IBOPE Zogby interactive survey.

That is jaw-droppingly unbelievable. I'd almost think this was a spoof, but no, it's very real:

Of course, a 2012 presidential run wouldn't be Cain's first foray into politics. Cain is closely involved with Tea Party organizations and co-signed a letter with prominent right wing leaders asking the GOP leadership make "restoring traditional moral values" a key part of their agenda

ROVE: Sarah Palin -- much different, which is: 'I'm gonna conduct a bus tour, where I go not to -- ' I mean, she's about ready, sometime in the next couple of weeks, to make her first visit to New Hampshire in over two years. That's, that's really unusual. And then you've got the situation of -- you know, she's going to Antietam and Gettysburg and to Philadelphia. And I'll bet you a dime to a dollar that those visits to those areas are not preceded by courtesy phone calls to the local Republican Party chairmen and a request that they generate volunteers. She's just gonna announce her schedule and show up.

What the GOP really needs is some new energy, and we've got just the people. Here's who the Republicans should actually be convincing to take a shot at the White House: George P. Bush ~~~ Strengths: People named "George Bush" generally tend to be president.

"Last week, the Social Security trustees issued a report saying Social Security and Medicare are not sustainable under their current structure." ~~~
when we had a functioning press corps instead of a cocktail-weenie-wagging press corpse; back when we had real reporters doing actual journalism instead of the steno-pool full of faithful scribes who can be counted on to regurgitate right-wing talking points unchallenged; back then, that sort of nonsense would have been a bit in the teeth of the reporter, who would have done his or her homework ahead of time, and McConnell would have been hammered mercilessly with the fact that the trustees said no such thing.

... Sarah Palin -- riding on the wings of her own narcissistic religious delusion -- would of course be running for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2012. And now, it appears, the confirmation is getting closer:

Ms. Palin has reshuffled her staff, rehiring two aides who have helped plan her political events. And she is expected to resume a schedule of public appearances soon — perhaps as early as this weekend

Surveying the wreckage in Joplin, Mo., it seems flat-out nuts to think that cutting financial corners on weather satellites would be a smart move for Congress. But all year long, House Republicans have been doing precisely that, slashing away at the funding requested by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration to replace satellites that are rapidly approaching the end of their working lifespan

... in Campaign 1980 that the powerful coalition of neoconservatives, the Christian Right and the Republican establishment took shape. Over the ensuing three decades, that coalition has reshaped U.S. politics.

A key touchstone of that coalition has been granting Israel almost carte blanche to stall a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians while expanding settlements on the West Bank to "change the facts on the ground."

White House, Rep. Michele Bachmann says she is spending time reading books about presidential campaigns -- particularly ones that explore the darker side of campaigns.

... a working-class bigot named Archie Bunker, who sang it at the top of the show with his wife Edith. Archie's nostalgia for pre-1960s America informed much of the show, which satirized small-minded conservativism, paranoid patriotism, contempt for youth culture, and racism.

There's being provocative, and then there's getting down on your knees and absolutely begging for a nasty backlash. Business journalist and author Roger Lowenstein aims for the latter in a long piece for Bloomberg BusinessWeek exploring the degree of criminal culpability

d also guess that believing in evolution is not particularly controversial among New Jersey Republicans, who are not exactly Kansas Republicans.

So why hedge? Well, someday -- maybe someday soon -- he may want the support of Kansas Republicans. And sometimes, successful Republican politicians begin debasing themselves to win the votes of far-right rubes well before they begin forming exploratory committees.

WARNING: Reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" will disturb your sleep and haunt your waking hours. If you're a real American, it will make you want to scream — and do something to put "the bad guys" in their place. Everyone — especially Milton-Friedman, free-market lovers like Kingsley Guy — should read "Shock."

When I listen to my constituents about the challenges they face, skyrocketing cost of gasoline is at the top of the list. Prices at the pump have nearly doubled since President Obama took office, making everyday life like driving to work, buying groceries, picking up kids at school and visiting family more expensive.

"Obama has followed Mohammed, not the religious leader, but the boxer. President Obama has pulled off the perfect Mohammed Ali rope-a-dope," Tancredo said in a release Friday underlining his alleged prescience on the birther conspiracy as a way to pitch his own radio show.

