Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: more arguments against letting your rage make all your decisions for you.

Lauren Kirchner, writing at ProPublica, reminds us that what we know about the effectiveness of mass surveillance suggests that, well, it's not that effective. What often gets lost about all this pre-emptive surveillance is that it's a damn lot of data to sift through, and can divert your attention away from actual terrorist threats. We might even wonder if that's what happened here, since ISIS's attacks in Paris seemed to blindside everyone in charge of preventing this sort of thing.

Nick Stockton, writing at Wired, reminds us that "Turning Away Refugees Won't Fight Terrorism, and Might Make It Worse." Apparently the theoretical possibility of "terrorists posing as refugees" is extraordinarily small -- approximately a dozen refugees, out of three million, have been expelled from American soil since 1975 -- but that's not all: coming here as a refugee takes so long that it's hard to imagine terrorists going through the 18-month-plus wait, and leaving refugees in harm's way in their home country or in a foreign country's camp can radicalize them, too.

Once-marginalized Muslim-haters, apparently unfamiliar with the concept of the Jeff George Victory Lap, are LOLing it up that Republicans seem anxious to adopt their positions. "Angry about #Paris?" twitters one. "Time for a moratorium on Muslim migration to US. If you make big policy decisions because you're "angry," why should we listen to you?

Elisabeth Hasselbeck advises President Obama to "accept a pause" in allowing Syrian refugees to come to the U.S., adding that he should do so with "the good-hearted nature that of course as a nation we want to accept refugees because they’re not all bad." Word salad aside, this is one of the most pernicious ideas in American culture -- the notion that you can do whatever you like, to whomever you like, as long as you're "nice" about it. I'm so old-fashioned I still think you reveal your "good-heartedness" in your good works, and that doing bad things with a smile on your face doesn't make them less bad.

Finally, Attorney General Loretta Lynch says there's "no data" to support the notion of a "Ferguson effect," whereby police are "afraid to do their jobs" because people are talking about them, or filming them. You already knew there was no data if you've been attending Radley Balko's articles on the subject at the Washington Post, but seriously, "Ferguson effect" hacks are essentially telling you that police officers can't do their jobs because their bosses, the public, are watching them. Always it's the people taking part in a democracy that really scares Our Glorious Elites.

Around the table: starring hypocrites, pimps, greedy CEOs, and reactionaries.

Daniel Drezner, writing at the Washington Post, still thinks Donald Trump will have a lot of trouble winning the Republican Presidential nomination. His two main points: Mr. Trump hasn't done the work that would actually turn voters out (like buy voter databases and hire field staff), and Howard Dean, also, looked fairly inevitable in 2004 "right up to the moment people voted." Mr. Drezner isn't the only one who's ever cited Howard Dean in suggesting that actually pulling the lever for Donald Trump might give a lot of folks pause once they're in the voting booth. But Democratic primary voters are a different animal than Republican primary voters -- I wonder what, if anything, gives the latter pause.

The "liberal" media has heavily reported Paul Ryan's desire to spend more time with family as an obstacle to him taking the Speakership, but Bryce Covert at Think Progress reminds us that Mr. Ryan has consistently opposed policies that would help poor working families achieve a similar work-life balance, like paid sick leave. It's one thing to walk the walk about work-life balance yourself, and another thing entirely to cut off poor people at the knees so they can't do the same, because you say it's a "culture problem" when people can't get jobs corporations aren't creating.

The incomparable Dave Zirin reminds us not to resort to false innocence or cynicism when confronting the Louisville basketball recruiting scandal, wherein the University of Louisville allegedly paid a "Louisville madam" to ply players and recruits with sex. The path of cynicism is always the wrong path -- I'd put "always" in shouty-caps, if I weren't philosophically opposed to shouty-caps -- but the path of false innocence, a path to which I'm just as susceptible as anyone else, also blinds us to the sexism of this apparent "recruiting tool." I mean, just because "everyone does it" doesn't mean it's not outrageous.

This Center for American Progress report tells us, in about as restrained a voice as is humanly possible, what's wrong with the economy: corporations don't invest in the future, despite high profits and low borrowing costs. The right counters that corporations just need more tax cuts, but we've had nearly four decades now of evidence that tax cuts haven't done much for the economy but have starved our government of necessary revenues. And though CAP won't come out and say it, I will: corporations won't invest because the CEOs want all the money for themselves. I'll say this, too: when we condemn corporations who only care about short-term profits, we're the conservatives in the room, not the corporate lackeys in the Republican party.

Finally, there's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, again, saying that Adolf Hitler really didn't want to kill the Jews but the then-Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was (of course!) a Palestinian, forced his hand. But you know what's getting lost in all the brouhaha about this, ah, questionable thesis? That Hitler killed the Jews. You'd think a "conservative hero" like Mr. Netanyahu would know to blame the people who actually do evil, rather than the people who "forced" them to do evil. But maybe Mr. Netanyahu doesn't get that because he's a reactionary, not a conservative, and reactionaries don't get anything but what makes them angry or hard.

Around the table: attack of the blueshirts.

Bernie Sanders Has a Secret Weapon and the Media Elites Just Don't Get It," announces The Nation -- his secret weapon being "the gift of plain speech." I'd diagnose the problem slightly differently -- that the "liberal" media ignore Mr. Sanders's gift, while playing up the absurdly overheated pronouncements of Donald Trump and Ben Carson as evidence that they, somehow, possess "the gift of plain speech."

Speaking of Mr. Sanders, we learn that he actually rejected a $2,700 donation from the so-called "pharma bro," Martin Shkreli. You remember, the fellow who bought that toxoplasmosis drug and promptly jacked up its price fiftyfold, immunocompromised patients be damned? Naturally, Mr. Shkreli again suggests that without exorbitant drug prices, "innovation" won't happen. Always with the hostage-taking, these rich people -- "let me jack up drug prices fiftyfold, or the innovation gets it!"

Surprise, surprise, John Kasich's tax plan is negligibly better than any of the other Republican Presidential candidates' tax plans -- he'd hike the EITC, but he'd repeal the Estate tax, cut corporate taxes, cut investment income taxes, and cut the top income bracket from 39.6% to 28%. The moral of this story: we shouldn't praise John Kasich for sounding reasonable every once in a while -- we should excoriate the others for sounding reasonable so little of the time.

RNC Chairman Reince Preibus says that if Republicans don't win the 2016 Presidential election, "we're cooked as a party for quite a while." Dramatic much? If Republicans could claw out of the hole they dug for themselves in 2008, they can surely get out of this much shallower hole. All they'd have to do is obstruct the Democratic President on everything and then have their corporate cronies gin up a new "grassroots" movement the way they ginned up the Tea Party.

Finally, Trump supporter in a blue T-shirt curses and spits on a pro-immigration protestor. I concocted a nice theory explaining this incident -- that everyone thinks violence is wrong, but everyone who actually commits violence insists that whatever provoked them to violence was unique and justified. But upon further reflection I'll stick with my old theory, that a good chunk of the American electorate -- the same folks who insisted that criticizing Bush the Lesser was treason and then became teabaggers -- just likes being enraged and getting attention for being enraged. In that spirit, I propose that we call such people blueshirts.

Around the table: the "liberal" media, social benefits, charter schools, legal loansharking, drug legalization, and a living wage.

Ho hum, numerous polls (even ones done by "liberal" media outlets!) find that viewers thought Bernie Sanders "won" Tuesday night's Presidential debate, and by landslide margins, but "liberal" media pundits mostly claim that Hillary Clinton "won" it. We should speak as little of "winning" as possible, since this is not a sporting event, but it does behoove us to note that Our Glorious Elites do seem to grade Their Preferred Candidates on a curve.

Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post tells us that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders "need each other" for Democrats to succeed. Which anyone knows, if they've attended how Republicans have used their "Tea Party" and "establishment" "wings" to transmute governing failure into electoral success. But don't miss Mr. Meyerson's excellent analysis of why "social benefit" programs do better in Europe than here. It has less to do with everyone in America thinking we're temporarily-embarrassed millionaires and more to do with workers getting major representation on foreign corporate boards.

The Columbus Dispatch finds Ohio charter schools performing rather less well than the Ohio Department of Education said they were in a federal grant application. The corruption revealed within is truly breathtaking -- even the man who resigned two days after "scrubbing" data in the application still looks like a crook. Jesus Mary and Joseph what is wrong with accountability? Besides the fact that it makes it harder to steal taxpayer money for doing a bad job, I mean.

Zeke Faux at Bloomberg Business writes about two formerly ultrareligious Jewish men from Brooklyn who made millions in the "merchant cash advance" business, where you loan money to small businesses at usurious rates but get around the law by not calling what you're giving out a loan. The two gentlemen are mildly interesting, I suppose -- they were dirt poor growing up, got cynical about religion like most teenage boys do, and enjoyed working with developmentally-disabled adults in their early 20s -- but they morphed into the kind of bosses who'd steal your chair if you weren't making them enough money, which is, I suppose, what making tons of money without doing any real work will do to you.

Radley Balko asserts that the proliferation of methamphetamines doesn't argue for making drugs illegal so much as it argues for legalizing them -- not only with data showing that cracking down on meth hasn't reduced meth use (or, more specifically, meth lab raids), but with a new finding that meth prices go down in Kentucky counties that prohibit alcohol. As the late Sam Kinison once said, "if you give us back the pot, we'll forget about the crack." Drug addiction does take away your freedoms as surely as any government or corporation, but a civilized society could manage drug addiction in more or less the way Mr. Balko describes.

Finally, Fox News's Andrea Tantaros says waitstaff won't "work their tail off" if they get a higher wage instead of getting tips. She seems to have a very low opinion of people, if she thinks a living wage will represent the end of most people's ambitions (what, no waiter ever wants to become a manager? Or a restauranteur, even?) -- and what she might call "ambition" I might call desperation. But Jesse Watters's answer -- "I like to be able to slap down a fat tip to impress the waitress. Don’t take that away from me. I like to be able to show off a little bit" -- is considerably worse. Conservatism was not, last I looked, about "whatever gets you hard."

Around the table: scare numbers, corporate welfare, private prisons, ransomware, and shouty-caps.

Well, that was quick: an economist whose research was cited by the Wall Street Journal in its scare-number piece on Bernie Sanders has hit back, saying that single-payer health care would save Americans nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. The Journal, you may remember, said ZOMG SANDURZEZ PROGRAMZ WOULD COST TEH 18 TRILLYUNZ OF DOLLARZ!!!!! not too long ago. Further, "(t)hese financial savings would be felt by businesses and by state and local governments who would no longer be paying for health insurance for their employees; and by retirees and working Americans who would no longer have to pay for their health insurance or for co-payments and deductibles." Of course, Americans would be "paying for it," with their taxes, and corporations would be paying less, not nothing, but they're still trenchant points.

Ho hum, the House Ways and Means Committee votes to make some $38 billion in annual corporate tax breaks permanent. They've had trouble passing this mass of corporate welfare for more than two years at a time -- possibly because when ordinary Americans hear that these tax breaks enable big corporations to pretend their profits are all overseas but their expenses are all here in America, they hate them.

Sen. Sanders proposes a national ban on private prisons, which federal, state, and local governments would have three years to accomplish. Mr. Sanders would also bring back the federal parole system -- abolished in 1984 by men who feared everyone would find their penises inadequate -- and ending the minimum on how many immigrants the ICE must detain at one time, a quota that sure sounds like a way of making some crony corporation money. And unlike Messrs. Clinton and O'Malley, no one will be able to accuse Mr. Sanders of suddenly turning on a notion that's benefited his career for years.

Kim Zetter, writing for Wired, explains "ransomware," where evil bastards can lock you out of your computer if you don't pay them a ransom. The individuals who allege that you possess child porn and then ask for a few hundred dollars to make the charges go away really deserve their own circle of hell. How to defend against them as best you can? Use anti-virus software and back up your files somewhere off-net. Oldheads already know this, of course.

Finally, also from the "ho hum" file: Bristol Palin blogs that President Obama "needs to STAY out of" the Ahmed Mohamed case, and adds that Mr. Obama's invitation for Mr. Mohamed to come to the White House is a "childish game()" that "invites more racial strife." Never mind the people who actually create racial strife -- a bold person like Ms. Palin has the vision to blame those who "invite" their behavior, as if folks creating racial strife are simply powerless to stop their behavior on their own! And someone who employs shouty-caps should know all about "childish games." I wonder where she learned about them.

Around the table: renaming Mt. McKinley, tracking undocumented immigrants with FedEx, and other stories.

The Economic Policy Institute reports on "What Families Need to Get By," complete with a budget calculator that can tell you (if you live in one of 618 locations) how much money your family needs to make to meet an adequate standard of living in your zip code. You can enter up to two adults and up to four children to see how much you'd need. Key point: whatever the minimum figure is where you are, it's likely considerably higher than the federal poverty standard (let alone the minimum wage!). Also, child care costs exceed housing costs in over 80% of the locations studied.

President Obama announces that America's tallest mountain, Mt. McKinley, will be renamed Denali. Which is what most Alaskans (including the state's senior U.S. Senator) call it anyway, but cue the right-wing whinefest -- a whinefest defending William McKinley, a President who acted like corporations were the only Americans with a voice and who dragged us into war with Spain even after our diplomats had negotiated an agreement to avoid it. He not only makes George W. Bush look like a socialist; he makes George W. Bush look like a peacenik.

Chris Christie says we should get FedEx to track immigrants, since they do so well tracking boxes with barcodes that can't move on their own. He went on to say that it's just another example of how the private sector does everything better, but all I could think was he got that from Newt Gingrich's book Real Change! And it sounded utterly stupid then, too! When Chris Wallace has to remind you that "people aren't packages," it's bad. And, ah, it's not like FedEx delivers that many packages -- many, many packages fewer than the U.S. Postal Service, which has satisfied this customer rather more than FedEx has.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says we ought to consider building a wall on the Canadian border, too, because "some people" he's talked to in New Hampshire have "raised some very legitimate concerns," which he then went on to describe at length. I kid, of course -- he talks and you accept, just like the rest of them. But I wonder if Stephen Harper is still his BFF.

Finally, Steve Wasserman at The American Conservative bemoans the "phony populism" that "den(ies) Americans the joys of serious thought," and tells us that the internet age has, like the television age before it, made us less patient with serious criticism or, indeed, with anything we don't "get" right away. You can think of a hundred moronic internet comments as easily as I can, and I miss the days when Dick Cavett interviewed writers as much as anyone. But if Americans don't strive for "(t)he ideal of serious enjoyment of what isn’t instantly understood," one might also interpret that as an impatience with bullshit, and I sure hope Mr. Wasserman would count bullshit-detection among those critical thinking skills that "strengthen" the mind "as a workout tones the muscles."

