Opinion

I was raised by a pair of wild hippies, so my heart has always been committed to liberal ideology. As a Bible-believing Christian, however, I was surrounded by evangelical theology throughout my youth, in various churches, Bible camps and so on. When I decided to enter the ministry to attempt to change that conservative theology, I attended an evangelical seminary. It was clear on my first day on campus that no reform was going to occur.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Donald Trump, Jr. on Friday received harsh criticism after posting a video on social media showing his father physically attacking the current president of the United States.

On Friday, President Joe Biden tripped while walking up the stairs to board Air Force One for a trip to Atlanta to mourn those killed in the Asian massage parlor shoots and celebrate 100 million vaccination shots.

In the aftermath of the passage of the American Relief Plan, Republicans are caught in a swirl of regret and recriminations.

President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion package, which tackles the twin problems of ending the pandemic and relieving the economic pain it's caused, is incredibly popular with the public. It enjoys approval from not just a large majority of Americans but a plurality of Republican voters as well. A huge part of the reason why has been the lack of effort from well-heeled conservative groups to seed "grassroots" opposition through their usual Astroturfing methods.

We are told that Democrats unwisely allowed themselves to be tied to the liberal activist push for marriage equality in 2004, which made it easier for President George W. Bush to win a second term despite the disaster that was the occupation of Iraq.

We are told that Democrats should have told the liberal activists pushing that extreme proposal to "stand back and stand by." We are told that they should have Sister Souljah-ed the people who refused to accept anything less than marriage equality.

Wednesday, the House of Representatives approved awarding Congressional Gold Medals to members of the Capitol Police for their defense of the Capitol on January 6. Four hundred and thirteen members voted in favor, and 12 Republicans opposed the measure. A number of party members took offense at the language in the bill, which referred to the Capitol as "the temple of our American Democracy" and called the rioters "a mob of insurrectionists."

Part of their objection comes from their eagerness to downplay what happened on January 6 and to redefine it as a much less important event than it was.

America has a deficit problem. But the country's biggest deficit isn't the federal budget deficit. It's the deficit in public investment.

The public investment deficit is the gap between what we should be investing in our future — on infrastructure, education, and basic research — and the relatively little we are investing.

Increasing public investment needs to be a major goal of the Biden administration.

Public investment is similar to private investment in that we invest today because of the payoff in the future. The difference is public investment pays off for all of us, for America.

Sometimes it's not the wine inside the glass that is poisoned, but the glass itself.

The Republican Party and the right wing have a new obsession: "cancel culture." They hope to turn this into a winning political theme for 2022 and beyond.

For those of us who have things to do other than pay attention to politics, Mitch McConnell is probably best known for one thing: the United States Supreme Court. Specifically, the Senate minority leader is best known for smashing the rules and norms that normally would have prevented his party from placing two extra justices on the court but didn't, thanks to his cynical and cold-blooded willingness to smash them.

His success in this regard has won him praise from his party, obviously, but also from respectable people who admire explicit or even ostentatious demonstrations of power. The press corps in Washington, for instance, habitually describes him as a "master tactician" whose knowledge of procedure knows no rival. Fact is, McConnell has only been as effective as his GOP conference allows him to be. That's the way of things in the United States Senate. Those of us who pay attention to politics despite there being other things to do understand quite well that McConnell's reputation is overrated.

Yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did."

Only a few hours after arresting the 21-year-old suspected shooter alleged to have gunned down eight people near Atlanta, Cherokee County sheriff's deputy Captain Jay Baker appeared to offer a sort of rationalization of the suspected motive for the murderous rampage. "He was pretty much fed up and had been kind of at the end of his rope," Baker said Wednesday during a press conference.

Charlie Kirk is finding Twitter less supportive these days now that the man he spent four years promoting was banned two months ago from the social media platform.

The far right wing conspiracy theorist and propagandist who created a niche by milking the right wing claim that conservative college students were being silenced – because their views were and continue to be extremely unpopular, especially among educated Americans – on Thursday decided to send some support Vladimir Putin's way.

George White of North Carolina served two terms in Congress between 1897 and 1901. He was the only Black member during those years, and he would be the last Black person elected to the U.S. House for nearly another three decades.

This article was originally published at Salon

There's still much that's unknown about the shootings in Atlanta on Tuesday night. The suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, appears to have been targeting massage parlors. Eight people have been killed, including six Asian-American women. Early reports from the sheriff's office indicate that the shooter targeted the victims because he blamed them for his supposed "sex addiction." While the sheriff pointed to such comments to deny any alleged racist motivation, it's rare that such misogynistic motives don't come with a heavy dose of racism as well.

The attack happened at a time of heightened national concerns over domestic right-wing terrorism, and for good reason. In Donald Trump's America, hate groups exploded in number, and hate crimes hit record levels. In the past year, hate crimes against Asian-Americans, in particular, have spiked, fueled by Trump and his allies trying to pin the blame of the coronavirus on East Asians. And, of course, there was the Capitol insurrection Trump incited on January 6, which most Republicans refused to hold him accountable for. All of this is after Republicans blocked anti-lynching legislation last summer.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's threat Tuesday to unleash never-before-seen "chaos" on the Senate if Democrats take aim at the legislative filibuster was viewed by progressives as a strong signal that the Kentucky Republican is beginning to get nervous about losing his most powerful tool of obstruction as support for weakening—or outright abolishing—the archaic rule continues to mount.

Just hours after Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) became the highest ranking Senate Democrat to speak out in support of filibuster reform, McConnell—the upper chamber's chief obstructionist—took to the floor to vow "a completely scorched-earth Senate" if the majority party moves to eliminate the 60-vote threshold, which effectively gives the minority veto power over most legislation in a narrowly divided chamber.