[The GOP] has long claimed that evolution is a myth believed in only by whiny liberals – and it turns out it was on to something. Every six months, the party venerates a new hero, and each time it is somebody further back on the evolutionary scale.

However, the Republican Party is now dominated by ideologues who deny the threat of polluting our climate, even when faced with direct evidence of what the climate system can do to the people they are sworn to protect.

In an episode early in Donald Trump's career, his New York real estate company was sued by the federal government for discriminating against potential black renters. After a lengthy legal battle, it ultimately agreed to wide-ranging steps to offer rentals to nonwhites.

The little-remembered case provides crucial context for the current discussion centering on Trump and race.

Increasingly, one of our two great political parties appears to be governed by what Charles P. Pierce calls the "Three Great Premises" of talk radio: "First Great Premise: Any theory is valid if it moves units ... Second Great Premise: Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough ... Third Great Premise: Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it."

Then there are the rest: Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Roy Moore, Buddy Roemer, Jon Huntsman and maybe even Sarah Palin. None of them has a reasonable chance of winning the nomination, and just about all of them would be disastrous general election candidates for the party. [Maybe not Roemer and Huntsman]

First, the U.S. military re-invade the Middle East and commandeer control of Iraq's oil fields. As Trump sees it, the U.S. earned the right to annex Iraq's abundant reserves of crude oil by investing about $1.5 trillion in ousting Saddam Hussein.

Nobody, especially not neoconservatives who have been loudly championing the cause of freedom in the Arab world, has anything against Daniels's heritage. Nor, despite the fervent efforts of some to promote the myth that there has been a post 9-11 backlash against Muslims in this country, do many other Americans care about his origins.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Johnson endorsed the nullification movement — a radical view pushed by right-wing pseudo-historian Thomas Woods that states can invalidate federal laws which they don't like — calling it "terrific."

"Then there is Trump," he continued. "Trump is Al Sharpton of the Republican Party - provocateur and clown, unserious. I think he's going to harm the party if he runs for the same reason Sharpton harmed the Democrats. I can now see all the mail coming in - address it to me, not to Bret. He is not responsibility - which means in the debate he will be up there I think he will run, not just a trial run. He'll be up in the debate, and like Sharpton he will monopolize discussion and draw it away on issues that are irrelevant like Obama's birth and that can only hurt the party."

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is the sort of sober, smart governor that makes a brilliant presidential candidate in the minds of party elites, but, unfortunately, actual "voters" do not care for him. Especially Republican voters, who, last I checked, were torn between Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Daniels isn't going anywhere in a Republican primary race. Especially now that he's accepted an award from some Arabs.

The Texas State Data Center projects that Latinos will become the majority in the state over the next decade. ... The dramatic demographic transformation has sparked a redistricting war in Texas that has culminated in a lawsuit brought against Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX)

Mr. Trump himself has a well-known habit of writing love-notes to media outlets that cover him. We've yet to be lucky enough to receive one -- I'm not sure he knows how to use the Internet -- but many of his fans took it upon themselves to defend him.

"A belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves. And so we've built a strong military to keep us secure, and public schools and universities to educate our citizens. We've laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce. We've supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions, and led to countless new jobs and entire industries. Each of us has benefited from these investments, and we are a more prosperous country as a result."

... a spate of negotiation advice from the liberal punditocracy advising the President how he can better defend progressive policy aims -- as though the Obama White House deeply wishes for different results but just can't figure out how to achieve them. Jon Chait, Josh Marshall, and Matt Yglesias all insist that the President is "losing" on these battles because of bad negotiating strategy, and will continue to lose unless it improves. Ezra Klein says "it makes absolutely no sense" that Democrats didn't just raise the debt ceiling in December,

A new CNN poll is awful for supposed 2012 front-runner Mitt Romney. He's gone from a narrow lead over all of his rivals for the Republican nomination to an embarrassing tie for fourth place. He's dropped 6 points in a year.

This battle between the conservative pragmatists and hardliners was on full display Saturday as anti-Sharia activist Frank Gaffney and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist hurled charges against one another at a conservative conference in Lynchburg, Virginia.

