Muslims in Norway reflect on the fallout of the Oslo attacks. Bachmann sexism watch , hair and makeup edition. Republicans will like anything Democrats don't. GOP Governor Chris Christie is tired of dealing with "the crazies."

Alleged Oslo terrorist Anders Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto contained a number of recommendations to readers for where to go to get the truth about those barbaric Muslims. The scary part is that the FBI's 2009 Islam 101 briefing recommends some of the same books, Spencer Ackerman reports : Among the most provocative aspects of the presentation is its recommended reading list. One book offered is The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, by Robert Spencer. Spencer is one of the ringleaders of the protest against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the co-founder of Stop the Islamicization of America, which “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda,” in the view of the Anti-Defamation League. A manifesto written by the Norwegian terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik cited Spencer 64 times. Another book cited is The Arab Mind, by Raphael Patai. The volume was briefly infamous in 2004, after Seymour Hersh reported its influence among certain Iraq...

Representative Peter King's hearings on al Shabaab's Minnesota recruitment efforts was largely uneventful. Despite King hyping the supposed lack of cooperation with law enforcement from Minnesota's Somali American community, when asked whether he faced any opposition the St. Paul* chief of police, Tom Smith, said that he hadn't. One issue I would take with the hearing, though, is that the conversation about extremist ideology has taken on a kind of Reefer Madness quality, where lawmakers talk as though all it takes is the right jihadist sweet talk to instantly turn a misguided young man into a terrorist. I think that approach avoids some key issues. What we know is that an unusually large (but still miniscule relative to the size of the community itself) number of young Somali Americans have gone abroad to fight with al Shabaab. Otherwise, with some notable and tragic exceptions, extremists have been relatively unsuccessful at radicalizing Muslim Americans. There are some key...

It was two years ago that the NAACP and Baltimore city officials went after Wells Fargo over revelations that the bank had marketed subprime "ghetto loans" to blacks, referred to in internal memos as "mud people." The Justice Department has finally decided to act, suing Wells Fargo for discriminatory lending practices. The probe isn't coming from the section of the Justice Department focused on financial crimes, which has developed a disturbingly cozy relationship with the banks. Instead it's coming from Thomas Perez and the Civil Rights Division: The previously-undisclosed Justice probe, which is being led by the Civil Rights division's Fair Lending Unit, lends credence to the city's lawsuit, sources told The Huffington Post. The official overseeing the office, Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, previously served as secretary of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, a consumer protection agency that regulates mortgage and foreclosure terms and houses the...

Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released its report on the racial wealth gap in American society, with some really depressing results. The economic crisis essentially wiped out the wealth gains made by people of color over the past 20 years, resulting in "lopsided wealth ratios," that "are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter-century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009." Take a look: And again: Asians aren't included in the chart, but they saw their wealth decline by 54 percent as well. I want to look at this in the context of our political discourse on race for the past three years or so, during which many conservatives have put forth a narrative of white victimhood in which the Obama policy agenda consists entirely of " reparations " and the sluggish recovery is Obama's racial " payback " for past grievances. As silly as the...

Obama's favorite anti-gay pastor Rick Warren apparently has a twitter feed where he says things like: HALF of America pays no taxes. ZERO. So they're happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay taxes. Kevin Drum has a chart that says otherwise: I must have missed the part of the Bible where it says "blessed are the top 1 percent," but hey, I'm more of an Old Testament guy anyway.

I'm obviously not an expert on the debate occurring over the debt ceiling, but I know enough to know that raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with cutting spending. During last night's speech, House Speaker John Boehner repeated a whopper that is becoming a standard part of Republican talking points on the issue: But the far more dishonest statement is Boehner’s line that the debt ceiling amounts to a “blank check.” This is a straight-up lie. Not the everyday, casual fudging that politicians do, but a straight up lie. As the Government Accountability Office explains: “The debt limit does not control or limit the ability of the federal government to run deficits or incur obligations. Rather, it is a limit on the ability to pay obligations already incurred.” This isn’t a perfect metaphor, but not raising the debt ceiling is more like refusing to pay your credit card bill than it is akin to asking for a blank check. Congress appropriates funds; if they don’t want Obama to spend...