Can we just call it the Republican Birdocalypse?

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” Thomas Paine said that, and I wish I could ask him, “What times aren’t?” Still, whatever else they are these are our times. And, however obviously true that is, it is painful to confess.

America’s greatest promise lies in the bold idea that each citizen in every generation is Founder of the country. Though the promise remains unachieved, the idea is worth celebrating this Fourth of July.

Strict constitutionalists or not, you gotta think that for the guys who overturned the popular vote in Bush v. Gore — and have since followed that up by determining that the 1st Amendment right to free speech should be weighted by how much money you have in Citizens United, among other atrocities — the last thing in the world they’d want would be an established legal right of the public to “honest services.”

It’s official: Senator Jeff “Beauregard” Sessions can’t play poker for shit.

At the Republican caucus retreat, President Obama showed us the potential of a real-world, unscripted partisan showdown before an unblinking camera. Proving the democratic potential, FoxNews blinked and cut away from the event. That’s how important fakery and deceit are to its mission, and to the success the Right.

History might be written by the winners, but our most profound, long-lived legends and stories are created by the folk. That’s why the stories, songs and poems are not called Elite Lore. Many of them are cautionary tales about the blindness, cruelty, hubris and dehumanizing excesses of authority. The Framers, aware of this creative power, [...]

I’m gonna repeat my sad joke: we are approaching the time when there will be “corporate creationists” so convinced of the divine status of the corporate life-form that they will deny vehemently that corporations evolved from human beings. Americans, we are the new monkeys.