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This is the story of a dinner party. It occurred in a suburban middle-class community — maybe slightly upscale middle class, but not much — just outside one of our big cities. Pretty typical place. The guests all knew each other. They were neighbors or friends or acquaintances who’d been to these parties many times. They were white, every one, mostly businessmen and their wives, and some engineers who work or once worked in the nearby defense industries. The postdinner conversation was the usual stuff — who’s moving in, who’s moving out. Anybody heard from Ralph since he moved to...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: A little statistic for you. Since the beginning of 2012 -- we're almost now to August, so we've got seven months in, pretty much seven months in. Since the start of 2012, the death count in Chicago is 274. In seven months, the death count in Chicago, 274. They have some of the strictest gun laws in the country, just as they do in Colorado. You know, all of us have certain traits that reflect upon our character, and when those characteristics, when those traits cluster in a manner that causes a person to function in a...

Former Washington Post columnist William Raspberry has passed away. The obituaries in both the Post and the New York Times noted that while Raspberry was generally considered a liberal, he often expressed opinions that defied easy labels. Perhaps the most famous such case of an unconventional Raspberry column, which neither newspaper mentioned, was when he publicly changed his opinion of Rush Limbaugh after listening to his program. This was described through the years by Limbaugh as the Raspberry Effect: The Raspberry Effect, William Raspberry, a former columnist of the Washington Post, he wrote a piece highly critical of me based...

A new television advertisement from the campaign of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attacks President Barack Obama's campaign for spreading lies and dishonest attacks. Watch the ad, titled "No Evidence," here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L6b9F9IiAZw

The Romney campaign has been accused of deliberately getting the Republican presidential candidate booed by black people during his NAACP speech to attract votes 'in certain racist precincts', by MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell. Romney was booed for 15 seconds at the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People conference in Houston on Wednesday when he stated he would 'eliminate' unnecessary programmes like the Obamacare health reform. Democrats united in saying that Romney planned to get booed to appeal to his conservative base. But O'Donnell and his guests went a step further by saying that Romney was making a play...

It could be one of the biggest political intelligence coups of the 2012 battle to control Congress. Media Trackers, a conservative investigative watchdog group, discovered nearly three-dozen Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee opposition research notebooks – extensive secretive manuals outlining anything that could be used against a political opponent. Several news outlets have reported that some of the files have been quietly published on the DCCC’s website to facilitate their use by independent expenditure groups. On Thursday, however, Media Trackers published a dozen opposition research books that Democrats have so far managed to keep secret. The twelve unpublished manuals range in...

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign mocked Mitt Romney late Wednesday as being "scared" of Venezuela's anti-American President Hugo Chavez "like he's ten feet tall," the latest rhetorical broadside in an escalating war of words. "Hugo Chavez has become increasingly marginalized and his influence has waned," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement. "It's baffling that Mitt Romney is so scared of a leader like Chavez whose power is fading, while Romney continues to remain silent about how to confront al-Qaeda or how to bring our troops home from Afghanistan." The rhetorical rumble began late Tuesday when Obama told...

In advance of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s speech Wednesday to the NAACP, a liberal group headed by a former New York Times reporter and ex-Media Matter executive have produced a video “satire” that claims blacks don’t like Romney, who they dub so white he makes “Wonder Bread look like pumpernickel.” The YouTube from “The Message,” an online “media hub,” is described as a satirical video of Romney getting advice on what to say to the civil rights group. Or, as they said in a release, the video “lacerates Romney and his advisors as they prepare for his speech to...

WASHINGTON -- I first heard it two, perhaps two and a half years ago. A sage sitting in his New York City office pronounced it. Said the sage to me: "This is going to be the dirtiest presidential campaign in history." I would pass on my prescient friend's name, but he is a gentleman of high profile. It would be best if he were to continue his life unmolested by the Living Saint in the White House, whom a benighted majority of Americanos deposited there in 2009. Now, roughly six months from Election Day, I fear my friend was right....

At the end of a full report on Friday's NBC Today, based on a Washington Post hit piece that accused Mitt Romney of bullying of a gay high school classmate, correspondent Peter Alexander admitted the story may be false: "NBC News isn't naming the student who was allegedly bullied....Late last night, his sister told NBC News that his portrayal in the Washington Post story is 'factually incorrect'..." Despite that important detail, the network morning show still decided to promote the accusations. At the top of the show, co-host Ann Curry teased: "Prep school bully? Mitt Romney responds to a report...