Around the table: torture, free speech, body cameras, small businesses, and the gang that couldn't shoot or think straight.

Steve Benen informs us that no less than four Republican Presidential candidates have embraced torture as a viable option when dealing with terror suspects, not that they use the word "torture" or anything. Jeb Bush, naturally, parrots his brother's it's-not-torture-if-I-say-so line of dung, but Mr. Benen is right to point out that if President Obama had prosecuted torturers during his Administration, Republicans wouldn't be as quick to embrace torture as they are.

Scott Klinger at the Center for Effective Government reminds us that ag-gag laws violate the First Amendment. You don't need to be a vegan to think so, either -- especially not if you already know that laws against libel, slander, and destruction of property already exist. What could the big ag corporations be so afraid of?

The title of this article, "The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras," turns out to be a bit of a bait-and-switch: the "dystopian danger" turns out to be from using body cameras in other, obviously less appropriate ways, like to spy on students, but these are boundaries civilized people have to draw, every day. From there we move on to surveillance methods that are not body cameras; I was really hoping to at least be challenged on my support of body cameras, but I wasn't.

FCC rules that satellite TV corporation Dish can't apply some $3.3 billion in small business credits toward its purchase of government airwaves. You should be hitching on the notion that Dish could have received small business credits; apparently its subsidiaries have received the credits. Just as it occurs to me that a small business shouldn't have more than 50 employees (let alone the 500 employees the Small Business Administration uses as its cutoff), it also occurs to me that a small business shouldn't be owned by a big corporation.

Finally, we learn that one of the fellows guarding a "Muslim-free" gun shop in Oklahoma accidentally shot himself in the arm after dropping his gun on Tuesday. It's nice to know that some people who can't think straight also can't shoot straight, I guess, but it's still not a thing to count on.

Around the table: the Colorado River spill, drug-sniffing dogs, swordfighting about abortion, and police officers vs. cell phone cameras.

EPA workers accidentally release a million gallons of mustard-colored mine sludge into the Colorado River. Which really, really doesn't need the hit -- not just because of tourism, but because the river supplies a lot of states with clean drinking water. EPA talking heads have been a bit slow to say what needs to be said, which is: We fouled up. It's unacceptable, and we'll fix it.

Radley Balko bemoans a U.S. District Court decision allowing continued use of drug-sniffing dogs that might only be "barely more accurate than a coin flip." Key finding: drug-sniffing dogs aren't just trained to sniff out drugs, but also to please their handlers, which means they'll sniff out a lot of false positives -- especially when handlers give treats every time dogs signal the presence of drugs, instead of every time they actually find drugs. Read the whole thing, though -- Mr. Balko anticipates and refutes a lot of objections one might have.

Marco Rubio gets asked about his no-exceptions abortion stance, and, like the born swordfighter he is, doubles down. He even says "when asked to make a decision between two very hard circumstances, I personally reached the decision, if I'm going to err, I'm going to err on the side of life." Ah, "to err on the side of life" when the mother's life is in danger? He might actually be as stupid as he seems.

And swordfighting begats more swordfighting: Scott Walker says "medically there's always a better choice than choosing between the life of an unborn baby and the life of the mother." And when pressed on what "better choices" are available, his spokeshack made a long, detailed list of the medical options! Nah, just kidding -- she basically said ZOMG TEH GOVNUR IS 100% PRO-LIFE LEAVE HIM ALOOOOOOOOONE!!!!! Seriously, this will damage him, and eventually saying he really "meant" to say "there has to be a better option," which we all wish for, won't cut it, not when you're running for President.

Finally, Rohnert City, CA police officer pulls gun on a man recording him on his cell phone. The city promptly placed the officer on administrative leave, and hastened to add that "the incident portrayed on the video is not a typical interaction between our public safety officers and the public" -- which may be true, but will be of no comfort to anyone shot dead under such circumstances.

Around the table: Republicans fail to defund Planned Parenthood, Scott Walker gets punked and good, and other stories.

Democrats filibuster Republican bill that would have stripped Planned Parenthood of federal funding. I guess it's nice to know Democrats will still fight for something. But it'd be nicer to know that maybe, just maybe, putting out deceptively-edited videos isn't the recipe for success it was just six years ago -- though it should never have been a recipe for success anywhere, anytime, and has only succeeded due to "liberal" media laziness.

FAIR notes that the "liberal" media hardly ever covers when a politician slurs Iranians as "evil," "liars," or "animals." But here's an analysis of the problem I don't often hear: "(s)ome argue this is the inevitable product of the US right-wing constantly making ridiculous statements. At this point, they claim, we should simply expect conservatives to make absurd remarks." I've never heard someone actually say that, but I know everyone thinks it, though we all know racism is racism and bad behavior is bad behavior, and each of these demands a response.

Unlike those Scott-Walker-lives-in-my-butt protestors in south Philly last week, protestors in New Hampshire pulled off a good stunt on Scott Walker on Monday -- by posing with the candidate and a friendly sign, only to flip the sign to reveal a fake check for $900 million made out to Mr. Walker and signed by the Koch brothers. Yes, the photo is pretty glorious, and no, these folks are definitely not Walker campaign plants.

No doubt disappointing dozens of Americans, former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich has decided not to run for the Republican Presidential nomination after all. But the real story here isn't that he was a Republican who actually decided not to join the other 219 candidates; the real story is that he really thought anyone was waiting for his candidacy in the first place.

There's just no end to Teh Stupid: Charles Koch now flogs his alleged commitment to criminal justice reform as a way of trying to bamboozle good folks into thinking he's really not so bad. As with his brother's alleged support of gay marriage, it means nothing if he's going to continue to support politicians who just so happen to be tough-on-crime jerks. You know, as the "price" for supporting "fiscally conservative" politicians.

Finally, the incomparable Dave Zirin reports on the horrible water quality in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the 2016 summer Olympics will take place -- yes, with swimmers and sailors and the like. You know it's bad when sailors get sick after a few hours, and at least one scientist says athletes who actually go into the water have a 99 percent risk of infection. Say it with me: clean water is our most precious natural resource. And it won't stay clean unless we keep it clean.

Around the table: featuring tales of Republican Presidential aspirants and their would-be kingmaker.

President Obama unveils the finished EPA carbon emissions rules, which would cut carbon emissions from power plants by a third from 2005 levels. Mr. Obama showed some moxie, too -- "if we don't do it, nobody will" is not a statement Mr. Bush copyrighted, after all, and as for referring to "war on coal" hysteria as "scaremongering," well, it's about time. Hillary Clinton did him one better, though, calling Republicans "defeatists." I expect Republicans to whine about it like they never called Democrats "defeatists" during Tha Bush Mobb years.

Charles Koch says he hates corporate welfare, reports David Sirota, but his corporations have taken over $160 million in corporate welfare over the years. And in a sane and moral society, such hypocrisy would finish a man, once exposed -- but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, we'll have to bring this up a hundred times before the "liberal" media covers it, and then maybe another hundred times before they cover it well.

Also at the Koch brothers' notorious weekend retreat for Republican Presidential candidates, Charles Koch compared his political work to the civil rights movement -- even dropping the names of Frederick Douglass and Dr. King -- revealing him as just another fool who wants to be black without doing any of the hard work that comes with being black. And to hear a Koch talk about a "level playing field" when the Koch brothers started out with gobs of inherited money is, well, pretty rich.

At that very same conference, Jeb Bush changed his position on raising more tax revenue to solve budgetary problems. It's not much of a flip, though, from demanding $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases to demanding zero tax increases ever. It does bring him back in line with House Republicans, though, who consistently demanded a deficit-reduction plan consisting entirely of spending cuts -- and who occasionally even threw some tax cuts for the rich in there.

Finally, eighth-grade student Rebecca Freid refutes a scholar over whether "No Irish Need Apply" signs ever existed in America during the 19th century. Adjectives like "hero" and quite extraordinary" do certainly apply to Ms. Fried, soon to be a first-year student in high school, but only in a society this sick, immoral, and decadent do we need to constantly refute "scholars" who deny what's right in front of their damn faces.

Penny rants for Sunday, August 2, 2015: "I see weak people!"

David Barton whines that putting a woman on the $10 bill proves that liberals "literally want to erase our history." After all, it's not like the other bills all have men on them or anything! But that wasn't the stupidest thing he said on July 27, and neither, amazingly, was his invoking of our Founders, as if he's not the guy who attributes all kinds of right-wingy quotations to the Founders without sourcing them. Here's the winner: "(t)hey want to remake this country; in fact, as Obama said, to transform America, and you don't transform America from what it was without trying to erase what it was." You know who thinks "transformation" can never, ever build on tradition or honor the past? Two kinds of people: 1) a simpleton, and 2) someone pretending to be a simpleton in order to turn emotionally-vulnerable people into right-wing rageheads. I don't believe you'll find very many simpletons in America, I really don't. But you'll find a lot of pretend simpletons -- or, as better folks than I have called them, "useful idiots" -- and they're very well-paid in our sick, immoral, and decadent society.

Sen. Cruz (S-TX) suggests he'd shut down the government over continued funding of Planned Parenthood. You know, over that stupid video that the "liberal" media is somehow covering as if it's not a badly-edited hit job, even though, you know, they're supposedly full of "journalists" and stuff, a lot of whom actually took classes in college about how editing creates reality, even! You'll recognize the threat as more right-wing swordfighting -- Ted Cruz can't just have a vote over defunding Planned Parenthood like Rand Paul, but has to shut down the government over it. (And then, of course, Mike Huckabee suggested he'd send in federal troops to stop abortions, which proves that someone always thinks they have a bigger sword.) But, ah, Politico? That headline is profoundly offensive -- Planned Parenthood wouldn't "shut down the government"; obnoxious politicians would shut down the government. I guess if Republicans threw a similar tantrum over, say, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, Politico's headline would read "How Black Voters Could Shut Down the Government."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), currently vying for the Democratic Presidential nomination, says he will not run as an independent candidate if he does not get the Democratic nomination, for one simple reason: "I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States." Memo to Sen. Sanders: you would not be responsible for electing a right-wing Republican as President if you were to run as an independent. Who would be responsible? The right-wing Republican Presidential candidate, obviously, for successfully lying to the American people about what he plans to do (cough Scott Walker cough), and also to the people who voted for him though it wasn't in their interest to do so -- and also to the spineless Democrat politicians who accomplish nothing when they have power and thus give no one any positive reason to vote for them. We liberals get enough guff for "always blaming the wrong people" that we should actually, you know, blame the right people when bad things happen.

Around the table: includes tales of Republicans, "governing"!

You know that highway infrastructure reauthorization bill that Mitch McConnell is supposedly working so hard to get done, so he can prove Republicans can run Congress without everything falling apart? Well, among its problems is that it shields certain kinds of public safety information from disclosure via Freedom of Information Act requests. "Risk to public safety is exactly the type of information that FOIA is intended to prevent being shielded from the public," writes Sue Udry, but you know, it's only accountability to the people, so you can see why Mr. McConnell doesn't care.

Speaking of that highway bill, Scott Klinger says we should fund the Highway Trust Fund in ways other than what the Senate has proposed in its legislation, like closing the corporate offshore profits loophole. As an aside, the Senate is actually proposing outsourcing tax collection to private tax collectors as a money-saving idea again. It didn't work last time, as anyone who thought about it for a nanosecond could have predicted. But hey, look at the Republicans, governing!

Jim Tankersley at the Washington Post reminds us that Jeb Bush owed his "success" at "rejuvenating" the Florida economy to a massive housing bubble. Which, when it burst (after Mr. Bush left office, of course), left Florida way worse off than most other states. Next time he says "I know how to do this," remember that anyone can "rejuvenate" an economy with unsustainable speculation.

Leon Neyfakh suggests we can live without air conditioning -- which at least one scientist estimates adds the equivalent of 10,000 car-driving miles per household of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Ignore the notion that "civilization was humming along just fine" before air conditioning arrived -- I'd want to see stats concerning heat-related hospitalizations and deaths before and after A/C before buying that -- but attend the notion that it's silly to cool down offices so folks can wear uncomfortable business suits, or the notion that modern architecture has forgotten a lot of very useful information.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck uses her valuable time on Earth playing devil's advocate about cops beating up Sandra Bland (who later died in police custody) during a traffic stop. "But, what if, I mean, there are times, I'm sure, someone has, in the history of this land, used a cigarette against a police officer, maybe chucked it at him, pushed it at him." Number one, speak English! Number two, the officer had at least two far more powerful weapons than a lit cigarette. Let's do ourselves a favor and never speak of Elizabeth Hasselbeck again.

Finally, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stopped in at both legendary Philadelphia cheesesteak stops on Tuesday. Chiding Mr. Walker for ordering American cheese and no onions is so stupid I shouldn't even have to waste space calling it stupid, but chiding him for cutting in line and leaving trash behind is entirely appropriate. And those protestors held up such asinine signs I can't dismiss the possibility that the Walker campaign planted them.

Around the table: how Scott Walker will *fit right in* in Washington, and other stories.

Stephen M. Walt argues that if ISIS actually succeeds in establishing a state, our best course of action is containment. Right-wingers who find that the idea of containment doesn't adequately arouse them should remember that their hero, Ronald Reagan, never asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Soviets, who were a more powerful enemy than whatever Iraq-sized nation ISIS establishes will be -- especially if, as any reasonable person would expect, ISIS finds statecraft to be a lot harder than blowing crap up.

Brian Murphy, writing at Talking Points Memo, provides a comprehensive report of how badly Scott Walker's baby, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has run. You'll experience the shock of recognition when you read about the folks who donated six figures to Walker campaigns and got millions of dollars in tax credits, because that sort of thing happens in Congress all the time -- big corporations make millions in donations and get billions in tax breaks. See? Scott Walker will fit right in over in Washington, D.C.

FAIR catches Politico announcing that "Tennessee is the Capital of American Jihad," based on, literally, two incidents of domestic terrorism in the Volunteer State six years (and hundreds of miles!) apart. Two incidents -- why, it's an unstoppable juggernaut of an argument! Best part? FAIR makes up a fake Politico cover featuring two white Southern terrorists, with similarly histrionic headlines.

Kentucky gun-store owner bans Muslims from her place of business. Then whines about how, as a white person, she has no "freedom" anymore, and asserts that putting the sign up is only "freedom of speech," which certainly isn't true when you enforce the sign. You'd think gun-lovers would want to associate with other gun-lovers, but not this one. She also says her store will go out of business at the end of the month; I wonder why.