America's recession would have produced a good deal more misery if not for the social safety net, no matter how much Ryan and his comrades bemoan its existence. ~~~ The Republican Party has been chasing a ghost for more than 20 years, ever since Ronald Reagan doubled the deficit and seared simple words into the simple American mind.

... here we go with the same old "up is down, tax cuts create jobs, let's destroy our social safety nets in order to save them and let's send the have-mores some more money because god knows they all aren't doing well enough already" business. Oh yeah -- and the country is supposedly broke, unless you look at the hordes of cash the upper 1 percent are holding onto and not being taxed on. Ryan wants us all to be scared to death about this "crushing debt" we're facing, but it's funny he didn't seem to have those same concerns when Bush was breaking the bank.

More imposing (if less charming) than Roosevelt's Hudson River home and library, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in Palo Alto is Hyde Park's physical, political and spiritual antipode.

In a party-line vote, the House slaughtered dozens of sacred cows. The budget bill makes huge cuts to public education, nursing homes and health care for the poor. It slashes financing for highways, prisons and state parks. It eliminates full-day preschool, cuts teacher incentive pay and reduces scholarships for college students by two-thirds.

Muller says of surface temperature dataset, "Some of the most worrisome biases are less serious than I had thought." That's because he doesn't read the scientific literature!

... giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don't want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they've been raped or there's incest.

Dr. David Cull is a vascular surgeon in Greenville, South Carolina – home of none other than Tea Party Supreme Leader, Senator Jim DeMint. ~~~ Dr. Cull had a great idea. But to understand just how clever the idea is, allow me to briefly walk you through the treatment process when someone has to rely on dialysis to deal with failing kidneys–and the huge cost to Medicare that results.

Among other things, the probes are examining funding of a political-action committee that paid for attack ads against Sheriff Joe Arpaio's political opponent; the filing of criminal charges against county Supervisor Don Stapley even though the statute of limitations had already run out; the spending of restricted jail-enhancement funds; and a land deal reportedly to build a sheriff's substation.

She pointed to the individual mandate included in the administration's healthcare package, as well as recent regulations that encourage the use of certain types of ligh bulbs over others.

"I introduce the Lightbulb Freedom of Choice Act," Bachmann said. "I think Iowans are to be trusted on the choice of their lightbulbs, they're really smart people."

"An embarrassment of riches for Minnesota," is how Republican State Party Chairman Tony Sutton describes this prospect. But plain embarrassment is likely to become the dominant emotion when the rightward gallop of the Minnesota GOP starts to come under national scrutiny.

Whatever the case, the younger Paul said it is likely that either he or his father will seek the Republican presidential nomination.

Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, the director of the Joint Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the U.S. military is working to transition the lead of Operation Odyssey Dawn to the coalition "as early as this weekend."

This is more in the spirit of partypooping than of celebration. But on the first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, one of the law's most dogged defenders, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), admitted he thinks the Supreme Court will strike down the individual mandate. It's not that he thinks the mandate is unconstitutional, but that the court has become so partisan, that its conservative justices will rule against President Obama in a 5-4 decision.

President Obama may not be willing to endure the ideological battle that would result from nominating Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer protection agency, a top Democrat said Monday.

Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.), who co-authored the law creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said that if she were nominated, Warren might not be confirmed to head the agency. While Frank argued that's a fight worth having, he cautioned that the president might disagree.

GOP job creation? Marry your mistress, creating job vacancy, and fill it. Progress!

As he pointed out in his campaign ad, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Randy Hopper really does know how to create jobs. His new girlfriend (he's 45, she's 26) just got a new job working for the state -- and it pays $11,000 more than the last person who filled it.

The liberal class is discovering what happens when you tolerate the intolerant. Let hate speech pollute the airways. Let corporations buy up your courts and state and federal legislative bodies. Let the Christian religion be manipulated by charlatans to demonize Muslims, gays and intellectuals, discredit science and become a source of personal enrichment. Let unions wither under corporate assault. Let social services and public education be stripped of funding. Let Wall Street loot the national treasury with impunity. Let sleazy con artists use lies and deception to carry out unethical sting operations on tottering liberal institutions, and you roll out the welcome mat for fascism

Kristol attacked Barbour in a Weekly Standard post titled, "T-Paw v. Hee-Haw": ~~~ Barbour's comments, at a GOP dinner in Iowa, were ... comments—and certainly didn't constitute any kind of serious presentation of a foreign policy agenda ...