The day after President Obama endorsed gay marriage, Mitt Romney found himself responding to allegations that as a teenager he taunted a prep school classmate who later came out as gay.

There may be a good reason voters can’t get a good bead on Mitt Romney. And it may be because the real Romney has a troubled, sadistic history. High School classmates of Romney recall an incident that’s disturbing to its core. Romney, then a popular senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School in Michigan, disapproved of classmate John Lauber’s long, blond locks, which Romney allegedly took as a clue that Lauber was a homosexual. So Romney assembled a posse of bullies and held the boy down and brutally chopped off his hair. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look...

I suppose it can said of a Virginia elementary school teacher who allegedly told her students “Republicans are stupid” that she at least spoke her mind. Her actions are more defensible than those of a fellow Old Dominion State colleague who deviously tasked her students with finding flaws in the GOP presidential candidates but not in the lone Democratic candidate. The Daily Caller reports that “as Republican voters were filing into the halls of [Colin] Powell Elementary School in Fairfax County to vote on Super Tuesday,” teacher Kristin Martin told her sixth-grade class that “Republicans are stupid” and “they don’t...

Prosecutors have dropped kidnapping and rape charges against a former San Diego Tea Party spokesman after the alleged victim recanted her story. Michael Kobulnicky, 54, was arrested earlier this month and accused of sexually assaulting a 56-year-old woman he allegedly picked up in his car. According to San Diego Fox affiliate KSWB-TV, the alleged victim appeared at a bail hearing Monday and told the judge Kobulnicky was not the man who assaulted her. On Wednesday, she recanted her story to prosecutors and said she was never kidnapped or raped.

The individual at the center of the controversial Trayvon Martin shooting is a registered Democrat. George Michael Zimmerman, born Oct. 5, 1983, registered as a Democrat in Seminole County, Fla., in August 2002, according to state voter registration documents. It is unclear whether he voted for President Barack Obama in 2008. Some in the media have sought to blame Republican politicians and conservative activists for Martin’s death. “[Republican politicians] reinforce and validate old stereotypes that associate the poor and welfare as criminal behavior with African-Americans and people of color, calling us lazy, undeserving recipients of public assistance. In the case...

How very open-minded and reasonable it was of Bill Maher to deliver this little riff on the Santorums' decision to homeschool their children (h/t NewsBusters):CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Let’s not even get into his use of the term “madrassa,” which refers to an Islamic seminary that teaches mostly Islamic subjects. Suffice it to say anyone concerned about brainwashing should worry less about Rick Santorum’s children and more about subjugated women and children in the Middle East.Instead, let’s focus on the “comedian’s” own appalling lack of knowledge. What Bill Maher doesn’t know about homeschooling could fill a book he’d...

[...] These are just a few samples from the arsenal of degrading language Limbaugh deploys on women, people of color, lesbians and gays, immigrants, the disabled, the elderly, Muslims, Jews, veterans, environmentalists and so forth. Limbaugh doesn't just call people names. He promotes language that deliberately dehumanizes his targets. Like the sophisticated propagandist Josef Goebbels, he creates rhetorical frames -- and the bigger the lie the more effective -- inciting listeners to view people they disagree with as sub-humans. His longtime favorite term for women, "femi-nazi," doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore, an example of how rhetoric spreads when unchallenged by...

An Arizona co-chair of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign resigned after announcing that he is gay. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu was forced to come out after allegations that he dated a Mexican immigrant and hosted a pornographic online profile. The Romney campaign said they received a call from Babeu and accepted his resignation. "Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him. We support his decision," spokesperson Ryan Williams said. Arizona is holding its primary on February 28, and all four candidates will be in the state Wednesday...

(TheChurchReport.com) In Arizona sheriff building a national profile stepped down Saturday from a state leadership position with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign after a newspaper published allegations that he threatened to deport a former boyfriend. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu denied the allegations during a press conference Saturday. He was co-chair of Romney’s campaign in Arizona and is a candidate for Congress in the state’s fourth district.

POPULAR SENATOR’S 2007 ENDORSEMENT RECYCLED BY ROMNEY-ITES Here we go again … as if the final 24 hours of the 2012 South Carolina Republican presidential primary haven’t been sufficiently bizarre, into the fray at the last minute jumped U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.Well … Jim DeMint circa 2007.A recorded phone message featuring DeMint’s 2007 endorsement of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney began burning up the phone lines in the Palmetto State late Friday – a desperate last-minute attempt by pro-Romney forces to fool people into thinking that DeMint is support their candidate on the eve of Saturday’s election.He’s not … something...