Finally, NASA's Kepler spacecraft finds another planet that could support life -- its year being only a little longer than ours, which puts it in the zone where it could support life, though there's still a lot we don't know, because the planet is 1,400 light years away. Presumably the natives, if there are any, also don't call it "Kepler-452b" like we do.

Around the table: six more tales of our divided nation.

Former NATO General/Democratic Presidential candidate Wesley Clark suggests that America should have internment camps for "radicalized" Americans. Busts out a Nazi analogy, too, which reminds us that we're not actually at war with anyone right now, at least not as the Constitution dictates. (The "war on terror" doesn't count.) This "get(ting) tough" he proposes, of course, could not possibly be used against an administration's political enemies.

Democrats are apparently offering to allow Confederate flags to be sold at national parks in exchange for consideration of the Voting Rights Amendment Act. Needless to say, as a sanctimonious purist, I'm not going to waste any of your time with any action alerts I might get supporting that stratagem. And I don't if Republicans will go for it -- Confederate flag only really matters to them insofar as it reminds the ignorant to vote for them, and I think they've accomplished that much with their flag-related shenanigans already.

Elliot Berkman says that "Studying Human Psychology Turned Me into a Political Liberal." It's full of good insights, but it's always seemed to me that arguing the primacy of "enlightened self-interest" makes no logical sense -- there are plenty of "enlightened self-interests" to choose from, and more to the point, there are even more unenlightened self-interests that folks mistake for "enlightened self-interests" to choose from.

The Hill finds that both parties are using "too big to fail" banksters as a punching bag in the 2016 races. And though Carly Fiorina gets off the best zinger against "too big to fail," we don't learn what Republicans say they would do about it, meaning we don't get to evaluate their proposals against Democrat proposals. And if Republican proposals all turn out to be "Democrat proposals are lame," then certainly the "liberal" media should make Republicans work harder than that.

Venture capitalist collects enough signatures (at least until all the Dick Hurtzes and Heywood Jablomes get tossed out) to put a question on the 2016 ballot aiming to divide California into six states. I see two blue states, two red states, and two purplish ones as a result, and perhaps six Republican Senators and six Democratic ones, instead of the two Democratic ones we have now (which would in theory give Republicans their magic 60 to cut off filibusters, pending rule changes and 2016 election results, of course). But California voters already oppose the initiative by a roughly 6-4 margin, and I don't see how you change enough minds to win, since hippie-punching really only goes so far.

Finally, a Louisiana parish bans sagging pants. Sagging pants look stupid as all hell, but civilized people don't bring out the big stick of government for that -- civilized people poke fun at people who dress stupid as all hell. Really, we don't have to make every manner of dopiness against the law. And, ah, yeah, I doubt the white kids of Terrebone Parish who wear their pants all down at their ankles and everything will get stopped or fined very often for it.

Around the table: where being President means never having to say you're sorry until long after it means a damn, and other lessons.

Video alleges that Planned Parenthood sells "aborted baby parts," but the video has obvious edits. I don't mean edits that you and I can see just by watching attentively, I mean edits that any moron can see by looking at the video's timestamp. However, I hear that the "liberal" media has been reporting on this video with virtually no scrutiny. You'd think they'd have learned from that ACORN pimp video from 2009 -- unless you think they don't really want to learn, which is a distinct possibility.

FAIR cleverly calls NPR's political news coverage "Some Things Considered, Mostly by White Men." You should be able to throw a rock and hit women and people of color who can comment on politics just as well as David Brooks -- and it shouldn't be tough to find women and people of color who can comment on politics just as well as E.J. Dionne, either. If NPR is even interested in politics, that is -- apparently their commitment to political commentary has rather withered over the years.

Some Texas counties have stopped issuing birth certificates to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. They're really too obsessed with stopping the next President Obama, aren't they? Personal to those who state that it's only the American-born children of undocumented immigrants who get treated this way: how is that better?

Scott Walker gets caught saying gays shouldn't be Boy Scout leaders in order to protect the children, then says he meant protecting them "from politics." He blames the media (and not his own mouth) for causing the mess, and he apparently doesn't know that men commit the vast majority of pederasty against girls. But using the word "politics" like it's a dirty word? That's some cojones from a soulless man who does nothing for any reason other than politics.

Finally, former President Bill Clinton now admits that signing that 1994 tough-on-crime bill for which he's famous had some consequences he doesn't agree with now, specifically all the absurdly long sentences for minor crimes. Well, it sure is nice to be in a comfortable enough position to "admit" that you helped ruin the lives of so many people over the last two decades.

Around the table: "Courageous" news flackery, mercy for Corinthian students, a bad ag-gag law, Scott Walker's lousy job-creation record part 228, and another moron morons it up on Twitter.

CNN is not only starting up its own PR hackery shop, it's calling it "Courageous." No, this is not an Onion article -- "Courageous" (and I suspect I'll always put that in quotation marks) will deliver "news-like content on behalf of advertisers," but they promise they'll be "clearly labeling that and differentiating that." Remember back in 1996, when Roger Ailes promised everyone Fox News wouldn't be a right-wing news outlet just because a guy like him helped create it? Then you already know how much that promise means.

Excellent news: the Department of Education, after much pressure from good citizens like you, has decided to expand debt forgiveness to Corinthian students. Corinthian, you recall, is the for-profit college chain that folded in April after DOE assessed record fines. Personal to those who screech ZOMG TEH TAXPAYERS HAZ TO PAYZ FOR TEH LOANS!!!: where were you when our government gave out these loans? Cheering them on, probably -- or calling the Obama Administration's modest efforts at reforming federal student loan programs "socialism." No, I don't think I'm exaggerating about that.

North Carolina's reactionary state legislature overrides a Pat McCrory veto of an ag-gag law Vice suggests might be "the worst in the nation." That's right, it was too tough a pill even for Mr. McCrory, arguably the most reactionary Governor in America and that's saying something, to swallow. If the legislature wants to know why folks can't just go to the police when they see something (hint: because the law they wrote cites "duty of loyalty to the employer" as if that means a damn), then I want to know why existing laws against theft don't protect corporations from "espionage."

Ho hum, Scott Walker's Wisconsin also ranks dead last among U.S. states in "business start-up activity," which is exactly the sort of thing a man trying to sell his competence would hang his hat on. Here's what happens next: a) Scott Walker blames Obama, though the nation's economy as a whole is doing better than Wisconsin's; b) Scott Walker laughs and says his critics are always out to get him (even if these critics now include the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation), and c) if the "liberal" media gets up the nerve to report it (once they're done fellating him for riding a Harley in Iowa), he'll complain about how campaigns are so "negative." How to avoid negativity: don't do evil.

Finally, Minnesota native/abject moron posts, to Barack Obama's new Twitter account, an image of the famous "Hope" photo with a noose around Mr. Obama's neck. Then, naturally, he suggests it's everyone else's fault that they didn't understand he was really complaining about Mr. Obama's "communism" -- because, as we know, hanging Communists is a much more vivid image from American history than hanging black folks. Several quite justified Secret Service visits and at least one job loss later, it pleases me to note that we will never have to speak of Jeff Gullickson again.

Around the table: featuring perhaps the stupidest thing a Senator ever said on Twitter.

FAIR finds the AP describing "incidents involving white law enforcement and black suspects." Got that? If you're at the receiving end of a police officer's bullet, you must have been a suspect! Even if you're a seven-year-old girl sleeping on a couch! "Telling, too, that in its description of police killings in the news over the last several months...the only thing AP sees fit to describe as 'violent' are the protests." No, it's not "reading too much" to note these items -- as Rush Limbaugh used to say, words mean things.

The "liberal" media has continued to trumpet the YAY FRACKINGZ DOESN'T HARMS TEH DRINKING WATERZ!!!! line of argument after the EPA released its fracking report last week, but Wonk Wire presents even more reasons to be skeptical. I guess the "liberal" media will just ignore everything Mr. Fox said because he was once an "avant-garde filmmaker," though that description is not a terribly precise instrument for dismantling any points he's made.

Sen. McConnell (E-KY) suggests to a right-wing radio host that the Senate probably won't be confirming any of President Obama's judicial nominees. Which is very mature of him! Does Mr. McConnell remember how he felt about Democratic obstruction of far fewer Bush Mobb judicial appointees? I kid, of course -- he remembers and doesn't care, like all irredeemably corrupt souls.

Ho hum, the "liberal" media says Hillary Clinton isn't using her husband's "triangulation" strategy, which they say brought white voters from red states back to the Democrats, but adopting President Obama's strategy of mobilizing the voters who are already likely to vote for you in more swingy areas. I wonder if the Obama strategy would work in 2016, too, especially against a really good politician like Scott Walker, but "troubling the party" my ass -- it's really the "liberal" media that's mad she's not running as hard to the right as they'd like. And there's really no law of physics saying that you must run to the right to reclaim red state voters. There are a lot of populists in red states, after all.

Finally, Sen. John Thune says approximately the stupidest thing ever said on Twitter: "Six million people risk losing their health care subsidies, yet @POTUS continues to deny that Obamacare is bad for the American people." Ah, how did those six million folks get their subsidies in the first place? From the Affordable Care Act. It's not just stupid, it's classic hostage-taking: give up Obamacare, or I'll blow the brains out of these subsidies you only got through Obamacare in the first place! Maybe U.S. Senators should stay away from Twitter.

Around the table: featuring dumb people spewing forth dumb ideas about government, plus a potentially-revolutionary solar battery.

Right-wing Pennsylvania House Rep blames big government (among so many other villains!) for the unrest in Baltimore. Just two points, neither related to Rep. Kelly's profound disrespect for black folks: one, Mr. Kelly (born 1948) doesn't tell you that "the town and the times I was raised in," with "the greatest people the world could possibly have imagined," all happened when we taxed millionaire income at 91% or 70% and when the federal minimum wage had more buying power than it does today. Two, when he blames "big government," he's still blaming the people, since the government belongs to the people. In other words, typical teabagger anti-reasoning.

Paul Buchheit reveals "The Five-Step Process to Privatize Everything." They are: convince yourself you did everything on your own, insist that government is antithetical to freedom, get rich (that one's important!), defund government until it works so badly that privatization starts to look better, and "remain ignorant of any troublesome facts," like that privatization generally works even worse than a government deliberately made to work badly. Again we should ask the right-wing haters: how is government antithetical to freedom if government belongs to you?

Ho hum, President Obama seems to have conned another nominally Democratic House Rep into voting for "free" trade. If he'd only spent this much time getting mortgage cramdown passed, he might have done some good! And Ami Bera (CA-7) is another one who thinks we can "do this right" without amending the agreement, or debating it for more than an hour. Congratulations, Mr. Bera! You're now toast in 2016 -- for who will fight to elect a guy who likes "free" trade? No, the district's swingy nature does not mean "free" trade support is a position that will get people to vote for you! You know what might get people to vote for you? Holding positions that normal people actually hold.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announces goal of making a solar-powered home battery, called "Powerwall," that would "fundamentally change the way the world uses energy." I'm not sure this'll be much more than a replacement for a home generator, the kind of thing you use during blackouts, but that's still a good thing, and I presume future Powerwalls will do more. While the battery's cost doesn't sound prohibitive, n.b. that it doesn't include installation or a power inverter (or, I presume, solar panels).

Finally, Alan Keyes seems to think a pro-gay marriage ruling from the Supreme Court would be "just cause for war." Trying to wade through his paragraph-long sentences is difficult, almost like that's the idea, but n.b. that he doesn't explain why an "inalienable right" enjoyed by "the people" can only be enjoyed by some people -- or how extending that right to all people "degrades" or "discards" that right. Also, he shouldn't threaten "war" just because he doesn't get his way; it makes him sound like a diaper-loaded brat.

Around the table: from ye olde Iraq war follies to the solemn pronouncements of anti-gay marriage activists.

Jon Stewart excoriates former New York Times reporter Judith Miller for "help(ing)" Tha Bush Mobb commit "the most devastating mistake in foreign policy that we've made in, like, 100 years." Her response: that "everyone got it wrong," not just her. Having never believed Tha Bush Mobb's absurd case for war with Iraq, I can honestly say that I didn't "get it wrong," and I know a lot of people, liberal and conservative, who also didn't get it wrong. Of course she means all of her elite friends got it wrong. And given how much suffering (i.e., none) they've endured for getting it wrong, you have to wonder if they "got it wrong" on purpose.

President Obama sits down with more than two dozen center-right House Democrats and assures them that if they vote his way on "free" trade "fast-tracking," he'll campaign for them. Why on Earth does Mr. Obama imagine that'll help these folks in a tough campaign? And why does this article only quote one of those House Reps, and is it coincidence that this particular House Rep is very pro-"free" trade and pro-"fast track"? We only have his word, after all, that Mr. Obama "answered every single question" and "rebutted every single critique, respectfully," since in public, Mr. Obama's "rebuttals" to valid "free" trade criticisms include questioning the honesty and integrity of the critic. The "liberal" media could at least get their stories straight.

The Straight Dope asks if negative campaigning works. Long story short: the science suggests that it does, but the science is also not particularly thorough, especially before, say, 2000. We do know that negative campaigning about "inconsistent voting, broken campaign promises, contributions from special interest groups, and dubious business practices" works a lot better than negative campaigning about your opponent's personal foibles (exhibit A: Bill Clinton).

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders raises $1.5 million within 24 hours of announcing his candidacy for President. That worked out to a little over $40 per donor, which is encouraging, and also beat the marks Sens. Cruz, Paul, and Rubio set in their first 24 hours. Of course, Mr. Sanders won't have massive secretive SuperPACs behind him like those three will, but money ain't everything, and it's been a long time since liberals have had a candidate they'd run through a wall for. (I'm not sure I should count Howard Dean, since he wasn't all that liberal.)

Finally, Former Republican Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson announces that anti-gay activists "will give our lives standing for the truth." I'd say who am I to tell you how to remove yourself from the gene pool?, but they'll take other people's lives in such a fight, a fact I suspect Mr. Jackson doesn't want you to ponder. Plus he wants extra credit for not actually acting like an ogre as he's being one, and he suggests that the only alternative to doing his will is chaos and disorder, which is what, class? A hostage situation. In other news, "ex-gay activist" Janet Boynes really needs to polish her stage presence -- if you can't remember your allies' names, you shouldn't be up at the podium. (Plus "we're not going back to slavery"? What does that even mean?)

Around the table: drone deaths, "free" trade, stock buybacks, forensic foolishness, pot as "gateway" drug, and Rick Santorum's latest pile of dung.

