christopher_hallam

The prank call to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker mostly reinforces my belief in the uselessness of “stings” as a journalistic tool. As a political tool, they’re extremely effective–conservatives managed to help gin up controversies against ACORN and Planned Parenthood despite the fact that their “reporting” didn’t actually show what they claimed it showed. It’s possible […]

Jen Phillips reports that anti-abortion Georgia Rep. Bobby Franklin has proposed a bill that would criminalize some miscarriages. The bill, a ten-page anti-abortion screed that would legally define fetuses as legal persons from the moment of conception, criminalize abortion as “prenatal murder, and declares that continued recognition of Roe v. Wade will “cause the basis […]

The protests in Wisconsin are just the most visible public manifestation of recent conflicts between Republican governors and public sector unions. The political reasons why Republicans are so quick to try to eliminate public sector workers’ bargaining rights, and Democrats so eager to defend them, is that public workers tend to support Democrats. It’s certainly […]

Step One: Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour refuses to denounce a group of Confederate lost causers for proposing a state license plate venerating the founder of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Step Two: Liberals are outraged. Step Three: Conservatives demand to know why liberals are always calling conservatives racist, and the KKK were Democrats anyway so […]

In Wisconsin, public sector unions are practically in open revolt over Governor Scott Walker‘s proposal to eliminate collective bargaining for public workers. Public workers have long been a target of conservatives, and tight state budgets as a result of the recession have provided them with an opportunity to go after them as never before. What […]

CPAC was actually pretty low key on the offensive stuff this year, with the exception of the right’s unfortunate embrace of its Islamophobic fringe. That’s partially because several religious right organizations boycotted the event over the inclusion of GOProud, a gay conservative group. It also may be because the event seems to be skewing ever […]

Daniel Foster‘s piece on the Pigford settlement in National Review is really about as bad as one might have assumed from reading Conor Fridersdorf’s initial post and the screeds at Big Government alleging a blackety black conspiracy to defraud white folks of their hard earned money. It truly is, as Mark Thompson noted, a sort […]

Monica Potts writes about how video games turn her into Phyllis Schlafly: I eventually got the hang of The Sims, the best-selling computer game in history, and my Sim self became productive and happy. She always reached the top of her career, her children always did well in school, and she always had enough money […]

David Corn flags Glenn Beck‘s attempt to take a swipe at him for describing his rants on Egypt as “off the charts” in craziness: Beck: Really David. That’s why you work for Mother Jones and I work here. Night One we showed the similarities between Egypt 2011 and Iran 1979. That, too, was all about […]

Yesterday, a vote on reauthorizing three expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act failed after most Democrats and a few Republicans voted against it. The three sunsetting provisions were: Roving wiretaps, Section 215 orders, and the “Lone Wolf” provision, which has never been used. The roving wiretaps allow the government to obtain surveillance orders that don’t […]