Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 11:14:13 am
The latest really bad idea to move from the fringe to the Republican mainstream at light speed: repealing the "birthright citizenship" granted by the 14th amendment to the US Constitution. That's right -- the people who publicly make a fetish out of the Constitution, declaring their unconditional love for every word ...

Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 10:09:04 am
In today's news about the Park51 project in lower Manhattan, the right wing hate machine is running amok. The two most popular right wing talk radio ranters, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, were both spewing hatred and irrationality this morning to their angry hordes of listeners. Beck labeled the Park51 project ...

Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 5:33:28 pm
Today's video break from Vimeo is "Between Bears," a beautiful, thought-provoking animation by Eran Hilleli. This is his graduation project for Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. [Video]

Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 10:30:46 am
The bigots who oppose the construction of the Park51 community center in lower Manhattan have been hoping to get the existing building, a former Burlington coat factory, designated a "landmark" -- the only legal way they could stop the construction, since hatred and bigotry aren't considered valid exceptions to the ...

Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 9:46:47 am
Glenn Beck’s homophobic, atavistic 9.12 Project has apparently succeeded in getting a library in New Jersey to remove a book for gay high school students, even though no formal challenge to the book was ever filed: NJ Library, Citing Child Pornography, Removes GLBT Book. A New Jersey public library has ...

Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 6:10:53 pm
The big right wing talking point against the proposed community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan (I refuse to call it a “Ground Zero Mega-Mosque!”) is that Ground Zero is sacred. Hallowed ground. It’s a deadly offense to think of a mosque on that sacred, hallowed ground, a “stab in ...

Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 10:08:13 am
With all the absurd and deliberately distorted misinformation circulating around the Park51 project (the Bigot Brigade calls it the “Ground Zero mosque,” although it’s not actually at Ground Zero and will be a community center, not just a mosque), Aziz Poonawalla went to the source and interviewed the lead developer ...

Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 11:02:00 am
Heavily armed neo-Nazis roaming the Arizona desert looking for “narco-terrorists.” What could possibly go wrong? Jason “J.T.” Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on “narco-terrorists” and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants. So far, he says his patrols have only found a few border crossers ...

Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 5:55:28 pm
NPR’s All Things Considered covers the Islamic Center Near Ground Zero. Video

Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 12:58:05 pm
Here’s a new book I’m very much looking forward to reading, reviewed by Larry Rohter in the New York Times Books section: Mark Twain’s Unexpurgated Autobiography. Twain’s autobiography has been previously published, but only after meddlesome editors removed some passages, ostensibly to protect Twain’s reputation. Versions of the autobiography have been ...

Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 3:03:21 pm
The ESA-NASA Planck spacecraft recently completed a year-long imaging project, surveying the entire sky in a range of microwave light frequencies from 30 to 857 gigahertz, and here’s the result — an oval projection, with the Milky Way as the bright center area. The cosmic microwave background left over from ...

Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 12:00:51 am
Popular right wing blogger (and writer for Newsmax, World Net Daily, and Andrew Breitbart’s websites) Pamela “Shrieking Harpy” Geller is once again doing what she does best — inciting hatred against Muslims, in particular the Cordoba House planned for downtown Manhattan, near the former site of the World Trade Center. ...

Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:18:40 pm
This afternoon BP CEP Tony Hayward responded to GOP Rep. Joe Barton’s “apology” for the Obama administration’s “shakedown:” Thanks, but no thanks. BP CEO Tony Hayward disavowed a top Republican’s characterization of a $20 billion relief fund the company will establish as a “slush fund.” Hayward rejected the controversial remarks Rep. Joe ...

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 10:12:39 am
Here’s an account of a demonstration against the proposed community center/mosque in downtown Manhattan, featuring anti-Muslim bloggers Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller: On this ground, zero tolerance. The following appalling incident perfectly demonstrates the pure bigotry that motivates the Spencer/Geller crowd; the angry mob turned on a pair of men who ...

Fri, May 28, 2010 at 12:45:35 pm
In a jaw-droppingly bigoted rant last Wednesday, right wing radio talker Michael Berry came right out and said about the proposed mosque/community center in Manhattan, “I hope somebody blows it up.” Audio On Wednesday, a man named “Tony” called into the KTRH-AM (Houston, TX) radio show of right-wing radio host Michael ...

Wed, May 26, 2010 at 10:25:12 am
Yesterday a community board in Manhattan voted to approve a proposal to build a mosque two blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood: Local Board Endorses Muslim Center Near Ground Zero. The anti-Muslim bigots of the so-called “anti-jihad” blogosphere are freaking out, of course. Pamela “Shrieking Harpy” Geller is spewing ...

Sun, May 23, 2010 at 10:55:10 am
Rand Paul’s getting all the media attention for his ludicrous comments about the Civil Rights Act and the BP oil spill, but he is actually far from the most extreme Republican nominated last week. Meet Arthur Robinson, who won the GOP nomination for Oregon’s 4th Congressional District. Mr. Robinson is so full ...

Fri, May 21, 2010 at 12:13:42 pm
A member of the far right sovereign citizen movement (and quack mortgage adviser) and his son were shot to death yesterday in Memphis in a gun battle with police, in which two police officers were also killed: Relatives ID West Memphis suspects. A background search using the information from the ...

Mon, May 17, 2010 at 12:41:44 pm
Miami New Times writers Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp have a new article on Baptist minister George “Rent Boy” Rekers and his bizarre “Feminine Boy Project.” In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old “effeminate boy” named Kraig, whose parents had ...

Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 1:10:51 pm
In the ongoing smear campaign against yours truly, the waterheads of the wingnut blogosphere are constantly trying to find some way to accuse me of having stopped supporting Israel, or even better from their warped perspective, to accuse me of being an antisemite. Sure, it’s completely disconnected from reality, but what ...

Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 10:30:25 am
Here’s a disturbing article by Frank Schaeffer on the extreme apocalyptic ideology that drives groups like the “Hutaree” militia; keep in mind as you read that Schaeffer was once part of the inner circle of the religious right, and knew many of these people personally: The Evangelical ‘Mainstream’ Insanity Behind ...

Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:36:30 am
Hillary Clinton dialed down the diplomatic confrontation with Israel this morning, pledging that the US has “an unshakeable bond” with Israel, and dismissing suggestions that the relationship between the US and Israel was at its worst point in decades. “We have an absolute commitment to Israel’s security. We have a ...

Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 9:46:25 am
As mainstream news organizations increasingly find it difficult to turn a profit in the Internet Age, Pew Research has been studying the attitudes of news consumers toward some of the proposed solutions; and the prospects are pretty grim for news organizations to convince consumers to pay for something that they ...

Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 10:37:02 am
During Vice President Biden’s visit, Israel’s right wing Interior Minister suddenly issued a statement that the Ministry had approved a plan for new settlement building in East Jerusalem. This led to a minor diplomatic crisis, with Hillary Clinton saying that she considered it a direct insult. Which it obviously was ...

Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 5:56:50 pm
Reports of the death of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (aka Satan’s Browser) may have been greatly exaggerated. Today was supposed to be a great day for the Web. As of March 1, 2010, Google will no longer support Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 browser—a decade-old dinosaur engineered to navigate the Web ...