With the killing of two humanitarian aid workers/al-Qaeda hostages on Thursday, the drone strike death count stands at well over 4,000, including nearly 500 folks now described as "innocent" and eight American citizens. And, as you might expect when you're fighting an undeclared war from far away, the CIA can't tell if it's killed innocents and/or Americans until weeks after it's done the deed, at which point I'm sure "we tried our best" is a tremendous comfort to the mothers of the dead, as well as to those of us who still do not consider due process "quaint." Hate to get all Star Trek, but this is why war should be hard.

President Obama suggests that our complaints about the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade deals are rather like the whole "death panels" dust-up during the Affordable Care Act debate. Well, no: right-wingers took an obscure end-of-life-planning component of the ACA and blew it up into "death panels," whereas "free" trade opponents have made very specific complaints based on very specific leaks of TPP text, and these complaints are nowhere near as outlandish as "death panels" were. And it's evil for Mr. Obama to tell us that certain members of Congress have access to the text, but "forget" to mention that these members are sworn to silence about what they see in the text. I mean, sure, it looks like typical Democrat weakness, but it's evil.

Rex Nutting describes "How the Stock Market Destroyed the Middle Class." A more accurate title would be "How Stock Buybacks Have Destroyed the Middle Class," since I do not assume (though I'm often tempted to assume) that buying stock itself is evil. Still, the story will sound familiar -- our government once presumed it evil for big corporate titans using corporate profits to buy back stock, because that left less corporate money to invest in workers and infrastructures, but in the early 1980s our government started believing that getting executives to "think like owners" by making them owners would make them more invested in their corporation's success, when actually it just makes it easier for executives to drain the wealth of corporations. Why, it's almost like that was the idea.

In the wake of news that FBI forensic hair analysts have, over the decades, given "flawed testimony" in criminal cases virtually all of the time, ProPublica reminds us that a lot of the CSI-style forensic techniques actually don't have much of a basis in scientific research. A National Academy of Sciences study from 2009 found only nuclear DNA testing backed by a significant amount of "peer-reviewed, published studies." Ask some Republican Presidential candidate about this and I guess he'll answer, "well, I'm not a scientist," like that would excuse his responsibility as a leader to make decisions based on the best science.

Speaking of science, Factcheck.org reminds us that regardless of what Gov. Christie says, we cannot say with certainty that pot is a "gateway drug" to the harder stuff. The moment I read that plenty of folks who use pot also use harder stuff I thought correlation isn't causation, and then there it was in paragraph four. One would more reasonably conclude that people who use pot are people who are already more likely to use drugs generally. Research suggesting that pot "primes" the brain for other drugs isn't conclusive, and I'd like to see the study that (in the manner of the famous "Rat Park" experiment) gives rats pot and then offers them heroin, but has them in a cage where they have other stuff to occupy their minds.

Finally, Rick Santorum now argues that the "wall of separation" between church and state, as described in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, means the government can't legalize same-sex marriage. I get profoundly tired of giving basic civics lessons to people who should know better, but I'll do it again: our government could very easily legalize same-sex marriage as performed by the state, while leaving it up to churches whether they want to perform them as well. Not that such arguments could possibly penetrate Mr. Santorum's mind -- he'll just do like all right-wingers do, and ignore it, and then spout his argument again like no one had ever refuted it. The best way to silence Rick Santorum is to shame his stupid ideas and then wait for him to die. After all, it's not like his works will outlive him.

Around the table: the latest "research" on the "relationship" between gay marriage and abortions! And other stories.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush apparently plans to outsource "some of a campaign's central functions" to a SuperPAC. One right-wing observer, aware that SuperPACs by law can't coordinate with candidates, says that what Mr. Bush is trying to accomplish will take "a high level of discipline." It'll probably also take a judge willing to accept the notion that "turn(ing)" these "functions" "over to a separate political organization" somehow isn't coordination. Kudos to the article's first commenter, who reminds us that "delegating is the thing Bushes do best; this way they can not only be dumb, but play dumb when they are caught. It's called taking no responsibility."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie warns everyone that fully funding New Jersey's pension fund means tax hikes. No word on whether he wore a hood and put a gun to the pension fund when he said it. The Governor even has a twitter hashtag, #whereisthemoney. Some answers? He gave it away by cutting taxes on the rich for no good reason and pushing massive corporate welfare handouts -- neither of which you'll learn from the article (though some of its commenters haven't forgotten).

From the "Because It Bears Repeating" file: a USPIRG report finds that big corporate offshore tax avoidance would cost small businesses over $3,000 in taxes each, if governments were to try to recover the lost revenue from small businesses. Which they eventually will, not just because the quantum physicists tell us that pretty much anything we can imagine will one day happen, but because popular government functions (like fixing roads, keeping libraries open, paying cops, and catching Medicare fraudsters) cost real cash money, which has to come from somewhere if it's not going to come from some politician's paymaster or crony.

The estimable John Nichols wonders if David Koch's stated preference for Scott Walker as the Republican Presidential nominee actually means he'll make it happen. I take his point that the Kochs will spend buku bucks electing whomever gets the nomination because TEH DEMOCRATZ WILLZ DESTROYZ TEH AMURIKUHZ!!!!!, but I doubt the Koch brothers brought $900 million to the table so they could settle.

D.C. Attorney General investigates two Republican House Reps posing with an illegal-within-city-limits AR-15 assault rifle. The two Reps apparently posed for the photo right after getting out of their respective beds, judging by their hair. Though I've long believed that guns don't kill people, corporations kill people, I still shake my head at how idiotic right-wingers look when they're trying to prove how tough they are. And Ken Buck can hardly say a sentence without the word "patriotic" in it -- he even says he keeps his non-working gun in his office right above his "2nd Amendment flag," though he does not say where he keeps it in relation to his American flag.

Finally, right-wingers have been reduced to saying that gay marriage will cause more abortions. I thought they'd argue about the "lost children" gays "deprive" us of by not entering into heterosexual marriages just to procreate, but it's even worse -- gay marriage "devalues" marriage, thus causing fewer heterosexuals to marry, thus causing more unwed women, thus causing more abortions. Justified by thick reams of statistics, right? Of course not -- "(i)t's still too new to do a rigorous causation analysis using statistical methods," the theory's promulgator says, which it always is the minute after you've made something up.

Around the table: five examples of How Not to Be, plus a possible Alzheimer's breakthrough.

Ho hum, a ProPublica/Washington Post investigation finds New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's record on "fiscal responsibility" to be, well, not quite what he says it is. When the three big credit agencies downgrade your state nine times in six years, you know some shenanigans are going on, but read the whole thing, and learn how many times Mr. Christie, contrary to his persona, has settled for gimmicks and one-time fixes in his budgets.

New York state AG Eric Schneiderman sends warning letters to a baker's dozen of big box retailers for putting its employees in an "on-call" scheduling system, where workers don't know if they're working or not until the last minute. Corporations supposedly like such systems because it gives them more "flexibility" -- though workers don't get the same amount of flexibility in paying their bills. That eluded their calculation for some reason.

Idaho legislators kill a child support bill over absurd concerns that passing the bill would leave it open to ZOMG SHARIA LAWZ!!!!! The end result? Idaho may lose millions of dollars in federal funding to help find and process child support cases. This is how rageheads get attention for themselves now: they call everything Sharia law, and consequences for people other than themselves be damned.

Granville, MI car repair owner says he won't provide service to "openly" gay people, which leaves open the possibility, I suppose, that closeted gay folks or not-very-gay-looking gay folk can still get their car fixed at his shop. Same old same old with this guy -- you're-the-racist-for-noticing-my-racism, "(o)ur rights as conservative (sic) Americans are being squashed more and more everyday." A lot of people want to be persecuted in America without doing any of the hard work that comes with being persecuted.

Right-wing video blogger says he's "probably" going to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because he now has health insurance via the Affordable Care Act and Republicans want to take that away. To which I respond: asshole! Either your values mean something or they don't -- and if your values don't inconvenience you, they're not worth having.

Finally, Duke University scientists find a potential cause of Alzheimer's disease, one that may be treatable with a drug, no less. Apparently, in mice, the brain's immune cells go a little haywire and start devouring a nutrient called arginine that helps prevent the formation of the "plaques" in the brain associated with Alzheimer's. Further progress will take time, but it's an encouraging start.

Around the table: special Indiana "religious freedom" fallout edition!

Jeb Bush flip-flops on the Indiana "religious freedom" law, saying -- a mere day after endorsing it -- that "we shouldn't discriminate based on sexual orientation." I immediately thought of Mitt Romney, too -- and folks forget that Mitt Romney expressed two opposite opinions on the Blunt Amendment on the same day.

Arnold Schwarzenegger opines in the Washington Post that the Indiana law "is bad for America and bad for Republicans." It's a fine op-ed, fairly stirring, in fact, but I remember that Mr. Schwarzenegger twice vetoed same-sex marriage bills while Governator, and a stand-up guy would have been more up-front about that.

Carl Gibson cleverly deduces that the "religious freedom" bill, as originally contrived, could have allowed college students to nullify their debt. He takes his Scripture a bit out of context (Ezekiel 18:10-13 says "a man shall surely die" for a litany of sins, not just usury-plus-increase), but that's still nowhere near as bad as the religious follies routinely spewed forth by right-wingers.

For example: Sen. Tom Cotton -- who's really gotten that Senate career off to a bang-up start -- says "we should have a sense of perspective" on the Indiana law, because "in Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay." Setting aside that little Freudian slip where he'd criminalize homosexuality, don't complain how things are here, because it's worse somewhere else is offensively lazy thinking, unbefitting a civilized people who always seek to improve their world.

Finally, for some actual perspective, Kaili Joy Gray at Wonkette runs down the far right's histrionics about That Indiana Pizza Joint that Said It Wouldn't Do Pizzas for Gay Weddings Like Anyone's Ever Asked. A lot of bad people said the PR backlash against said pizza joint was JUST LIKE TEH HITLERZ!!!!, but (sigh, again) shaming and shunning people for their bad behavior is not oppression, and certainly not comparable to turning Jews into soap.

Around the table: internet freedom, corruption in Wisconsin, sentencing reform in New York, Army apologies, bad tax plans, and another right-wing attention hound in Congress.

Supreme Court of India strikes down one section of that nation's Information Technology Act and narrows government interpretation of another. The Court found that Section 66A of that Act allowed for too much state interference in freedom of expression, while the government's interpretation of Section 79 gave it too much power in forcing online platforms to take down content. But the Court still allowed the government to take down entire websites without very much oversight or transparency, so we still have some ways to go on this. Still, it was a good day.

Billionaire Wisconsinite gives over $1.5 million in secret donations to the pro-Walker Wisconsin Club for Growth -- then gets $1.8 million in tax credits over just two years from the Walker administration! Nice work if you can get it! Gov. Walker's spokeshack, Laurel Patrick, employs classic misdirection in the official response -- says Mr. Walker was "not involved" in the decision made by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation he chairs, and anyway Mr. Walker's Democratic predecessor gave Mr. Menard buku tax breaks, too (though of course she does not say whether Mr. Menard made secret donations to pro-Doyle groups). She'll do a heckuva job for President Walker, just like Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino did for Tha Bush Mobb.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) aims to end the state's nearly 200-year-old practice of treating 16-year-olds as adults in criminal proceedings -- but the plan isn't without its problems. Among them: it would make sentences stricter, allow judges to consider previous violent offenses if that person is charged with another one -- and he's using the state budget process to ram these changes through, which is, at the least, not terribly honest. Admittedly, some states do much worse, like try 12-year-olds as adults for serious crimes, which action is a lot like giving up the responsibilities of being civilized people.

Army Undersecretary apologizes to over 600 soldiers exposed to sarin and sulfur mustard gas in Iraq and then given substandard medical treatment afterward. Sounds like the Pentagon used a loophole to fail to report this matter to the Senate, plus they put a gag order on the soldiers exposed to the gas. But, you know, apologies, and bygones. And TEH TERRURIZTZ MUSTZ NOTZ WINZ!!!!!

Citizens for Tax Justice alerts us to Sen. Ted Cruz's support for the flat tax and the so-called FAIR Tax. The former would replace low- and high-income tax brackets with a single tax bracket, the latter would replace the income tax with a national 30% sales tax, and both would give the rich yet another massive, unearned tax cut while slamming middle-class working families hard. Say it with me: Ted Cruz will increase your taxes. Again: Ted Cruz will increase your taxes. Now all we need to do to make Ted toast is get the "liberal" media to keep repeating it -- a difficult task, admittedly, given their utter cowardice in the face of right-wing bluster.

Finally, Texas U.S. House Rep introduces bill that would force Air Force soldiers to say "so help me God" in their oaths, then defends his bill by saying, "Americans have the freedom of religion -- but not freedom from religion." He may be too impressed with his parallel construction to realize he's utterly misrepresented what the First Amendment says, but let's not call this guy "traitor," OK? Because the Constitution sets a high bar for that. Certainly there are plenty of other things we can call him -- like "moron," or, more precisely, "attention hound."

Around the table: the stupid, the greed, the arrogance, it all burns.

House Republicans propose a budget, and boy is it a stinker: it would turn Medicare into a voucher program, again, would turn Medicaid and food stamps into block grant programs that states could spend on things other than Medicaid and food stamps, again, and would repeal the Affordable Care Act, again. And as for "balancing the budget in 10 years," you could do it this year if you brought back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income. You're tempted to say, why do they never learn? -- until you remember that they never learn because weakling Democrats try to work with these monsters, instead of shame them, as civilized people would do.

Robert Reich, in "The iEverything and the Redistributional Imperative," apparently sees modern technology as a job-killing Leviathan. But the corporations who say they're serving 450 million customers with just 50 employees probably aren't saying how many "consultants" and "independent contractors" they use, nor do they tell you how many other corporations they depend on. Also, "advanced sensors, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, big data," et al need service technicians, even if their arrogant paymasters don't think so. I rue the upward redistribution of income as much as anyone, but I think he overstates the role of technology in that trend.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says he'd repeal the Affordable Care Act and "really" reform health care by doing what he did with Medicaid in Florida -- but Bloomberg reminds us that he really, really bollocksed that up, to the point where the state has largely scrapped his "reforms." "Too many plans, too much administration and plenty of patient confusion, along with too little spending," says one pediatric cardiologist, and boy does most of that sound conservative. Well, nobody could have predicted that giving health insurance corporations so much power could possibly lead to those insurers hardly wanting to cover anything! And "letting the consumer decide," when the consumer can't predict the future, also turned out not so great.

On the eve of a tough re-election fight, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares his opposition to a Palestinian state -- which is, believe it or not, a reversal for Mr. Netanyahu. He has, it seems, learned from Messrs. Ahmedinejad, Bush the Lesser, and Berlusconi that when you're in trouble, you double down on your mistakes -- voters still respect the air of decisiveness, especially when your opponents are unimpressive. Haaretz's exit polling showed Mr. Netanyahu's party with a very narrow lead over Mr. Herzog's as of 9 PM EST last night -- though, with 11 parties standing to win seats, he'll need to create a coalition.

