OK, it’s true: Rick Santorum didn’t sponsor Virginia legislation to require that women seeking abortion undergo an ultrasound – and in cases of very early pregnancy, when a fetus is hard to see, a creepy and intrusive transvaginal ultrasound. But seven states have already passed ultrasound requirements for women seeking abortion. The Virginia bill is galvanizing opposition nationally at least partly due to the climate of crazy that’s been fomented by Santorum’s backward candidacy.

I have been very encouraged by Barack Obama’s statements of support for green energy, but the time has come for him to act on that support.  Especially in the area of solar, we have a narrow window of opportunity to move forward in both the manufacture and the deployment of solar components.

When a politician gurgles out bold, stupid claims it is always in their own interest to avoid any sort of statistics or facts, and instead stick with emotional dog-whistles. While the armchair politician running for your local school board may understand this, America’s aspiring Ayatollah Rick Santorum seems to not have grasped the concept yet. Yesterday the prospective leader of the free world rambled off a number of lies about the Bolshevik Baby-killing Republic of the Netherlands that are just laughable.

Following news that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) seems to have walked back his support for a GOP-sponsored bill that would require women to undergo a physically invasive transvaginal ultrasound procedure before having an abortion, members of the state legislature are speculating that Republicans are looking for a way to rewrite the bill to avoid having to fully back down on it.

If Republicans seem spooked to you these days, here’s why.

President Obama’s political comeback over the past several months aligns neatly with when he began more aggressively attacking the GOP and politicking for economic growth and equality back in September.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum charged on Monday that President Barack Obama and Democrats were “anti-science” because they refused to exploit the Earth’s natural resources to the limits of technology.

Over the weekend the candidate had been criticized for saying that President Barack Obama followed a theology that was not “based on the Bible.” He later insisted that he was talking about the president siding with “radical environmentalists.”

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.” – George Orwell, 1984.

On CNN's State of the Union, when asked about some of the recent events where the Republicans are waging war on women's reproductive rights and Darrell Issa's hearing where the Democrats lone female wasn't allowed to testify along with the panel full of men they had scheduled, Rep. Michele Bachmann expects us to believe that her party is really pro-women.

Yeah, pro-women going back to the 1950's.

The Obama Administration will no longer defend legislation in court banning same-sex couples from receiving military and veterans benefits.

In a letter Friday to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Attorney General Eric Holder wrote:The legislative record of these provisions contains no rationale for providing veterans' benefits to opposite-sex couples of veterans but not to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans. Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Veterans Affairs identified any justifications for that distinction that would warrant treating these provisions differently from Section 3 of DOMA.

We're still waiting for any actual evidence that this new cybersecurity bill is really necessary. An actual description of the real problem being dealt with would be a good start. Instead, we just get pure fear mongering. While some Senators are asking supporters of the bill to slow down and carefully consider the issue, the bill's backers, led by Senator Lieberman seem to be on "full speed ahead" mode -- trying to skip hearings and markups to take the bill straight to the Senate floor for a vote.

Five wealthy people, led by Dallas industrialist Harold Simmons and Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, have donated nearly $1 of every $4 flowing to the super PACs raising unlimited money in this year's presidential race, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

On Thursday, MSNBC pulled the plug on Pat Buchanan, an anchor on Joe Scarborough’s three hour conservative commentary every weekday morning.  The rabid, racist Republican right, along with Buchanan himself, are claiming that the left silenced his freedom of speech.  Lets examine Buchanan’s history and character, and lets see why the Republican claims are lies.

Newt Gingrich said Monday a Republican win in November is "a duty of national security," taking his attack on President Barack Obama a step further on the day the country celebrates Presidents Day. 

"Defeating Barack Obama becomes, in fact, a duty of national security," Gingrich told a crowd of about 4,000 people on the campus of Oral Roberts University. "Because the fact is, he is incapable of defending the United States." 

Although Mitt Romney used the word "conservative" 19 times in a short speech at the February 10, 2012, Conservative Political Action Conference, the audience he used this word to appeal to was not conservative by any traditional definition. It was right wing. Despite the common American practice of using "conservative" and "right wing" interchangeably, right wing is not a synonym for conservative and not even a true variant of conservatism - although the right wing will opportunistically borrow conservative themes as required

In their campaign to keep women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, Republicans are backing themselves into another no-win situation, as the nation lines up against their position.  However, instead of having the wisdom to back down, Republicans are doubling down, generating even more widespread opposition. Videos.