He also said that the U.S. should consider reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan. "I think we need to look at that," he said when asked if the U.S. should scale back its presence. ... "What is our mission?" Barbour said. "How many Al Qaeda are in Afghanistan. ... Is that a 100,000-man Army mission?"

Gingrich, of course, is just one of many likely Republican candidates seeking to curry favor with a Republican Party base that is filled with religious conservatives -- often by voicing loud support for "traditional marriage."

Only four months ago the consensus among the political establishment was that of a right-wing resurgence in U.S. politics. After relegating the Republican Party into the political wilderness in 2008, the Democratic Party managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, conceding a midterm electoral sweep to the GOP which now had the wind of the tea party "movement" at its back.

Conservative activist James O'Keefe has released a video purporting to show an NPR executive making inflammatory comments to two people posing as members of a "Muslim Brotherhood front group." As has been the case in the past, conservative media outlets and blogs are hyping O'Keefe's video.

It's not clear why anyone would believe anything that O'Keefe says about what is seen in the video.

The website for MEAC [Muslim Education Action Center] read a lot like a right-wing cartoon version of radical Islam -- so perhaps it's not surprising that a few notoriously anti-Muslim bloggers were apparently taken in by the hoax website. (It's not clear that the NPR officials ever saw the site.)

Are we finally seeing average Americans stand up and demand a fair shake in an economy now grotesquely tilted toward the wealthy and the privileged? Are Americans beginning to awake to the fact that our economy now delivers a larger share of total income to the very top than at any time in living memory? That big corporations are making more money and creating more jobs abroad than in the United States?

The Republican Presidential Forum took place in a church and was sponsored by the Iowa chapter of the Faith and Freedom Foundation, an organization that descends from the Christian Coalition, the Pat Robertson-founded group that attained prominence in the early 1990s under Ralph Reed

GINGRICH: Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. … It's also an ideological problem. The United States doesn't need anybody's permission. We don't need to have NATO, who frankly, won't bring much to the fight. We don't need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we're intervening. And we don't have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.

... even as she released statements concerning President Obama's budget, and freedom of choice in light bulbs.

"She does not support gay marriage," said Doug Sachtleben, Ms. Bachmann's spokesman.

"But I do know that right now she is particularly concerned about defunding Obamacare, this whole budget process," he said. "Those are the time-pressing issues for her."

"Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here."

Given the level of wackiness that seems to have afflicted this third planet from the sun, Jack Nicholson's immortal line in the movie "As Good as It Gets"" (written by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks), should become our worldwide slogan. Sure, it's always a cuckoo fest here on Earth, but this week it seems the out-of-control dial has been cranked up way beyond 11.

Instead of leading the way on serious entitlement reforms and cutting the military budget, the Mike Pences of the party are taking giant steps backward by suggesting we cut funds to Planned Parenthood. He and others believe that if we defund the organization, which helps counsel woman about their health and prevent unintended pregnancies, we could limit its ability to use other non-government money for abortions. (It is prohibited from using any direct federal funds.)

What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American.

TRAVIS: She's an anti-abortion rights, pro-environment vegetarian, with two bad hips, cared for Medicare. She may have been the first to publicly protest the stimulus in early February, 2009. It was outside an event in Fort Myers, Florida, where President Barack Obama was promoting his plan.

With the premature withdrawal of John Thune and Mike Pence from the ranks of the GOP White House hopefuls, social conservatives are nervously waiting for Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann to announce their candidacies. But whatever Huckabee, Palin and Bachmann ultimately decide, each has already claimed God is on their side.

The humble village of Jupiter, Florida is where Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann will meet with local Tea Party supporters at the Abacoa Golf Club.

The scathing manuscript draft of former Sarah Palin aide Frank Bailey's In "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years," leaked to The Daily Beast, spares not a single embarrassing email or angry campaign trail moment. Among more juicy allegations in the book, which is filled with catty asides, including a description of Palin's skin as being "tanning-bed bronze":

Palin e-mail: "Yes, (Newt/GOP) are egotistical, narrow minded machine goons… but all the more reason God protected me from getting up on stage in front of 5000 political and media 'elites' to praise him, then it be shown across the nation." ... Whoops!