Finally, new Republican foreign policy architect Sen. Tom Cotton, a U.S. Senator for all of two months now, informs Face the Nation viewers that "we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance" because "(t)hey already control Teheran and, increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad. And now, Sana’a as well." It is true that Iran controls Teheran, and has for a long time now, in much the same manner as the United States controls Washington, D.C. And why does Little Tommy think Iran has such "regional dominance"? Could it be because his Personal Lord and Savior George W. Bush invaded Iran's main regional rival on ridiculous pretexts? The stupid, it burns.

UPDATE. And Benjamin Netanyahu wins a more decisive victory in the Israeli elections than exit polls had suggested, with his path to forming a new government clearer than expected. It proves the point I'd made, but sigh.

Around the table: concentrating perhaps too much on stupid people for our generally optimistic taste.

The incomparable David Dayen explains how tax amnesty plans for corporations could do worse than simply let corporations off the hook -- they could actually "doom the economy." Long story short: tax amnesties generally don't create jobs (since the corporations that benefited the most from the 2004 amnesty mostly cut jobs and give the money to their executives and shareholders), and they encourage further offshoring of profits, which further reduces the "effective corporate tax rate" and deprives Americans of needed tax revenues. Amazing how President Obama's plan looks like a step forward and a step backward at the same time, but as I said last time, the corporate tax rate for offshore cheaters should be higher.

The Obama Administration announces it will make some small changes to its NSA data-vacuuming program. I suppose forcing the NSA to delete records on innocent Americans collected "incidentally" is a good thing, but you know what a better thing is? Getting a damn warrant every time you do your damn snooping. Then you don't have to have so many rules. You're welcome, President Obama.

"Jeb Bush's Middle Class Speech Was a Historic Shift -- and More of the Same," announces the Washington Post, and once you read the article you'll be irritated at how generous that headline is. At least the article notes that the sort of Republican policies that Mr. Bush described in his "historic" Detroit speech about the gap between rich and poor, the kind he said would consistently yield 4% GDP growth, never yielded 4% GDP growth during the administrations of his father and brother! Let some debate moderator ask about that and I'm sure Mr. Bush will recite a litany of excuses, just like right-wingers say liberals always do.

Noah Millman at The American Conservative notes that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker "has got a really valuable card to play" during the Republican Presidential nomination process -- one that would defend him from charges of "squishiness" resulting from his recent backing down on the University of Wisconsin charter controversy. That card, of course, is Mr. Walker's destruction of public sector unions in Wisconsin, but I actually think Mr. Millman sells Mr. Walker short -- Mr. Walker only won that battle because of his real talent, of being simultaneously firm and soft-spoken while pushing radically reactionary policies, and that's the "card" that will win him the nomination. (But Mr. Millman might be wrong that other candidates won't claim "his policies are bad ones" -- Republicans will say anything to win, after all, and criticizing his policies might damage him in the general election.)

Catherine Thompson at Talking Points Memo provides a helpful timeline delineating how the false connection between vaccines and autism got a foothold in America, to the point where two potential Republican Presidential candidates could make fools of themselves about it in one week. You'll recognize familiar villains (Wakefield, McCarthy), but you may not have remembered the part where both 2008 Presidential nominees wouldn't say that vaccines don't cause autism, which (since the Lancet didn't retract the Wakefield study until 2010) is, I guess, only mostly their fault.

Finally, a Republican legislator in Vermont proposes a new state motto in Latin -- one with historical meaning to Vermont residents and everything! -- and the knuckle-dragging crowd confuses Latin for Latin American and gets all go-back-to-Mexico about it. The article dutifully catalogues some of the worst comments on the matter; future historians may conclude that "I hate having to press 1 for English now" must have been written by someone with calcium deposits the size of walnuts in their index fingers. But the episode doesn't prove that American democracy "is conducted by morons" -- it proves that the emptiest wagon makes the loudest noise. The task of civilized people? Fill those wagons the best we can -- and be louder, together.

Around the table: the completely predictable behavior of right-wing fools, part 232.

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issues report finding that lower-income earners pay a bigger chunk of their earnings in state and local taxes than higher-income earners, and right-wingers react predictably. When you hear BUT WHEREZ TEH FEDERAL TAXEZ!!!!, you have at least two possible responses: 1) "by changing the subject, you're conceding the point?" and 2) "haters gonna hate."

Surprise, surprise, House Republican Transportation Committee Chair says the votes just aren't there to hike the gas tax -- which isn't a big deal to me (I say gas taxes are yet another tax that hit lower-income working families hardest), except that he's talking up another corporate tax amnesty as a way to pay for infrastructure repairs. Anything but tax banksters, apparently.

Elderly black man shopping for coffee creamer at a Florida WalMart attacked by not-as-elderly white man who saw him take a handgun out of his car and holster up, not knowing (or perhaps not caring) that he had a permit to carry concealed. I'm not opposed to citizen involvement in public life, but I sure do wish stupid people wouldn't give citizen involvement in public life a bad name.

10 Virginia McDonald's employees sue corporation for racial discrimination, alleging that they fired several employees because the stores had "too many black people" and/or "didn't fit the profile." The plaintiffs also allege other sexual and/or racial harassment. McDonald's is trying to hide behind "franchising," but if you've come to think the whole concept of franchising is a way to avoid accountability for wrongdoing, you're not alone.

Finally, right-wing talk radio blowhard says President Obama's State of the Union address had secret Muslim messages in it. It sure is a good thing no one in human history has ever used the word "pillar" to mean anything other than the Five Pillars of Islam, or Ms. Rios would be an abject fool.

Around the table: hope for Reading, PA -- and four more helpings of contempt for right-wing fools.

Abby Scher at Dissent describes the efforts of Reading, PA to re-emerge from poverty and desolation as a "solidarity city." Among their plans: embrace localism constructively, use tax breaks to grow small businesses instead of using them to lure large corporations who leave in a few years, and encourage the growth of worker co-ops, public banking, energy efficiency, and urban agriculture. Reading has a crapload of poverty, but their infrastructure is pretty good; I wish them success in their efforts.

Bill Moyers interviews MIT economist Simon Johnson about the seemingly inexplicable attacks from the right against financial services reform. If Mr. Johnson is correct, and President Obama has signaled he'll defend the Affordable Care Act to the death but allow "open season" on Dodd-Frank, it is a shame, because Dodd-Frank is the better bill -- or would be, if the relevant federal agencies would do their jobs and enforce its mandates. Mr. Johnson performs a tremendous public service by reminding us that small banks actually grow the economy by loaning to businesses, while big banks, "with their fundamentally anti-social behavior," play casino games with our economy.

Now we know what taxes Gov. Brownback of Kansas is willing to raise to get his state out of tax-cut hell: taxes on cigarettes and booze. He still wants to move to a "zero income tax" situation, because "(s)tates with no income tax consistently grow faster than" I'm sorry I couldn't type the rest of that without spewing water all over my laptop. And I'm no fan of cigarette and liquor taxes -- some call them sin taxes, but I think taxing addicts isn't particularly compassionate.

Some right-wingers have been spreading the notion that Governors should call out the National Guard to stop gay marriages. One of them asks, not particularly rhetorically, whether "76 percent of the people voting can be wiped out by a single federal court decision?" Well, yes, occasionally -- because, by freaking definition, we don't subject rights to a vote! And we have three branches of government precisely so that any one branch can correct the excesses and abuses of any of the other two! If "76 percent of the people" voted to bring back slavery, a judge could remind everyone of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution! And if 76 percent of the electorate voted to, say, pay all World Net Daily readers no more than $6/hour at their jobs, you can bet any amount of money they'd all be squealing like pigs for a judge to step in.

Finally, Markos Moulitsas (the "Kos" in Daily Kos) levels a slew of entirely appropriate and trenchant criticisms against one New York Times columnist who stands at the ready to defend 30-year-old rich kids who shoot their parents dead when they cut off their allowance. No duh the rich are people too, but my guess is Mr. Leiber thinks he's smarter than everyone else because he tries to have empathy for rich spoiled brats, rather than for the Trayvon Martins of the world, which I suppose he regards as a plebeian taste.

Around the table: an actual victory for justice and civilization! And more right-wing attempts to destroy both.

Good news: the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the execution of Scott Panetti (scheduled to take place yesterday), until it can consider "late-arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter." The 5th Circuit may ultimately allow Texas to carry out the sentence, against a man who tried to call Jesus Christ, John F. Kennedy, and the Pope as witnesses in his murder trial, but every reprieve is a victory for justice and civilization.

Despite Gov. Scott Walker's public pronouncements that he has no interest in turning Wisconsin into a "right-to-work" state, some of his allies have announced plans to do just that. And then Scott Walker can say it was the people who wanted it! But citing declining union membership in public sector unions since Act 10 would be rather like citing declining automobile travel on highways after installing steel spikes on every exit ramp. And if Mary Burke had pledged to veto any budget that didn't repeal Act 10, she'd probably be Governor right now.

Judd Legum at Think Progress reminds us that Missouri could still prosecute Darren Wilson for shooting Michael Brown if "the court having criminal jurisdiction" over the case can find a lawyer willing to prosecute it. Let me guess how the right wing would react to such a development: ZOMG ACTIVIZT JUDGEZ!!!!! (Mr. Legum refers to Missouri state law; I have no idea if New York state has a similar law, now that a grand jury has declined to prosecute Eric Garner's strangler, which decision is, if anything, even more befuddling.)

Matt Wood at FreePress explains why net neutrality won't result in new fees for everyone. One simple answer would be, "well, because we've had net neutrality all these years, and where are these billyuns and billyuns of dollars in fees?" Another simple answer would be, "net neutrality opponents only come up with this kind of ooga-booga now, when they've had eight years?" But Mr. Wood negotiates the actual legal issues patiently and thoroughly.

I shouldn't be spending any time debunking utter rubbish like this, but no, the average "welfare family" does not get $61,000 in annual welfare benefits. How did David Barton come up with this number? Among other things, he counts Medicaid and CHIP spending as if it's actual income going to actual people, and he counts spending on folks above the poverty line as spending on folks below the poverty line. As the Center for Budget Priorities put it, "(p)roviding a frail senior with nursing home care does not mean that the typical low-income family with children is receiving huge amounts of benefits that give it a high standard of living."

Finally, those blessed individuals at Fox and Friends think it would be "great" if you had to pass a civics test before you can vote, apparently blissfully unaware that, well, that was a feature of Jim Crow laws. And I bet their ideal test would require you to say that when Moses handed the Constitution down from Mt. Sinai, he said that it doesn't authorize the government to help anyone, but does demand that government give massive handouts to corporations. A lot of alleged small government types seem to want to give governments new powers to keep people from voting. I wonder why that is.

Around the table: Greg Palast explains the Republican wave, and other stories.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, claims the Republicans took the Senate mainly because of the voter roll purging system used in many Republican states known as "Crosscheck." Crosscheck purports to identify voters who vote illegally in two different states, but mainly it's a database of voters with similar names -- a database that has not only convicted precisely no one of voter fraud, but seems to have the names of a lot of non-white voters on it. Now, you may have noticed that "Crosscheck" hardly put a dent in the numerous progressive ballot initiatives that passed on Election Day 2014. You'd think there'd be a message for Democrats in that -- that they can, as Phil Jackson would say, play above the referees.

Bruce Bartlett writes (in this month's cover story at The American Conservative) that President Obama has governed rather like a Republican. He makes a thorough case, but he also confuses the words "Republican" and "conservative" (i.e., when he conflates conservatism with "hawkishness" or a "harsh anti-drug policy," both of which we might more accurately describe as "reactionary"). And his hope that "conservatives" will one day realize Mr. Obama wasn't so bad might be a vain one. Right-wingers have been spending decades letting their mouths write checks their asses can't cash. What can they do from there but double down?

Study links crops modified genetically to withstand the herbicide glyphosate to 22 diseases, including "infertility, immune dysregulation," and "accelerated aging." We'll see if others can reproduce the study's results, but I do wish the pro-GMO crowd -- that is, the folks who insist that opposing GMOs is like denying climate change -- would acknowledge that engineering food merely to withstand more and more dangerous pesticides is a terrible way to feed the world, even if it is a very good way to redistribute wealth upward from small farmers to big corporate ones.

Chemical leak at a Texas DuPont plant kills four employees -- and the state has cited the plant for environmental violations over two dozen times. This plant has been fined plenty of times, too, though the fines hardly rate a blip against the parent corporation's profits; perhaps a pair of lawsuits filed by two family members will show up in DuPont's budget. Personal to those who oppose large fines because of TEH SMALL BIZNIZZIZ!!!!!: how many small businesses kill people like this?

Study finds link between homosexuality and two areas of the human genome in 409 pairs of gay brothers, lending the strongest scientific support yet to the notion that folks are born gay. Anyone who thinks of the crap kids put up with when they come out would know people don't "choose" to be gay, but it's still nice to have some science behind it.

Finally, Stanford University scientists develop hand-pads that help you climb glass walls. The pads may actually outclass the geckos that inspired them -- and they likely also outclass the Department of Defense's much larger hand pads. Stanford's researchers hope to use them in outer space, where intricate maneuvering, as you might expect, is a little dicey. I wish them the best.

Around the table: now, with even *more* bile!

The Economic Policy Institute finds that a $10.10/hour minimum wage would save our government $7.6 billion annually in public assistance programs like TANF and food stamps. See? A higher minimum wage is not only fiscally conservative, it's also pro-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, which I suspect informs the support a higher minimum wage has received from conservatives like those at, well, The American Conservative. But most right-wingers would rather keep complaining about all the help they have to give to Those People and pretend that making $2/hour back in 1967 is sooooo much worse than making $7.25/hour now, as if a little thing called inflation doesn't exist.

"Do You Ever Shop Anywhere? Congratulations: Your Data Will Be Hacked," announces The Consumerist. And admittedly the numbers aren't on your side, since Home Depot and Target have been hacked this year and that accounts for over 100 million credit card numbers, but all is not so lost: Visa and Master Card will be rolling out encrypted-chip technology (you know, like the rest of the developed world has!) over the next three years, and there are many things you can do to ameliorate financial loss due to hacking, like checking your credit card account several times weekly. Which reminds me...

Jad Mouawad at the New York Times instructs us as to why a travel ban wouldn't help us fight ebola. It goes rather beyond the fact that a travel ban on West African nations wouldn't have stopped Mr. Duncan from getting to Texas, given that he flew in from Belgium -- a travel ban would actually make it harder to track folks who might have the disease, and it would make it harder to get aid workers into West Africa. But please, by all means, let's just do whatever John Boehner says, even though he's an expert in nothing.

