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 yesterday, 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 …

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 …

Most of the Republicans have relied upon scripted talking points and generalized denunciations of big government and a “government takeover.” Numerous Democrats in the room have explained why it’s not possible to ban insurance companies from discriminating against those with preexisting conditions without also covering everybody and subsidizing those who can’t afford it. (Short answer: people would just game the system, going without insurance until they get sick.) Obama has spoken at enormous length today about why letting insurance companies sell policies across state …

There’s plenty of criticism being directed today at Sen. Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who single-handedly prevented the Democrats from extending the filing deadline for unemployment benefits, which arrives Sunday.
Bunning says that he wants the $10 billion cost to be paid for with cuts elsewhere, and, despite his past support for much larger unfunded bills, we’ll take him at his word. But there’s another good reason that Republicans want to prolong the debate over the unemployment benefits bill: Namely, it keeps all other Democratic …

Jonathan Rauch — one of the few libertarian/conservatives, like Bruce Bartlett and David Frum, who has remained more hopeful than partisan in the Obama era — pens a compelling essay about the roots of modern GOP populism. It’s all about the legacy of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, argues Rauch. (Wallace, a Democrat and independent, gave his final presidential endorsement to Bob Dole in 1996.)
Supporters of Sarah Palin won’t like this passage — to say nothing of neoconfederate Wallace-lovers:

The hottest ticket in the Republican …