Cutting spending is hard, especially when the defense budget and Social Security and Medicare are deemed off-limits, because that's where the real money is. It's so much easier to rail against gay marriage and liberal elites wanting to take guns away and drive God out of public life.

In a lengthy interview with ThinkProgress, Gaffney warned that Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist and influential Republican strategist, was spearheading "active measure" campaigns within the conservative establishment on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. "I belive the conservative movement is being subjected to a concerted Muslim Brotherhood infiltration effort," Gaffney told us, adding that Norquist began his insidious effort in the 1980s. Norquist's wife is Muslim.

... conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) are boycotting CPAC because the of the participation of GOProud, a gay conservative organization. But as TPM documented, there are still plenty of anti-gay and anti-Muslim events on the CPAC agenda.

As Media Matters noted, we had Will Bunch in this segment -- Media Matters' Bunch: Someone Giving Beck's Caliphate Speech On Street Corner "Probably Would Be Involuntarily Committed".

Washington bureaucracies that have heretofore enjoyed decades of support from both political parties are now under assaulted from the Tea Party. Rand Paul, a Republican swept into the US Senate last November by the Kentucky Tea Party, has introduced a bill that would virtually eliminate two Federal departments – Education and Energy – and impose across-the-board spending cuts for all government agencies, including the Pentagon.

"You probably don't give a lot of time thinking about Egypt," a Fox News presenter suggested about an hour ago, before explaining that "groups linked to al-Qaida" were in danger of taking over the government in Cairo.

In another sign that he's gunning for a run for president in 2012, Santorum announced that he's bringing on veteran Republican strategists Nick Ryan and Jill Latham, both currently with the Des Moines based Concordia Group. Ryan founded and is now President of the group.

I'm glad Obama promised to cut taxpayer subsidies for oil companies (even though almost no one clapped.)

Sadly, it took a little bit of courage to speak with compassion about the children of illegal immigrants or to say "American Muslims are part of our family."

Yesterday, the Office of Special Counsel released a 118-page report detailing the Bush White House's widespread violations of federal election law during the 2006 midterm elections. According to the document, White House staffers in the Office of Political Affairs — which was headed by Karl Rove — used government resources and taxpayer money for purely political purposes.

It's not until the eighth paragraph -- and the second Internet "page" -- of the Time magazine cover story on Sarah Palin's tactics and ambition that this sentence appears:

"I would run because the country is more important than my ease, though I'm not necessarily living a life of ease," says Palin, who answered questions from TIME via e-mail.

Exclusive!

Iconoclastic Texas Republican defends WikiLeaks again, says US response 'an example of killing the messenger'

The greatest critic of fiat currency perhaps anywhere in the world is about to take control of a congressional panel that would conduct oversight on the US Federal Reserve bank.

This could get interesting.

The former House speaker and perennial almost-presidential-candidate recently said on Fox News that he is "much more inclined to run than not run" in 2012. Meanwhile, in the past few weeks, Gingrich has been furiously trying to sell his historical novels and self-help books.

HANNITY: All right. Amidst all the controversy on Capitol Hill surrounding the extension of the Bush tax cuts, one thing is crystal clear. This deal marks a major defeat for the anointed one who let political gamesmanship get the best of him.

Well, now he's backtracking on one of his central campaign promises. But apparently that's not how he sees it.

It's a measure of where we are, I think, that at a meeting of Americans for Democratic Action, you find me comparing President Obama unfavorably to President George W. Bush.

In economic policy it was said earlier we have a lack of narrative.

WASHINGTON -- Incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Thursday dismissed an ultimately successful attempt by House Democrats to extend middle-class tax cuts as "chicken crap" and "nonsense."

Joe Scarborough wants Republicans to "man up" and put a stop to it.

"Republicans have a problem," wrote Scarborough in a column for Politico. "The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private."