Another day, another "liberal" media outlet botching a fact-checking assignment about ISIS operatives supposedly already being "caught" in Texas. And boy it sure is a good thing that former Bush Mobb House Liberal Matthew Dowd didn't want to "conflate" "ebola" with ISIS, which of course can never be done by mentioning them at the same time! And if liberals were as hard-headed as Duncan Hunter the Younger was about allegations he couldn't defend, no "liberal" media punditoid would defend them by saying they "sincerely believed" what they said.

File this one under "one more thing Bruce Braley will be too polite to mention in his campaign ads": Iowa Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst thinks we have to "educate" Americans that they can "be self-sufficient," that "(t)hey don’t have to rely on the government to be the do-all, end-all for everything they need and desire." Plus the whole process will be very "painful," though much less so for her, I reckon. But don't play her game: just remember that, in the end, government belongs to us, and so when they talk about their fear that government will "do things for people," they really fear that we the people will do things for ourselves.

Finally, Wisconsin Republican U.S. House candidate alleges that the Supreme Court stayed Wisconsin's notorious voter ID law because they want Scott Walker to lose so he can't run for President in 2016. Setting aside that Rick Santorum lost his last Senate race by 18 points (as an incumbent!) yet was the clear runner-up in 2012's Republican Presidential primaries, I did actually give this matter serious thought -- does the Court actually want someone even worse who could still get elected? I wondered -- but I couldn't think of anyone worse than Scott Walker who could actually get elected President. I also found that this Dan Sebring character ran against incumbent WI-4 Rep. Gwen Moore in 2010 and 2012, too, peaking with 30% of the vote in 2010, so folks, there's just no there there.

Around the table: an unusual amount of good news, and an unusual amount of news about Senate races.

Good news, everyone! Malala Yousafzai, the now 17-year-old woman who wouldn't quit school even after the Taliban shot her in the head, will share this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Nice to know we're going to give these things to people who actually promote peace, versus giving them to U.S. Presidents who have the good fortune not to be George W. Bush and who then launch unilateral, unconstitutional wars.

And more good news: the U.S. Supreme Court has put Wisconsin's Voter ID law on hold for the 2014 election, likely because the law has been struck and restored enough times that it would cause significant confusion on Election Day. And yet Wisconsin's Attorney General says he'll try to find ways to implement it anyway, because he just knows it's Constitutional. Just as you already suspected, right-wingers only love the rule of law when it assures their victory -- when it doesn't, they look to obliterate it.

In a statement widely interpreted as pro-net neutrality, President Obama tells a California audience that he opposes "creating two or three or four tiers of internet." You're well within your rights to ask: if that's true, then why did he appoint Tom Wheeler to be FCC Chair?

Wisconsin Attorney General candidate says that if Wisconsin still had an interracial marriage ban, he'd have to defend it, distasteful as that may be, because "it's not my job to pick and choose." Actually, for as long as his office would have more work than it could reasonably complete, it is his job to "pick and choose." And who wants to bet that Mr. Schimel would prioritize precisely those matters his biggest donors would want him to?

The South Dakota Senate race gets even more fascinating, as we learn that independent (and former three-term Republican) Larry Pressler, who had been surging in polls, has taken the homestead deduction for maintaining his "principal residence" in Washington, D.C., meaning he doesn't live in South Dakota by any stretch of the imagination. Non-residence was the death blow to Richard Lugar and may yet be the death blow to Pat Roberts, but do Mr. Pressler's opponents attack him, when each of them knows his attacks might help the other? (After watching these clips, I actually feel like we'd be missing out if Mr. Pressler lost this race. I must be getting soft in my old age.)

Finally, Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes refuses to tell the Louisville Courier-Journal whether she voted for Barack Obama for President. It's not as "painful" to watch as advertised (she doesn't seem particularly rattled by the question), and Chuck Todd's histrionics about "disqualification" are utterly moronic (apparently being a complete asshole doesn't "disqualify" Mitch McConnell in Mr. Todd's eyes!), but she should have just said she voted for Mr. Obama, which is what everyone thinks anyway, and which isn't as ridiculous a proposition as the "liberal" media would have you believe, since Mr. Obama received nearly 38% of Kentucky's votes even in 2012. Instead, she's fumbled away the momentum Mr. McConnell just handed to her after he was very, very testy with a sports radio show last week. Heckuva job, Ms. Grimes!

Around the table: lessons about criticism, citizenship, and good politics.

Greg Sargent describes how Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is playing up his support for expanding Social Security benefits on the eve of his re-election battle. What a shame Mr. Sargent writes for an audience that doesn't seem to understand how expanding Social Security could get conservative votes.

Josh Hoxie explains how the Republicans' latest attempt at Estate Tax "reform" actually represents just another income tax cut for the rich. Long story short: the old, well-functioning Estate Tax didn't hit the super-rich that hard on capital gains taxes, but the "Death Tax Repeal Act" would allow them to avoid both the Estate Tax and those capital gains taxes. It's just obscure enough to pass -- unless enough of us speak up about it.

Juan Cole reminds us that our government cut food stamps by $8.7 billion this year, while spending upwards of $18 billion on the undeclared, unconstitutional war on ISIS. While I'm not the biggest fan of comparing one budgetary item to another as if they're the only two items in any budget, I share his outrage that right-wingers pretend food stamps make all governments everywhere broke, while stupid war spending (and stupid intelligence spending, I might add -- we've spent an awful lot of money not to see ISIS coming) never breaks any bank, even as war spending's alleged positive effect on economies isn't very apparent anymore.

Democratic lawmakers demand that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation extend operating hours in rural areas so more voters can get the voter ID they now need to vote. Many rural DOTs are open only two days a week, which was probably fine until Voter ID laws came along. Note Gov. Walker's proclamation that "we've actually seen fewer people seeking free IDs recently than we've seen in the past couple years," and admittedly if you have those DOTs open only two days a week and a judge has only lately upheld Wisconsin's Voter ID law, you might "see" that. The main reason Scott Walker keeps winning, though, is that no journalist challenges him when he says things like this.

ProPublica looks at a federal government website revealing pharmaceutical and medical device corporation payments to doctors -- and finds it "virtually unusable." Key issues: no search box on the front page, utterly confusing links, and too much technical jargon, plus the site occasionally just doesn't work. And the corporation that designed it is the very same corporation that led the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov last year! Honestly, I didn't see that coming. You'd think I'd know better by now.

Finally, a Colorado state Board of Education hack defends efforts to replace critical thinking with unthinking patriotism in the AP History exams by saying the United States "ended slavery" "voluntarily." I guess she wants you to focus on the phrase "voluntarily, at great sacrifice," but the qualifier is nonsense, since about half the country did not "volunteer" to end slavery but literally fought to the death to keep it. And since when is it true that you only love something if you never say anything bad about it? Being unable to take criticism is a bad quality in a friend, and it's a bad quality in a citizen, too.

Around the table: another corporate "right" free of responsibilities! And other stories.

The Missouri state legislature mulls a constitutional amendment ensuring the "right to farm" -- not so much the right to grow your own food in your own yard as the right to pen up your animals in inhumane conditions and use antibiotics liberally and use genetically-modified organisms. In other words, it's another "right" that's not really for farmers, but for big corporations. Don't they know their Russell Kirk? With rights come responsibilities -- including the responsibility not to poison your customers and their planet so that you can make a few more bucks today.

Speaking of GMOs, Neil deGrasse Tyson has weighed in on their side, telling anti-GMO folks like myself to "chill out." His reasoning? That we've been "genetically modifying" organisms for thousands of years, and doing it in the lab is no different. But doing it in the lab is a lot different, because you can do it a lot more quickly, before you've had a chance to think out all the consequences -- something nature helped us do before we took it into the lab. Also, corporations do too much genetic modifying not to increase yields or make more nutritious food, but to withstand corporate pesticides, which is very short-sighted.

Josh Barro looks at "pension smoothing." What is "pension smoothing"? Pension smoothing is when Congress allows corporations to delay payments into their pension plans, which induces corporations to report more profits and pay more taxes -- well, at least in theory, given the ease with which corporations can evade taxes -- and since Congress only looks at the next decade when measuring the cost of legislation, they never count the true cost of the lost revenue from corporations having to make up lost ground with larger pension payments years down the line. Meaning it doesn't raise income tax rates, hurts workers, and raises revenue at-least-on-paper -- it's a perfect Congressional trifecta!

Don't look now, but Americans for Prosperity has set up a branch in South Dakota, where there just so happens to be a four-way race for U.S. Senator in 2014. Will they protect the favorite, Republican ex-Governor Mike Rounds? Or will they support his challenger from the right, one Gordon Howie? Just kidding; if I were a betting man, I'd lay money on the former proposition, which won't be tough, because Mr. Rounds is no "moderate" (though Mr. Howie, at least, seems to have a sense of humor). I'm surprised that both Democrat Rick Weiland and independent Larry Pressler both want them to stay out -- seems that running against AFP might be a boon to either one of them.

Finally, American Family Association personality says she thinks Congress should impeach President Obama, in part, over the release of a Guantánamo detainee implicated in the Benghazi attack, except that Mr. Bush actually released said detainee. But remember, kids: Barack Obama has whipped up all of this impeachment talk by himself! Will right-wingers tell us next that Sandy Rios is actually an undercover Democratic operative? If so, we won't discuss it here, because we'll never speak of her again.

Around the table: it's *your* fault you're losing your jobs, factory workers! And other follies.

Good news, everyone! Uganda's Constitutional Court overturns the Parliament's recent anti-gay legislation, making it "dead as a doornail," in the words of one of the bill's challengers. Of course, the Court overturned the law because Parliament didn't have a quorum of legislators when the bill passed, and not because it felt gay folks' rights were being trampled, but the more gay-friendly members of Parliament could derail future attempts to pass it by being "unavailable" to vote, and in Uganda, that may be the most courageous thing they can do. And if you're one of those who pressured Uganda, you did good.

Connecticut Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley suggests to paper mill workers that it's actually their fault their factory is closing. But of course he can't defend this thesis -- met with the factory worker who says he and his coworkers "work their butts off," Mr. Foley can but meekly agree. It gets better: investment firm OpenGate Financial owns the factory, which is actually doing quite well, but is closing the factory so it can sell off the factory's equipment, which will make OpenGate some money, but which actually kills jobs. For everybody but folks like Tom Foley, this demonstrates how our economy actually opposes work.

Daily Kos diarist asserts that "Obama Has Rope-a-Doped-These-GOP-Clowns-Hard." Which may be true, but I still wish more would come of it than a few decent ideas moderate Republicans would have proposed back in the day. The author does stock some choice slabs of prose in his rant, like when he wonders if "the GOP is so amazingly incompetent that they have become a Sideshow Bob trapped in a field full of rakes that they have set there themselves."

Utah-based language learning center fires worker for blogging about "homophones," saying he'd given the impression his employer espoused a "gay agenda." As usually happens in These Interesting Times, reality outruns satire, and it's not nearly as funny. Well, OK, hearing the boss try to defend his move by saying that a lot of his corporation's customers aren't ready for "complicated concepts" like homophones was kinda funny, if not Kids-in-the-Hall funny. But what will he do when it's time to teach homonyms?

Finally, a Royal College of Art graduate has created a synthetic "leaf" that can turn water, light, and carbon dioxide into oxygen. The article seems more excited that it could help us explore and colonize space than that it could help us clean the air right here on Earth. For better and for worse, I bet most of us are more concerned about that.

Around the table: "one missile, one terrorist," and other follies.

Israeli missile kills eight Palestinians at a Gaza cafe as they were preparing to watch the World Cup. An Israeli colonel later said the missile aimed at a single terrorist, which is like trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer. I'm not sure which is worse -- that they might be telling the truth, or that they don't care if everyone knows it's a lie.

Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) introduces a bill called the Stop the EPA Act, which would require both Houses of Congress to approve each and every rule the EPA makes. Again: Congress has already empowered the EPA to make rules, so this bill is like demanding 10th, 11th, and 12th innings because you're three runs down at the end of the 9th. Can't some Democrat beat Mr. Graves in 2014 by calling him "pro-pollution" in ads? It's not like Missouri's 6th is that red.

Ho hum, Duke University study finds that Congressional candidates tend to be moderates. The study essentially finds that Republicans as far right as Paul Ryan run for Congress nearly ten times as often as moderate Republicans, while Democrats as far left as Nancy Pelosi run five times as often as moderate Democrats. But Nancy Pelosi is a corporate Democrat, and thus hardly a foil for Mr. Ryan -- in fact, if the study used, say, Alan Grayson as the Ryan foil, we might not find such a disparity for Democrats. We might even suspect that Republicans run so far right to pull Democrats further right, thus locating the "center" where the right used to be.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), addressing a panel on women's issues, says that "men do tend to talk about things at a higher level" and should "bring it down to a woman's level." I'm willing to grant that Ms. Ellmers actually meant something different, but she didn't say something different -- and claiming it's "both offensive and sexist to take my words and redefine them to imply that women need to be addressed at a lower level" exhausts my patience. I do not live in a world where "bring it down" means "bring it down to a higher level."

Finally, Joe Conason writes an op-ed entitled "Borderline Behavior: GOP Demands Action, Blocks Solutions, and Always Complains." That's not merely a succinct summary of the Republican m.o., it's a terrific pun on "borderline"! But hang around for Sen. Ron Johnson (E-WI) telling the world that he's sure it doesn't cost $3.7 billion to deal with undocumented children at the border because he's been on Orbitz and you can fly a kid back to central America for $200! Ron Johnson: he gives the "Citizen Legislator" a bad name.

Around the table: the Kansas "experiment" and other tales.

Get your surprised face ready: a Washington Post investigation finds that nine of 10 folks caught up in the NSA's giant data dragnet are not in any way targets of any NSA investigation. Nearly half of the folks caught up were American citizens or residents, and the Post talks to a few good folks who understand why they were caught up, but don't understand why the NSA had to hold on to their private communications. The reason, of course, is that different elites get in the driver's seat every few years, and they all have different enemies they'd like to turn into "terrorists," and one day that "enemy" could be you or I.

I did not know, until Citizens for Tax Justice told me, that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback called his cut-taxes-on-the-rich-but-raise-them-on-the-poor-and-then-pray-for-more-revenues plan -- the one currently blowing up in his and his state's face -- an "experiment." One thing I know about people: they just love being an unwilling or unwitting part of some politician's "experiment." The ways of God may be mysterious, but sometimes I find it especially difficult to see what holy plan would be served by Sam Brownback's re-election -- until I imagine the sight of Paul Davis refusing to commit to repealing the Brownback experiment when a debate moderator asks him, thus sealing the election for Mr. Brownback and teaching Democrats yet another lesson in the political benefits of courage.

