I find myself wondering if Antonin Scalia didn't do the supporters of the Voting Rights Act a favor when he claimed that the right to vote was some sort of gummint giveaway to those greedy black people. His argument was so transparently racist, while being so unapologetically stupid, that you wonder if people might feel a little embarrassed to agree with him. And of course, the constant mockery of Scalia can't be helping either. He's literally become a joke.
Speaking of Scalia and human jokes: after hearing some compare Scalia to himself, Rush Limbaugh says the justice should be "honored" by the comparison. The man's got an ego the size of a mountain and an intellect the size of a sunflower seed.
When it comes to marriage equality, Republicans continue to be like King Canute, trying to hold back the tide. The war is lost, the Homosexual Menace has overrun America. There's nothing left to do but stop being so damned intolerant and crazy.
I've been saying for a while now that the gun regulation is most likely to be a long slog, rather than a quick victory with sweeping legislation. The comparison I've been using most is the long, slow-moving victory of anti-drunk driving activists against the well-funded and influential state Tavern Leagues. We need to change the culture, slowly but surely. Then regulations will follow naturally. DUI used to be a minor traffic violation -- now it's a reason for outrage. There's no going back.
Florida offers a great example of how the GOP rebranding effort is likely to work pretty much everywhere: a GOP leader does something halfway sane to save his and his party's hide, but the crazyassed base torpedoes it out of ideological purity, thus dooming the party to further and deeper irrelevance.
President Obama has three new nominees to fill various cabinet posts. What rightwing freakout will hold these up? Any guesses? Charges of ye olde witchery, mayhaps?
A Dominican escort says she was paid by "a lawyer who approached her and a friend" to spin a yarn involving New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez and prostitutes. "That man has in turn identified another lawyer who gave him a script for the tape and paid him to find women to fabricate the claims," the report goes on. Did Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller set him up? Someone did -- and the Caller's been riding the phony Menendez-hooker story like a circus pony.
Finally, here's yet more evidence that Mitch McConnell and the Kentucky GOP are scared to death of Ashley Judd.
[cartoon via Truthdig]
