I started a Facebook group called I Oppose Torture, and Kagro X Is My Hero.  It’s for people who don’t see much “reality based” discussion of the subject of torture on cable news, and want to see David Waldman on TV  every day. <

When I started blogging six years or so ago, I wrote a lot about the new right wing, trying to describe what I was seeing and hoping to understand what had happened to the mainstream conservatism I had grown up with and thought I knew. Until I came across Dave Neiwert’s blog Orcinus, I didn’t even know there was a word for it. Once I read his long posts called “Rush, Newspeak and Fascism,” I did. It’s called “eliminationism,” which Neiwert defines as “a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.”

This new strain of conservatism, then, wasn’t actually conservatism at all, but a hearkening back to old radical strains of American tribalism and some very unpleasant 20th century European political movements —which all focused on completely annihilating perceived internal enemies. One would have thought that notions of expelling racial groups or committing genocide had been purged from the American body politic sometime around the turn of the last century. But here it was again, all mixed in with white supremacy, fundamantalist religion, nationalism, chauvanism and paranoia — and it was being absorbed into the mainstream of one of the two American political parties.

Notre Dame once led its people to an understanding of the Church as envisioned by the Vatican II, the legacy of the Good Pope, John XXIII. Now it too sees the Church as a hierarchical organization controlled by the Pope. No wonder the right was able to stir up a pseudo-controversy over the invitation to President Obama.

There hasn’t been much of a spotlight focused on the Ohio Senate primary (May, 2010), except in Ohio– at least not yet. The Republicans have all but picked their candidate for the open seat, ex-lobbyist (for Oman and Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier) and pre-Mean Jean Schmidt Congressman Rob Portman who went on to serve as Bush’s Trade Representative and then his director of OMB, two jobs at which he failed spectacularly, particularly for Ohio working families.

Today we’re going to start looking at the contest by meeting the more progressive of the two candidates, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

I’ve been reluctant to embrace suggestions that torture, iraq, and Valerie Plame were all going to coalesce into one linked story. But it is increasingly looking like that may be the case.

Tomorrow’s talking head shows will no doubt be filled with questions about torture, enhanced interrogation, and who knew what when. Digby’s got an intriguing proposal for getting some answers.

Despite what the Cato and Heritage crowd have been telling you via their mouthpieces for the past few decades, Social Security is doing a lot better than your 41(k). Alicia H. Munnell has the details.

As Mr. ReddHedd and I prepare to visit New Orleans next week, I’ve been reading everything I can on the sights and tastes of the city. And man does this sound like a trip to savor.

I’ve always wanted to visit NOLA, but haven’t been able to get there until now.

Featuring the music of Grizzly Bear and FOOL’S GOLD.

You know, it was a big week. . . lots to talk about, lots of insanely insane Republicans to shamelessly shame. . . but what with all this “he said, she said,” with the “she” being Nancy Pelosi, isn’t it time we talked about, you know, the, um, elephant in the room?

That’s right, tonight, let’s talk about Dick.