Alex Park at Mother Jones points out a major problem with the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision from the perspective of settled corporate law. Long story short: the owner of a corporation and a corporation are actually separate "persons" from the law's perspective, which is a major reason corporate owners don't very often go to jail for corporate malfeasance -- but by suggesting that a closely-held corporation's owners can infuse a corporation with "religious beliefs," the Court has severely undermined that distinction, such that corporate owners could one find themselves in jail for what they make their corporations do. Then again, the Court could simply await the chance to rule out that notion -- they don't even need to argue the point in a particularly cogent manner, which is fortunate for them.

The New York Court of Appeals rules that two small New York towns can ban oil and gas drillers from operating within their borders using local zoning laws. And conservatives all over America are proclaiming this as a boon for local autonomy, a victory for the notion that the smallest group knows best how to make decisions affecting that group? I kid, of course -- well, actual conservatives may be praising the development, but who can hear them over the din of corporate reactionaries calling themselves "conservative" on TV, radio, and internet?

Finally, my first reaction to a tale of right-wing diaper-loaded brats actually modifying their trucks to spew out more pollution was "gosh, what a bunch of assholes!" One of my readers' reaction was a bit more instructive: "because apparently only liberals breathe air." But is "coal rolling" really as big a thing as the sudden spurt of media coverage suggests? A 700% increase in "rolling coal" Google searches over three years sounds more meaningful than it is -- after all, over that same time, this blog's Facebook following has increased over 7000 percent, and that means our work is world-famous, right?

Around the table: with special guest star Zombie Jacques Plante.

PR Watch reports on how well Wisconsin Gov. Walker's brainchild, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has done on Mr. Walker's stated goal of creating 250,000 jobs in the state. Long story short: not good -- the WEDC has created a little over 5,000 jobs in FY 2012 and 2013, but in its reports to the state legislature it trots out five-digit numbers that count expected jobs in addition to actual jobs created or retained. In other news, I expect a million dollars to appear in my bank account sometime this week. Should I budget based on that? I suppose Mr. Walker would say I should.

Dean Baker notices that the "liberal" media seems very, very concerned with coal miners losing their jobs due to the EPA's proposed carbon emissions limits, and wonders why, when the "liberal" media doesn't care about jobs lost to trade deficits. Of course we all know the answer -- because the "liberal" media's corporate paymasters stand to lose money from the EPA limits and gain money from "free" trade -- but still, it's nice to have the hypocrisy noted.

Oregon U.S. Senate candidate Monica Wehby (R) actually tries to tell folks that the harassment charges her ex-husband and ex-boyfriend filed against her suggest that she'll fight hard for Oregon voters. Of course there's a difference between being a fighter for people and a fighter of people, but why would we expect modern-day Republicans to recognize that?

ProPublica explains how the "hyperspecialization" in youth sports ruins both the sports and the kids playing them. Basically, when you demand that kids be just like adults and be the best they can be at one sport for eight or nine months a year, instead of letting them be kids and try different things (which also helps them master different things more quickly), you get a lot of injuries, not to mention burned-out kids. And I wish Zombie Jacques Plante was around to tell young goalies that the butterfly style only gets you an early hip replacement.

Finally, Oklahoma state House candidate says "we would totally be in the right" to stone homosexuals to death, saying it "was done in the old testament under a law that came directly from God." And he said all this on Facebook, where nothing can ever be unsaid. Anyway, Leviticus 20 prescribes the death penalty for all sorts of things in addition to homosexuality -- cursing your parents, adultery, sleeping with your stepmother or daughter-in-law, sleeping with both your wife and her mother, bestiality -- so you have to wonder, as usual, why homosexuality seems to bother him the most.

Around the table: solar panel users are FREE RIDERZ!!!!! and other absurdities.

Right Wing Watch notes that Tea Party clowns have begun to promote a massive demonstration ominously called Operation American Spring, scheduled for May 16 at the Mall in D.C. But Operation American Spring's organizers have openly called for a military coup against our center-right President, which no liberal did in the aftermath of Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election, or of any of the subsequent humiliations Mr. Bush visited upon our great land. I say if these clowns want the Democrats to win back the House and expand their Senate majority, then they ought to go ahead and throw their little pity party. (Yes, even if they're all armed, it's still a pity party.)

The Los Angeles Times notices the right-wing war on solar power users. "If you are using the grid and benefiting from the grid, you should pay for it," says one right-wing spokeshack. You mean like solar power users already do when they have to draw energy from the grid? And don't other users benefit from the power solar users put into the grid, which utilities can presumably resell? Why does any "liberal" media outlet even quote such offensively stupid crap? And how, ultimately, is it somehow evil for people, and not corporations, to create electricity?

Robert Reich describes a California bill, SB 1372, which would hike state taxes on corporations that have a high CEO-to-worker-pay ratio (and cut taxes for corporations with a low CEO-to-worker-pay ratio, bet the "liberal" media doesn't report that part). I think the bill's a bit roundabout for my taste -- why not just hike taxes on millionaire income? But the Chamber of Commerce naturally calls it a "job-killer" (are those the only two words of English their spokeshacks know?), though we might more accurately describe the Chamber of Commerce a "job-killer" when it sinks tens of millions of dollars into political ads instead of, you know, hiring people to make stuff, like our grandparents did.

Right-wing "Christian" Ralph Reed can't say for sure whether a kid is better off in an orphanage or being adopted by a same-sex couple. "I think the social science is just simply not in yet on same-sex couples," he said. He had just said the "social science" was in to say one-man-one-woman families were better, but never mind -- "the social science is just simply not in yet" is pretty weak tea, and only reminds us that he's the guy who invented compassionate bigotry. He even makes Cokie Roberts look good. Indeed, you have to wonder if that was the idea.

Finally, both of South Carolina's U.S. Senators and the local U.S. House Rep. skipped the unveiling of a statue of an anti-segregationist U.S. District Judge in Charleston. They all claimed scheduling conflicts -- the U.S. House Rep in question, Mark Sanford, said he was in Virginia, leading one to ask if Virginia is the new "Appalachian trail." I suppose they could also all claim they have re-election battles to fight this year, but then you'd have to ask why they would all think honoring an anti-segregation judge would cost them votes.

Around the table: the struggle to detect signs of intelligent life in corporations and government.

Ho hum, Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the latest Ryan Budget gives millionaires an average tax cut of over $200,000. Which they'll then turn around and use to create jobs, right? Sure -- just like they do whenever they get a massive tax cut. Which means "never," since the rich are very much like you and me in that they hoard a windfall when they get it.

Richard Kirsch describes some of the challenges unions face in organizing retail and fast-food workers today. Key finding: large corporations are extremely powerful, even "more powerful than governments," but they distribute their workers over hundreds of sites and unions can really only organize one at a time, giving said unions very little power to change what a corporation does. That's if it succeeds, of course -- workers in retail and fast food turn over a lot, which makes getting half the workers to sign cards that much harder.

Tennessee pols see the gnarled, ringed hands of the Koch brothers behind a bill restricting municipalities from creating mass transit programs using dedicated lanes -- you know, like the one Nashville just so happens to be trying to build right now to shorten commuting times. The good news? Sunshine on this bill might kill it, as it killed Tea Party efforts to kill solar power efforts in Georgia (though at least one other Tea Party group fought on the side of the angels during that battle).

Speaking of the Koch brothers, their front group Americans for Prosperity is dropping over a half-mil on an ad nominally aimed at incumbent Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor (D), featuring a speaker who seems to have no idea if he has health insurance or not. See, what you do here is you all get together and laugh at this clown, who seems to think his ignorance is someone else's fault, and whose wife, perhaps not coincidentally, narrated another AFP anti-Affordable Care Act spot broadcast in Arkansas that reporters found to be, well, not necessarily in line with the facts.

Hobby Lobby -- the corporation trying to assert before the Supreme Court that it has the "religious freedom" to deny its workers contraception coverage -- has pumped over $70 million of its employee retirement plan into mutual funds investing in corporations making abortion drugs and contraception pills and devices. Hobby Lobby's Glorious Leaders no doubt stand ready to tell us that they have no control over what the mutual fund does with its money, which I knew was bunkum even before I heard of the Ave Maria Fund. I guess actual people have an easier time living their values than fictional ones.

Finally, scientists have found an ocean under the icy surface of one of Saturn's moons, making that moon a candidate to support life. That life may not be very lively, since Enceladus is, like many of Saturn's moons, quite small and quite cold, and the ocean underneath its icy surface is about the size of Lake Superior. Still, it's a start.

Action: a bogus "religious" "freedom" bill in Arizona, and keeping Amazon from handing over your customer info to the CIA.

First things first. Arizona's state legislature just passed SB 1062, which would let businessfolk and government workers discriminate against gay folks if they presume to hold a "sincere religious belief" that Leviticus is anything but a book about taking precautions with blood. You'd think Arizona's legislators wouldn't want so much attention after SB 1070, the nefarious "show me your papers" bill, but, apparently, they never learn. The bill now goes to Governor Brewer for approval, and both the ACLU and the People for the American Way help you urge Gov. Brewer to veto the bill. Is it any good, anymore, telling people that their religious "freedoms" don't get to trample on other people's actual freedoms -- that we all have "sincere beliefs" we don't automatically impose upon everyone else because, well, we're not more important than everyone else? Here's something that might make Gov. Brewer listen: businesses that exercise the "freedom" to have gay-free lunch counters will bring bad PR on themselves from all over America, and thus cost the state money. I hate to make it about money, but I also like to get the job done.

Meanwhile, Amazon recently got $600 million to provide "cloud computing" services to the CIA. And Amazon currently provides cloud computing services to you, if you're a customer. See where there might be a problem? Our government loves collecting information about us, and they might well use the "in" they've now got with Amazon to pressure them (or perhaps "pressure" them) to hand over information about what you're buying and watching. I've heard from good folks that "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear," but let's say you've watched the AMC show Breaking Bad on Amazon Prime. You're not doing anything wrong, right? But can you foresee the CIA asking for lists of people who've watched that show, because they think some of them might want to learn how to become a meth kingpin or build a wheelchair bomb? Can you foresee the CIA one day becoming so desperate for results that they harass or torture folks on that list until they confess to anything? If you can foresee any of that, then Roots Action helps you tell Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to promise his corporation won't provide customer info to the CIA.

Around the table: folly, folly, folly, and, also, folly.

Tennessee state legislature also pushes an anti-gay discrimination bill in the name of "religious freedom," one that would allow businesses like wedding vendors to "turn away" gay folks. Money quote from state legislator: "“I think it’s more wrong to force people to violate their conscience" than to protect gays from discrimination. But businesses provide a service, and once you're providing a service to other people who have rights just like you, your "conscience" doesn't reign supreme. Next up: state legislatures seek to nullify the 13th and 14th Amendments because the Bible tolerates slavery, and, you know, some people might have sincere religious beliefs about that.

"Horror at the world's largest solar farm days after it opens as it is revealed panels are SCORCHING birds that fly over them," screeches the headline on this London Daily Mail article. But we're looking at a giant plant of 300,000 mirrors reflecting sunlight to a giant water tower, not the photovoltaic panels you're likely more familiar with. I bet a lot of folks are going to look at the headline and think ZOMG SOLAR POWER KILLZ!!!!! And plenty of environmentalists who'd never get a second look from the "liberal" media will suddenly get exposure when they oppose solar power (and wind power, for that matter).

Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the man who gives Everyman a bad name, has taken a union job at a Chrysler plant. And he promptly took to Facebook about being "required" to join the union (which isn't true, actually -- he's just required to pay dues) and then seemed to defend private unions, saying they represent "a choice between employees and employers." So how does he really feel? Oh, who knows or cares? In any case, he's gotten the memo from his real paymasters that private unions are OK until all the public unions are gone, after which the private unions will most decidedly not be OK.

George Zimmerman, arguably the most hated man in America and for good reason, claims that "(t)he government, the president, the attorney general" or somebody has made him a "scapegoat," not that he can say what he'd be a scapegoat for because "I don’t know what they’re thinking or why they’re thinking it, all I know is that they’re doing it." Usually you can tell "what they're thinking or why they're thinking it" by what they're doing. Seriously, what a diaper-loaded brat -- I hope people point to him on the TV (where he always is anymore!) and tell their children that this is how not to be.

Penny rants: breaking the back of hypocrisy since 2005.

Uh oh: Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell's primary challenger, Matt Bevin, has been crushing Mr. McConnell for his support of the 2008 financial services bailout -- but it turns out Mr. Bevin's firm itself praised said bailout in a letter to its investors. Only "don't call it a bailout," the letter said, though it did not follow with "it's been here for years." It gets better: Mr. Bevin's firm also praised the stimulus! Mr. Bevin's spokeshack first said his opinions about matters bailout- and stimulus-related hadn't changed, despite the written evidence that they had, and then said that Mr. Bevin's signing off on these statements was a "formality" that didn't imply that he approved of them. She can call that a "formality" if she likes, but the SEC calls that Mr. Bevin's obligation under the law, which tells me that Mr. Bevin's just another one who thinks laws are only for other people. This is bad, bad news for Mr. Bevin, unless he can convince large numbers of voters in Kentucky that his approval of the bailout matters less than the establishment press "opposing" him. Even that's unlikely -- folks really, really don't like the establishment press, but they really, really hate the bailout.

A Republican-dominated Kansas House passes a massive anti-gay discrimination bill, one which allows private citizens and state officials to refuse to serve gays if they hold a "sincere religious belief" that homosexuality is an abomination. Then a quite-justified storm of criticism followed -- some of it coming from the state business community -- and the state Senate subsequently announced that, well, the bill has problems and needs a bit of rewriting. (First, I suppose, they'll have to figure out who wrote the bill, since the House Speaker doesn't seem to know for sure.) Folks are mainly mad because the bill would discriminate against gays in more or less the way Jim Crow laws discriminated against black folks, and while I share that anger, my anger also goes much deeper: I'm so, so sick and tired of bigots claiming they're being "discriminated against" because the law won't let their bigotry run roughshod over other people's real rights, and I'm so, so, so sick and tired of the weakest people in America getting attention with their whining and their tantrums whenever the world around them actually becomes a little kinder and gentler than they'd care to be. So I propose that, in the absence of a mechanism to eject Kansas from the union, we no longer call it Kansas. I propose, from now on, that we call it Flyover Country instead.

