The last day for the public to write (hopefully not) in futility their comments is today.

So go here — keystonecomments@state.gov — if you wish to file your resistance.

By a greater than 3 to 1 margin the American people see the Republican party as out of touch with the concerns of regular people. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll only 23 percent of adults see the party as in touch, while an incredible 70 percent see the party as out of touch.

Each time the stage mothers of the Republican Party push another child star out into the footlights, we find, yet again, that the children of Lake GOP are quite uniformly, below average.  Although this goes back to Reagan; the idea of casting affable meat puppets for the role of “President” to cynically sell the evergreen policies of the plutocracy to the unsuspecting rabble, the talent pool has gotten pretty laughably shallow.  And not for nothing.

The single most important question about a possible immigration reform bill is whether or not Congressional Republicans are really prepared to defy their base for the political good of the party. The prospects of anything happening hinge entirely on this one question.

Michael Steele, the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, is less than thrilled with the current head of the RNC, Reince Priebus. Priebus came to power by beating Steele in the 2011 RNC chair election after Steele helped lead the Republican Party to taking back the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm election. Priebus, meanwhile, oversaw the Republicans losing 2012 elections in the Senate and an inferior infrastructure in the presidential election. Now Steele is accusing Priebus of “crapping” on Steele’s legacy.

While Chambliss is talking about same-sex marriage, this basic line could easily be adapted to explain almost every other major position of the Republican Party. Chambliss isn’t unemployed, so he is not going to need unemployment insurance. Chambliss can’t get pregnant, so he doesn’t need the right to choose. Chambliss makes more than minimum wage, so he doesn’t need minimum wage laws. Chambliss is not an Iraqi, so the war will not hurt him.

What is remarkable is that even with these terrible numbers the GOP is still favored to retain control of the House in 2014 because redistricting has given them such a huge built-in advantage.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops held their annual November meeting this past week, and coming a week after the elections, it had to have been rough. The bishops lost four out of four state votes on marriage equality, and the prospects for rolling back the Affordable Care Act and advancing their other policy prescriptions dimmed greatly with Obama’s reelection and the failure of the GOP to take control of the Senate. It was not a good week for the bishops, and like all people in politics who came out on the short end of things, a little stock taking was in order. What went wrong, and how can we do better next time?

Their answer: bad messaging. “If only we were better at explaining things . . .” Right. And Todd Akin lost not because he was a man firmly on a mission to return us to the 18th century, but because he was inarticulate.

News flash for the USCCB: It’s not that the voters don’t understand you; it’s that they don’t agree with you.

As long as the rank and file members don’t want their party to move to the center, it isn’t going to moderate. While opinions could change going forward, this recent loss was not enough to convince the Republican base that their party needs to really change.

Why are there so few articles, or even op-ed pieces in the erroneously labeled liberal media and national newspapers devoted to the scandal of fraudulent election supervision, mistakes on absentee voter ballots, or misinformation on polling places, and dates of election. In the past month, the LA Times has published zero articles on the topic, but seven concerning voter ID laws. The Washington Post: 1, and that one from the AP news wire. The NY Times: zero. The Miami Herald: zero. Bloomberg News: zero.