Let me be clear that I am not attacking Christians here.  Supply-side Jesus is completely opposite to the Jesus that authentic Christians worship.  Supply-side Jesus was invented to justify the Republican false gospel of hate, greed and racism for Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians.  Many practitioners of this obscenity prey on their congregants and promise miracles, but when Supply-side Jesus can’t cut it, and there is no miracle, guess whose fault it is.  Video.

Weeks of intense campaigning in the early nominating states have left the leading Republican presidential candidates increasingly dependent on millions of dollars spent on their behalf by outside “super PACs,” reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday showed.

A Wisconsin judge Friday denied Governor Scott Walker extra time to review the estimated one million signatures submitted last month to the state in an effort to recall him.

Dane County Judge Richard Niess refused to give Walker’s campaign the two extra weeks it requested to examine the signatures on the estimated 152,000 pages of petitions recall organizers turned into the Government Accountability Board.

The federal government has been paying lip service to the idea that it wants to encourage new businesses and startups in the US. And this is truly important to the economy, as studies have shown that almost all of the net job growth in this country is coming from internet startups. Thankfully some politicians recognize this, but the federal government seems to be going in the other direction. With the JotForm situation unfolding, where the US government shut down an entire website with no notice or explanation, people are beginning to recognize that the US is not safe for internet startups. 

In the never-ending battle to teach religious dogma in public schools, the GOP in Alabama has introduced a bill that will lift a ban on “release time” classes that will allow students to leave school grounds and study Creation “Science” in a different location. The school would only be involved so far as to give an elective credit to students that participate.

Although Mitt Romney used the word "conservative" 19 times in a short speech at the February 10, 2012, Conservative Political Action Conference, the audience he used this word to appeal to was not conservative by any traditional definition. It was right wing. Despite the common American practice of using "conservative" and "right wing" interchangeably, right wing is not a synonym for conservative and not even a true variant of conservatism - although the right wing will opportunistically borrow conservative themes as required

If Republicans seem spooked to you these days, here’s why.

President Obama’s political comeback over the past several months aligns neatly with when he began more aggressively attacking the GOP and politicking for economic growth and equality back in September.

OK, it’s true: Rick Santorum didn’t sponsor Virginia legislation to require that women seeking abortion undergo an ultrasound – and in cases of very early pregnancy, when a fetus is hard to see, a creepy and intrusive transvaginal ultrasound. But seven states have already passed ultrasound requirements for women seeking abortion. The Virginia bill is galvanizing opposition nationally at least partly due to the climate of crazy that’s been fomented by Santorum’s backward candidacy.

After Democrats blocked Republican attempts to poison the payroll tax cut extension with the Keystone XL Pipeline, mandatory drug tests for unemployment benefit recipients, and more.  Republicans finally found that they had boxed themselves into a political corner from which they escape only by giving-in, which they did on all but one thing.  They still refuse to make millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals share the burden that their greed has imposed on the rest of us.  And already, Republicans are lying about it.

Family Values Republicans have a way of proving that they believe their family values must be imposed by force on everyone else, but do not apply to their own behavior.  In the Totalitarian Corporate Plutocracy of Brewerstan, formerly Arizona, Romney had such a man as the co-chair of his campaign there.  Even before the scandal broke, Paul Babeu was problematic due to his extreme hatred of undocumented Latinos and his association with the White Supremacy movement.

A Wisconsin judge Friday denied Governor Scott Walker extra time to review the estimated one million signatures submitted last month to the state in an effort to recall him.

Dane County Judge Richard Niess refused to give Walker’s campaign the two extra weeks it requested to examine the signatures on the estimated 152,000 pages of petitions recall organizers turned into the Government Accountability Board.

Presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, has been greatly inconvenienced by the “aspirin tablet between the knees” joke by his own private millionaire, Foster Friess.  First, he assumed a victim stance.  Then, after all his rhetoric against birth control in recent weeks, Santorum actually tried to present himself as a birth control supporter.  One has to wonder if he took lessons from Romney.  (videos)

In the never-ending battle to teach religious dogma in public schools, the GOP in Alabama has introduced a bill that will lift a ban on “release time” classes that will allow students to leave school grounds and study Creation “Science” in a different location. The school would only be involved so far as to give an elective credit to students that participate.

Fighting contraception. Stopping domestic violence protections. Extending tax cuts for the wealthy, while hiking taxes on the middle class. Welcoming white supremacists to a conference, but banning gay conservatives. The GOP has followed its extremist fringe off the deep end, leaving the rest of us back in the reality based world, and befuddled. Their strategists warned them not to do this, but it appears that to the GOP, unhinged fringe issues are like catnip.

This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.

