A California-based PAC called the Republican Majority Campaign spent nearly all of the $1.7 million it raked in from conservative donors last year, but less than 2% of the money went to supporting candidates or independent political spending.
The rest of the money raised by the group went to operating expenses, salaries for the PAC’s top officers, and back into fundraising appeals — which often ask supporters for as much as $144 in exchange for sending faxes opposing health care reform to members of Congress.
The …

By Emma Ruby-Sachs
General Petraeus has announced that he supports a review of the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy. Too bad that in his presentation to the Senate Armed Services Committee he told the Committee that eliminating DADT could negatively impact military function.
Petraeus gained support from equal rights advocates when he told Fareed Zakaria that he served with gay individuals in the CIA and that he didn’t think that troops would have trouble adjusting to working with openly gay service members. Today he prepared …

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
Theodore Roosevelt – 1912

With these fighting words, Teddy Roosevelt shrugged off an assassination attempt by a deranged Milwaukee saloon owner and — bullet still lodged in his chest — launched into a ninety-minute address railing against the corporatism and corruption that dominated both parties in Washington.
The year was 1912, a time of widespread discontent among both Democratic and Republican reformers. …

Washington memoirs are all about settling scores. Karl Rove’s “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight” takes that tradition to new and self-parodying heights. To read Rove’s recollections of George W. Bush’s White House is to believe that, for eight years, men of “courage and moral clarity” governed the United States and were beset by critics who refused to give them any credit. On page after page, Rove names the naysayers and picks apart their claims. He’s most at ease …

On his radio show, right-wing host Glenn Beck warned his audience about churches that care about social justice. As the deranged media personality sees it, “social justice” is code for … something nefarious.

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them … are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long …

One of the reasons many people work for government even when there’s not a recession going on (despite the fact that government jobs often pay lower salaries than private sector ones) is the job security and generous benefits. Particularly for the younger generation of workers, there remain relatively few companies that offer traditional pension plans, but they still abound for workers in government jobs. But if Mary Williams Walsh’s story in The New York Times is any guide, those supposedly secure government pensions are …

I saw the following story on the Minnesota Independent this morning and being a Minnesota native myself, I felt moved to respond: White on same-sex marriage: Rosa Parks didn’t ‘move to the front of the bus to support sodomy’
“For the first time in Minnesota history, a legislative committee contemplated the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state on Monday.” About time, I’d say. And it’s a shame that Minnesota’s political landscape has been dirtied by the reprehensible beliefs of a small group of narrow-minded …

A California Republican family values legislator who was arrested early Wednesday morning for drunk driving had recently left a gay club, sources tell a local news channel.
State senator Roy Ashburn was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol on Wednesday at 2am in Sacramento, after police saw the car he was driving swerving erratically. An unidentified male passenger was in the car with Ashburn.
The sources told CBS13 that Ashburn, a father of four, had that night been at Faces, which touts itself as …

Sen. Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who single handedly delayed unemployment benefits for 400,000 desperate Americans and forced an unnecessary furlough of another 2,000, should be a figure regarded with wonderment.
The awesome power he held in his hands! The utter disregard for vulnerable Americans he exhibited while wielding it!
Bunning is a Republican superhero. He personifies the mean-spirited, hypocritical, wealthy-serving, obstructionist Republican Party. As a result, his fellow GOP senators championed him. South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint said, “He’s my hero this week.” Alabama Republican …

In Liz Cheney’s worldview, Rudy Giuliani is a disloyal al Qaeda sympathizer.
Let us explain.
Yesterday, Cheney’s outfit, a group called Keep America Safe, went up with a blistering ad that attacked Justice Department lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees and are now working on detainee issues. The ad dubbed the lawyers “the Al Qaeda Seven” and asked “whose values do they share?” while flashing an image of Osama bin Laden.
It turns out that among the many high-profile lawyers who have represented so-called “terrorist detainees” is …