Despite a decade of Bush tax cut windfalls for the wealthy pushing income inequality to levels not seen since 1929, Republicans are calling for another $700 billion, 10-year payday for the richest Americans. So it should come as no surprise that as corporate profits reached an all-time record in the third quarter, leading voices in the Republican Party want their tax bill slashed, too.

In a letter Tuesday to OMB general counsel Preeta Bansal, league president David Wenhold and board member Peter Mayberry called the guidance "discriminatory, arbitrary" and "harmful" to lobbyists and government officials because it could deny K Street's expertise to policymakers.

Mayberry, president of Mayberry & Associates, is a former member of an advisory committee that deals with trade issues.

Today, The Nation -- a magazine which generally offers very good journalism -- subjects John Tyner to similar treatment, with such a shoddy, fact-free, and reckless hit piece (by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine) that I'm genuinely surprised its editors published it. Beyond the inherent benefit of correcting the record, this particular article is suffused with all sorts of toxic though common premises that make it worth examining in detail.

"I think the majority of Americans don't want to put up with the blue bloods," Palin said on Laura Ingraham's radio show on Wednesday. "And I say it with all due respect because I love the Bushes. The blue bloods who want to pick and choose their winners instead of allowing competition to pick and choose the winners."

As she embarks on her 16-stop book tour promoting "America by Heart," former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has one person to be enormously grateful to: media baron Rupert Murdoch

... the millionaire governor is caught on tape shouting insults at teachers and public servants. But because he is so incredibly popular among the sort of people who identify with the bullies in Very Special Episodes about bullying

... a sense of mutual responsibility, commitment to equality and belief in inclusive diversity ... inspired a new generation of voters, restored faith to the cynical and created a national movement. Now, eighteen months and an 'enthusiasm gap' later, the nation's major challenges remain largely unmet, and a discredited conservative movement has reinvented itself in a more virulent form."

Palin is on the top of her worlds — both the Republican Party and the media universe. "Sarah Palin's Alaska" set a ratings record for a premiere on TLC, attracting nearly five million viewers — twice the audience of last month's season finale of the blue-state cable favorite, "Mad Men." The next night Palin and her husband Todd were enshrined as proud parents in touchy-feely interviews on "Dancing With the Stars," the network sensation (21 million viewers) where their daughter Bristol has miraculously escaped elimination all season despite being neither a star nor a dancer

Remember that during the president of Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican who frequently worked with a Republican Congress, the highest marginal tax rate was 91 percent; most Republicans in those days recognized that they represented Main Street not Wall Street.

... embraces the bigotry of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, who's race-baiting on the air on a daily basis -- why, that party couldn't possibly be racist because they elected Michael Steele as RNC chairman.

Gingrich also fails to note that Steele's fund-raising efforts were severely undermined by the likes of Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove and similar outside groups.

The conservative-controlled U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Monday accused the Justice Department of "delaying and smothering" the agency's investigation into the handling of a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.

Well, yesterday he [Beck] explained it: It's not so much that the "far left" is actually going to commit left-wing terrorism. No. What they're actually plotting is to recreate Oklahoma City by pulling off an act of domestic terrorism and then blaming Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers for it.

No American, certainly not one about to occupy a leadership position in our government, could possibly call the American health-care system "the best health care system in the world." Boehner did just that last week. He was having an out-of-country experience.

You see what happens when you young liberal voters get so disgruntled and disillusioned that you drop all your party's newborn, hard-won ideas about Hope™ and Change™, without any patience, without really giving them sufficient time to mature, without understanding that hugely foreign, anti-American concept known as "the long view"?

Democrats' Senate majority faces a midterm shrinkage Tuesday, a further complication for President Barack Obama's agenda, even if Republicans fall short of seizing control of the 100-member chamber.

Republicans must pick up 10 seats to regain the majority they lost four years ago. Analysts in both parties consider that a tough task.

I don't have any words to describe it.

During the fluffy conversation, O'Donnell told Brody that she would never go bungie jumping, but that she did like running, as long as nobody makes fun of her for being slow. [But being slow is part of her charm]

The GOP's fire will be concentrated especially on the administration's efforts to use the Environmental Protection Agency's authority over air pollution to tighten emissions controls on coal, oil and other carbon fuels that scientists say contribute to global warming.