We have heard quite a bit of late about Newt Gingrich’s personal billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, and Santorum’s personal millionaire, Foster Friess, but many may not be aware that Romney hasa a personal billionaire too, and like Romney, his billionaire is also a vulture capitalist.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested to a group of business people in Michigan on Thursday that entrepreneurs should ask their parents for money instead of using loans from the federal government.

When a politician gurgles out bold, stupid claims it is always in their own interest to avoid any sort of statistics or facts, and instead stick with emotional dog-whistles. While the armchair politician running for your local school board may understand this, America’s aspiring Ayatollah Rick Santorum seems to not have grasped the concept yet. Yesterday the prospective leader of the free world rambled off a number of lies about the Bolshevik Baby-killing Republic of the Netherlands that are just laughable.

A few days back, I criticized Ron Paul for suggesting that the Republican party of Maine had stacked the deck against him.  When I’m wrong I say so.  In my own defense, it was an easy mistake to make as it’s been hard to find a time when Paul or his acolytes were not sniveling over some perceived injustice.  It is now clear that there were enough irregularities in the Maine caucuses to bring Paul’s complaint into the realm of possibility.  Imagine, if you will that the Chair of the Maine Republican Party.  Watching the returns he sees that Ron Paul might actually win the caucuses there.  Oh the shame!  Oh the humiliation they would suffer to be the only state where Ron Paul has ever, or will ever, win the caucuses or a primary!  Faced with such an anathema, I can picture the party leaders cooking the results out of fear that the entire Republican Party of Maine might be certified insane.  Videos.

Although Mitt Romney used the word "conservative" 19 times in a short speech at the February 10, 2012, Conservative Political Action Conference, the audience he used this word to appeal to was not conservative by any traditional definition. It was right wing. Despite the common American practice of using "conservative" and "right wing" interchangeably, right wing is not a synonym for conservative and not even a true variant of conservatism - although the right wing will opportunistically borrow conservative themes as required

In the war of rhetoric that has developed in Washington as both sides blame each other for our economic mess, one argument has been repeated so often that many people now regard it as fact:

Rich people create the jobs.

Specifically, entrepreneurs and investors, when incented by low taxes, build companies and create millions of jobs.

I have long argued that the impact of the Affordable Care Act is not nearly as big of a deal as opponents would have you believe. At the end of the day, the law is – in the main – little more than a successful effort to put an end to some of the more egregious health insurer abuses while creating an environment that should bring more Americans into programs that will give them at least some of the health care coverage they need.

There is, however, one notable exception – and it’s one that should have a long lasting and powerful impact on the future of health care in our country.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday said the largest U.S. banks and financial companies should hold extra cash on their balance sheets to cushion themselves against financial crises.

The proposal by the chief U.S. banking regulator will affect banks with over $50 billion in assets. There are even stricter rules for companies with over $500 billion in assets such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc.

Loving others is a principal tenant of Christianity, but far to many people many people fail to realize that authentic Christianity and Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity are completely unrelated.  Here is an example of Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity in action.

The Montana Supreme Court just sent a chill down Corporate America’s spine. The state’s high court restored the century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees.

This stunning rebuke of  the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 that deemed corporations as people, which gave them constitutional rights to spend money on political campaigns is a win for democracy.

American citizens are celebrating in the streets as their government snatched final victory in the War on Terror on 1 Dec. 2011 -- through a maneuver that used legislative brilliance rather than bullets.

The moment of victory came when 61 senators passed a version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2012 that allows the indefinite military detention on American soil of American citizens who are merely suspected of having connections to terrorism.

If Republicans seem spooked to you these days, here’s why.

President Obama’s political comeback over the past several months aligns neatly with when he began more aggressively attacking the GOP and politicking for economic growth and equality back in September.

I see by the calendar that Congress is due back in session Tuesday, whatever that means. They’ve actually been in session — sorta, kinda, why not? — a parliamentary trick to prevent President Obama from naming people to keep the government running. But even that is in dispute.

Thus far, the Worst Congress Ever has done nothing but show that the United States can be a nonfunctioning democracy when it wants to, like Italy but with all-you-can-eat buffets. In a single demi-term, it nearly shut down the government, fouled a fledgling economic recovery with a pointless fight over the debt ceiling, and then threatened to withhold spending money for 160 million working Americans by raising the payroll tax. Brinkmanship is its only game.

Before someone accuses me of saying that all Republicans are intellectually substandard, I do not think that is true at all.  Nevertheless, we have an ongoing stream of psychological studies that link decreased mental capacity with Republican practices and policies.  Personally, I think that the leadership, the Republican politicians and pundits, are quite bright, with a few obvious exceptions.  The problem is that they are devious enough to take advantage of their base by promulgating policies, designed to pander to their mental dysfunction.