Around the table: includes more anti-Obama lies debunked like I should be spending any damn time doing that.

Apparently, not only did the CBO not say that the Affordable Care Act would kill jobs, the CBO said the Affordable Care Act would actually reduce unemployment. How? Roughly, the people who will benefit most from the Affordable Care Act will have more money to spend on stuff, which means businesses will need more workers to make that stuff. You know how that works, even if Republicans don't (or pretend not to).

Beware, good citizens, of this corporatist meme I hadn't heard about before: calling bills aiming to block local governments from banning pesticides or genetically-modified food "right to farm" bills. A right for whom, one wonders? After all, I know hundreds of folks growing tomatoes in their backyards who'd just love to get their hands on some Frankenseed. Kidding, of course -- nobody wants to recreate Monsanto's "achievements" in their backyards, and only big corporations "need" the "right" to contaminate.

Uh oh: Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts apparently doesn't actually spend very much time in Kansas, and folks (including at least one primary challenger) are starting to notice. He might not get "Lugared," though -- he's tacking noticeably to the right, he doesn't have Richard Mourdock fighting him in the primary, and (people forget this for some reason!) he hasn't committed an act of apostasy to the banksters, as Mr. Lugar did when he voted in favor of capping some of their fees.

Republicans who dig out the AMURIKAN CAESAR!!! line against President Obama may want to consider that he's issued fewer Executive Orders than any President over the last 100 years except for Bush the Better. They may also want to consider that not getting your way on every last little thing builds character, or that stamping your feet about a President exercising authority Congress delegates him makes you look like a diaper-loaded brat.

Finally, the House Armed Services Committee concludes that the Obama Administration did not order our military to "stand down" during the Benghazi terrorist attack, nor could our military have done very much to change the outcome of that attack. Next up on Fox News: how Barack Obama got to Buck McKeon. After all, the House Armed Services Committee Chair is retiring; do we dare call that mere coincidence?

Around the table: right-wing values, our values, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny.

Richard Kirsch reminds us that when Republicans vote to cut food stamps and Medicare and such, those are "statements of values." He also reminds us that right-wingers believe "it’s an infringement on a person’s freedom to be taxed to take care of someone else" -- but actual conservatives (versus the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative") don't necessarily believe that, since they also know how (for example) the interstate highway system works. (As an aside, boy am I sick of knuckledraggers calling it "free health care." Even single-payer wouldn't be free -- you'd pay for it, as a taxpayer. Is that why it's free? Because you pay for it?)

Time magazine "helps" you "understand" our ongoing cold war with Iran with a helpful graphic -- that begins in 1979. Because, of course, if it didn't directly affect us in the form of (to think of a hypothetical situation) hostage-taking at an embassy, it didn't really happen. Remember this timeline from CNN from a few years ago, which also started in 1979? It's like the "liberal" media never, ever learns. More likely, that's just what they want us to think.

Kentucky's "KYnect" health exchange -- entirely state-run, but set up with funding from, and under the authority of, the Affordable Care Act -- has a great first day, enrolling almost 3,000 individuals and families in health care coverage. Sadly, not everyone in Kentucky proves well-informed about KYnect -- one thinks it was "defunded," while another "hope(s)" "it beats Obamacare." They probably want government to keep its hands off Medicare, too.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (S-PA) thinks it was "inappropriate" for his Administration's lawyers to compare gay marriage with children marrying -- but then remarks that "a much better analogy would have been brother and sister." I've got a "much better analogy" for Tom Corbett: he's a lot like that ancient, bitter uncle who has a few too many and then thinks everything he says is funny and brilliant.

And finally, some good news: remember that 15-year-old rape victim whom the Maldives government was preparing to flog in public in March? Well, the Maldives High Court overturned the sentence last month. Note well that a global shame campaign conducted by Avaaz (in which you might have participated) just so happened to precede the High Court's decision. We might have helped save only one person, but often that's where the arc of justice starts.

Around the table: starring a now-infamous Congressman and a relatively famous conservative with doubts about Republicans.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) suggests that the shutdown is "my idea of fun." You know what my idea of fun would be? Running that line in negative TV ads for eight weeks in the fall of 2014 until David Schweikert loses his re-election bid to either a dead guy or a shrub.

Now the shutdown posturing has even Rod Dreher thinking of voting Democrat, "because it has gotten to the point where they don’t unnerve me like the Republicans." And he throws Russell Kirk at the Republicans, just like any sane and normal person would do -- even declares Republicans are not conservatives, but radicals, and yes I got there seven years before he did, but I take the Parable of the Prodigal Son seriously. Still, he gives Rand Paul too much credit -- Mr. Paul's "leadership" on foreign policy and civil liberties has given us bupkus so far, and that may be by design.

Meanwhile, Mother Jones instructs us in re who the shutdown screws the hardest. Really, suppress the urge to say yeah, poor people, what else is new and read the whole thing, lest you miss the part where 94 percent of the EPA gets furloughed. Or the part where OSHA won't be able to inspect factories. Or the part where GIPSA won't be able to do food inspections. But, yeah, WIC funding drying up is still bad for poor people.

Finally, the New York Times reports about the growing textile and apparel manufacturing industry in the U.S. Yes, that's right, as foreign textile factories burn to the ground and corporations suddenly remember the considerable advantages of keeping the manufacturing process relatively local, this sort of manufacturing is coming back -- but the workers aren't there, having been, you know, outsourced to foreign lands many years ago. At least some organizations (like the Makers Coalition in Minnesota) are trying to train these workers again. But it is kinda sad to hear a corporate president say "if we want good workers we know we have to train them and bring them in ourselves," because every corporation should do that.

Around the table: home health workers get vital work protections, and other stories.

Good news, everyone: the Obama Administration's Labor Department issued a new rule extending minimum wage and overtime protections to home health care workers. The new rule still exempts folks who provide occasional companionship to seniors, but not the vast majority of workers who bathe, dress, and toilet seniors (often several seniors per day). You probably advocated for this change over the last year-plus, so good job!

FAIR catches USA Today failing to check Republican assertions that too many people get food stamps or that the vicious food stamp bill passed Thursday would "restore() integrity to the program." And thus FAIR provides another lesson that "balance" -- or, more precisely, symmetry -- isn't the same thing as fairness. And would it have killed USA Today to note that our government lets more people get food stamps for good reasons?

Speaking of food stamps, intrepid constituent posts lengthy New Testament passage protesting Rep. Kevin Cramer's vote in favor of the Cantor food stamp bill -- and Rep. Cramer responds with a quotation from Paul's 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians: "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." Ahem: a lot of folks who get food stamps are already working, and if they're not making enough money to feed themselves, that's largely because corporations don't pay them enough. Also, you don't fight Jesus with Paul.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) delivers a scathing indictment of mandatory minimum laws and the War on Drugs -- suggests that drug-related incarceration has become the new Jim Crow, notes that while most drug dealers and offenders are white, most folks getting put in jail for all that are black, the whole nine yards. Good speech, but again: let's see if Mr. Paul's words lead to action.

Surprise, surprise -- Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the states so often praised as "low-tax" states, well, aren't, at least not for the working poor. Click through and you'll detect a theme: these states levy big sales and excise taxes, but have low (or nonexistent!) income taxes, and sales taxes always hit the poor harder, because, you know, the poor have to spend all their money just to get by.

Head of Amsterdam's health service says sugar should be just as tightly regulated as tobacco and alcohol, because it's "the most dangerous drug of the times." I'd be inclined to agree, and not just because I've had the damndest time cutting down on sugar, a much worse time than I've had cutting down on caffeine -- truth is, we're learning more and more about how sugar makes us fat. Would I insist on limiting the amount of sugar food processing corporations can add to food? I don't know. But I do know that we need to stop propping up high-fructose corn syrup producers with handouts.

Finally, Buzzfeed finds that "30 or 40" Tea Party House Republicans are forcing Speaker Boehner to the ideological right. Myself, I think that's what he wants us to think. But dig Rep. Schock's assertion at the end that "(i)f the majority of our members are bomb throwers, our leadership has no other choice but to acquiesce." Actually, Mr. Schock, leadership could, you know, lead.

Around the table: stockbrokers vs. their clients, Germans vs. the NSA, corporations vs. work, sin taxes vs. working folk, Louisiana poll respondents vs. the truth, and the Koch brothers vs. the people (and the people win!).

Both the Labor Department and the SEC are apparently mulling rules (again, mandated by Dodd-Frank and what's taking them so long?) making stockbrokers act as fiduciaries -- which is to say they'd have to work entirely on behalf of their clients and not for themselves. Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) responds that Wall Street won't be able to service small investors if they actually have to act on their behalf. No, really, that's essentially what he said. And this has been another installment of "The Uselessness of Republican 'Moderates'."

Germans seem to respond more negatively to the news of American domestic snooping than Americans do, and ProPublica explains why. Long story short: Germans generally agitate for privacy rights more than Americans do (at least since the end of World War II), and Germans just so happen to be the NSA's favorite target, as the NSA has collected more metadata from Germany than from any other European nation. Not to be discounted: that Germans' experience with agencies like the SS and the Gestapo is more recent than Americans' experience with Redcoats bursting into their houses whenever they felt like it.

David Graeber explains why we don't all work 15-hour work weeks, as John Maynard Keynes once predicted we would. It's like the we-were-promised-jetpacks bit, except that we were promised something more interesting and useful than jetpacks. Long story very short: our economy destroys real work (via technological advances and outsourcing, certainly, but mainly through corporate "populism" against those "parasite" schoolteachers and dockworkers), and then creates all sorts of paper-pushing "work" for us to do, "work" that, perhaps not coincidentally, teaches us to align our needs with that of our economic elites.

Pennsylvania mulls SB 1080, which would enact a 2¢ fee on every plastic bag used. Put me down as opposing that sort of thing, though: small though the tax is, it'll hit working folks harder than it'll hit the 0.1%, and I don't know anyone who doesn't reuse these plastic bags, frequently more than once. It is kind of a necessity when you're not rich, you know.

Public Policy Polling finds that while 28% of surveyed Louisiana residents blame George W. Bush for our government's lackluster response to Hurricane Katrina, an astounding 29% blame Barack Obama, though Mr. Obama wouldn't be President for three more years. And 44% more just can't decide! Seriously, when confronted with this level of stupidity, it's getting harder and harder for me to convince people that the Obama-hate is mostly because he's a Democrat, not because he's black.

Last but certainly not least, the Koch brothers have decided not to purchase the Tribune Company newspapers. A Koch Industries spokeshack says the brothers still "have an interest in the media business," but no longer, apparently, in papers such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Hartford Courant. Who stood against the Koch brothers? Nobody but us. So celebrate, and then come back tomorrow ready to do more good works.

Around the table: Barack Obama, banksters, frackers, activist judges, and a rodeo clown.

Mike Whitney, who was all over the financial crisis before any of our prized "liberal" media reporters were, absolutely eviscerates President Obama's new housing plan. Long story short: Mr. Obama has now accepted the right-wing lie that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the cause of the housing crisis, when even Forbes will tell you that 85% of all subprime mortgages were privately held -- and his new plan puts bankster profits above his own duties to the citizenry. Anyone who still calls Mr. Obama a "socialist" deserves a punch in the nose.

In a related note, a just-unsealed lawsuit from 2011 suggests that mortgage-holders still simply don't own the houses upon which they foreclose, simply because they don't have the correct documents. Now our government stepped in and "settled" this imbroglio for $95 million -- but they only settled with five defendants, meaning the original plaintiff can now go after the other 23 defendants. And while it's regrettable that our government's settlement did shield Bank of Amerikkka and J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo from further action, the remaining 23 defendants ain't exactly small-fry.

Get your surprised face ready: gas drilling corporations find ways not to pay royalties to landowners. I'm sure energy lobby says gas corporations should get to deduct expenses such as processing and transportation, but some corporations deduct them even when their contracts with landowners prohibit it. And setting up subsidiaries to which they "sell" the gas cheaply might be legal, strictly speaking, but I oppose any corporation owning any other corporation, so I'm not impressed. And some folks find telling landowners to do their due diligence a lot easier than telling corporations to do right by landowners. I wonder why.

A Tennessee judge forces a couple to change the name of their seven-month old boy from Messiah to Martin, because "(t)he word Messiah is a title and it's a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ." Citing reams of case law, no doubt! I can't feel too bad for the parents, since they were only in court because they couldn't agree on the kid's last name, but what a shame to find that activist judges have even infiltrated child support courts.

Finally, a Missouri rodeo clown dons an Obama mask, while an announcer asks the crowd if they want to see "Obama run down by a bull." Just imagine the reaction from the right if some liberal had done something similar to George W. Bush.

Court martial judge finds PFC Bradley Manning guilty of 20 charges relating to his release of information about America's "war on terror" to WikiLeaks -- but not the "aiding the enemy" charge. That last item promotes the common good, I suppose, but when is anyone from Tha Bush Mobb going to jail?

Mr. Obama again offers to cut the corporate tax rate as part of an imagined "Grand Bargain" on jobs. I think all this bargaining misses the whole point of governing -- if Mr. Obama's supposed to negotiate with anyone, it's the American people, who have no great yearning to lower the corporate tax rate.

The U.K.'s proposed anti-pornography firewall will also "protect" folks from "web forums" and "esoteric material." And here I'm reminded, yet again, that British PM David Cameron has worked as a politician for most of his life -- at least Margaret Thatcher was a scientist, which is why she didn't believe the big corporations when they told her CFCs had little to do with ozone depletion.

David Dayen reminds us that while the Justice Department has gone after a reality TV celebrity for mortgage fraud, it hasn't gone after any banks for mortgage fraud, though a reasonable case against the banks would rather closely resemble the case the Justice Department will pursue against the Giudices. FTW: "Banks have been found to systematically lie to bankruptcy courts, yet their executives don’t appear on TV shows tossing over furniture and getting into slap fights, so they commit these crimes with impunity." And that is all.

R.J. Eskow's piece called "Tom Friedman: A New Ayn Rand for a Dark Digital Future" crossed my filters a half-dozen times before I read it. Each time I saw it I said I know, right? But those chores ain't gonna do themselves! But it's actually even more incisive, and chilling, than it sounds. So read it, even if you already know the story -- and not just for turns of phrase like "Panglossian panegyric."

Ed Kilgore notes that former Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton (R-PA) and former Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. -- who both died this past week, at a combined age of 194! -- belonged to an America we'd have a hard time getting our heads around today. Mr. Scranton was a fairly liberal Republican, back when Lyndon Johnson needed a bunch of them to pass civil rights legislation, and Mr. Byrd was a far-right Democrat back when most Southern Democrats belonged to a "conservative coalition." Strange times -- almost as strange as these times.