The furor over the Islamic center near Ground Zero has led many to conclude that the right wing has rediscovered its passion for Muslim-bashing, and some predict more to come. But what strikes me most about the recent outburst of Islamophobia is its exceptionality. Nine years after 9/11, the once preeminent obsession of American foreign policy and Republican politics had been all but forgotten. Even the attempted bombing of Times Square failed to generate much rage from the right. [Read more]

Some Democrats have cheered the success of right-wing extremists in the Colorado primaries yesterdays. They have a point. Republican gubernatorial nominee John Maes, who called Denver's bicycle program a "well-disguised" plot to destroy the "personal freedoms" of Denver's citizens by transforming the city into "a United Nations community," will now split the crazy vote with famed xenophobe Tom Tancredo, who blamed immigrants for electing "a committed socialist ideologue" to the White House. If Tancredo stays in the race, Democrat John Hickenlooper will likely sail into the governor's house. [Read more]

Late Saturday night, the California Highway Patrol stopped 45-year-old Byron Williams as he sped towards San Francisco. Wearing a bullet proof vest and armed with three guns, Williams opened fire on the officers. After a 12-minute firefight, CHP troopers subdued and arrested Williams. [Read more]

In response to the relentless demands of millions of adoring readers, I've decided that it's time to break my media silence about the status of the book.

After an eight-month effort that has been simultaneously grueling and exhilarating, the book is nearly finished. I completed the manuscript at the end of June and have been racing through the revisions since then. In a few weeks, it will be all over but the rhapsodic reviews. The book is still on schedule to come out in mid-October. [Read more]

I've written a couple of posts recently about the phenomenon of right-wing projection. Projection is a Freudian concept according to which people project their own feelings of hostility onto the targets of their hostility. It is a psychological defense strategy that enables people to disown their feelings of hatred and intolerance by attributing them to the people they hate. [Read more]

In light of Tea Party favorite Rand Paul's overwhelming victory over the Republican establishment candidate Trey Grayson in Kentucky yesterday, it's worth taking a brief trip with the Ghost of Republican Past back to the first of many conservative purges in the modern era.

[CUE PSYCHEDELIC FLASHBACK TRANSITION] [Read more]

As if its draconian immigration law weren't sufficient to demonstrate Arizona's profound appreciation for its Latino minority, the state has just enacted a second law to make the point. The new law prohibits Arizona schools from teaching "ethnocentric" courses that:

1. Promote the overthrow of the U.S. government
2. Promote resentment toward a race or class of people
3. Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group
4. Advocated ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals

(The law threatens to eliminate popular courses like, "Future Marxist Revolutionaries of America" and "Torturing White People, Yes You Can!") [Read more]

If you harbor any doubt about the racist undercurrent driving right-wing immigration concerns, listen to Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh knows his audience, and when he discussed Arizona's immigration law on Monday, he gave them the red meat, or rather the black-and-brown meat, that they were looking for: [Read more]

Who loves a Tea Party? A recent NYT/CBS poll punctured a couple of myths about the makeup of today's paranoid right-wing activists.

Myth #1. Tea Party supporters are motivated by economic anxiety [Read more]

Last summer, a number of advertisers boycotted Glenn Beck's FOX News show after he accused Obama of being a "racist" with a "deep seeded [sic] hatred for white people or the white culture." Since then, Beck has avoided overt race-baiting, focusing instead on Obama's affection for Marxism, progressivism, fascism, totalitarianism, and many other unsavory "isms," not to mention a few unpleasant "y's" like oligarchy, tyranny, and the Democratic Party. [Read more]

Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) is desperately fighting off an election challenge from MSNBC host, Rachel Maddow. Though Maddow insists that she has no interest in running for Senate, Brown is not deceived by her evasions. After alerting donors to the Maddow threat in a fundraising letter, he aggressively challenged her alleged non-campaign on the airwaves, vowing, "With all due respect, I'm going to continue to fight and do my job and work hard to do just that. And, er, bring her on. I don't care." [Read more]

Apparently, there are some Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits who feel that the worst thing about death threats and vandalism is that the politicians being threatened might gain public sympathy. Digby and Billmon both have brilliant analyses of the victim-blaming rhetoric being used here. Instead of wading into the swamp of counter-charges, I'll just point out two logical problems with the Republican complaints here.
 [Read more]

Readers, I apologize for my slow posting lately. I've been hunkering down to work on my upcoming book, How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas. But I'm popping my head up briefly to announce my first piece of press, a blog article at the Washington Post. Check it out to see me answer probing questions like "What is the single most resilient myth you will crush in the book?", "How will conservatives react to your analysis?", "Is it true that you once saved the nation of Liechtenstein from an army of Ann Coulter clones?" [Read more]

What is the most persecuted demographic in the nation? It's not the blacks, the Jews, or the Hispanics, and certainly not the gays. One victim stands out in the gruesome annals of discrimination: the Beauty Queen.

The latest sacrifice to the bottomless hunger of the gay liberal hate monster is Miss Beverly Hills, Lauren Ashley. Ashley simply quoted an innocent line from the Bible:

If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them. [Read more]

Dear Mr. Alexander, [Read more]

A conservative "civil liberties" group has challenged the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act. The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center is suing U.S. government on behalf of three pastors and the president of the American Family Association of Michigan. The suit alleges that the law violates the plaintiffs' freedom of speech and freedom of religion under the First Amendment, the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment, Federal jurisdiction constraints of the 10th Amendment, and, for good measure, the Constitution's Commerce Clause. That's three Amendments and one Clause, which is an awful lot of unconstitutionality for one bill. [Read more]

The Tea Party, a potent collection of dyspeptic right-wing populist groups, was on the verge of national conquest. Having defeated a Republican candidate in a New York House election and a Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts Senate election, it seemed that there was no stopping this crew of tax-rejecting, socialist-hating, health-care-not-wanting defenders of the Constitution and all that is good in America. [Read more]

In the wake of resignations by Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan, Democrats may be taking some shortsighted solace in the prospect of a brewing conservative civil war between the Republican Party establishment and the revolting Teabaggers, no pun intended. The differences between the warring camps are not ideological - the G.O.P. long ago purged its dissenting moderates - but attitudinal. [Read more]

Friday, November 20, 2009. 145 evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed the "Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience," in which they declared their shared opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Though only hours old, the declaration has already been declared "historic" by those whose job it is to designate historic declarations. Several reasons were cited for the historic designation of the declaration: [Read more]

GQ Magazine's editors believe they know why Lou Dobbs left CNN: persecution. [Read more]