NewsTrust - Republicans - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Komen Fundraiser Calls for CEO Nancy Brinker to Quit

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Karen McVeigh - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Ellis refers to her disappointment even as Brinker reversed the funding decision. "Brinker's words struck me as vague and hollow – no future commitment to Planned Parenthood and no specific apology to the low-income women who would have become the collateral damage from the defunding," Ellis wrote. "I also don't believe Brinker and her board when she claims that Komen's decision wasn't political."

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League of Conservation Voters: George Allen Named to Dirty Dozen

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

action.lcv.org - Feb. 10 (Press Release) - Former Virginia Senator George Allen earned an abysmal 1% LCV lifetime score during his time in the Senate. Additionally, Allen has received nearly $500,000 from oil and gas interests. This is Allen's 3rd time on the Dirty Dozen, having been named to the list in 2000 and 2006.

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"Gasland" Director Josh Fox Fires Back at Republicans After His Unfair Arrest

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Ed Schultz - Feb. 02 (Interview) - Gasland director Josh Fox, ... was arrested this week, in violation of his first amendment rights, while covering a Congressional hearing on fracking. In the interview, Fox fires back at the Republicans who have been targeting him

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The Tea Party Paradox

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Elbert Ventura - Jan. 20 (Review) - It remains one of the mysteries of our political age: How did a Wall Street-spawned meltdown and the worst recession in decades spark a populist reaction against government? In the 1930s, the failure of a Republican administration and laissez-faire economics led to a leftward swing and the New Deal. In our time, the financial crisis seemed poised to catalyze a revived reformism. But mere months—weeks even—after President Obama’s swearing-in, angry Americans began gathering in living rooms and town halls and public parks to demand an end to government tyranny. Who are they, and what do they want? In the nearly three years since the Tea Party’s efflorescence, political observers and the media have sought answers to those questions. A third question—what are they capable of?—has already been answered. Many liberals and political elites scoffed when the army of tricorn-wearing, teabag-toting protesters first appeared. A midterm election and a hijacked government later, the smirks are gone. The Tea Party, it turned out, is a real force, and its impact has been nothing less than seismic. The last couple of years have seen a rush of volumes hoping to explain and exploit the phenomenon, their titles matching the movement’s heat: Boiling Mad, The Whites of Their Eyes, The Backlash, Give Us Liberty, Mad as Hell. Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson’s The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism might seem a latecomer, but it is in its own way well timed, arriving in the midst of a presidential campaign. What does the Tea Party do now that it has had a taste of governing? And where does American democracy go from here?

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Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Noam Chomsky - Jan. 19 (Opinion) - it goes across the board. In fact, it goes through the whole so-called Libertarian ideology. It may sound nice on the surface but if you think it through, it's just a call for corporate tyranny. It takes away any barrier to corporate tyranny. But, it's all academic. The business world would never permit it to happen because it would destroy the economy. They can't live without a powerful state, and they know it.

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Neocons Dream Up Scary Iran Scenarios

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Paul R. Pillar - Jan. 11 (Opinion) - As American neocons continue to walk the United States toward another war in the Middle East, this time with Iran, they have been laboring to come up with rationales, including alarmist scenarios of what a nuclear-armed Iran might do geopolitically, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.

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Jon Stewart Rips GOP's Hypocritical 'Class Warfare' With Mitt Romney (VIDEO)

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Jan. 10 (Comedy News) - video

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Buddy Roemer: GOP Pres. Candidate Who Backs Occupy, Campaign Finance Reform, Excluded From Debates

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez - Jan. 06 (Interview) - We speak with Buddy Roemer, a candidate who is on the Republican ballot in New Hampshire, but has not been invited to this weekend’s two Republican debates — or any of the past 16 debates — even though he is a former governor of Louisiana and four-term member of Congress. Roemer's campaign is unusual in the Republican field: He has refused to accept campaign contributions more than $100, rejected all donations from political action committees, and has made campaign finance the key plank in his platform. He has also endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. "[President Obama] gets elected and he says he wants change, but he takes all his money from these same corporations who don't want change," Roemer says. "Special interests control Washington -- I've been there." [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Mitt Romney’s climate and energy views

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Grist - By Lisa Hymas - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - Where does Mitt Romney stand on climate change and energy issues? Brace yourself: He doesn’t have that flip-flopper reputation for nothing. Then Romney used to be one of the more sane Republicans when it comes to climate change. He would play up uncertainty and use weasel words, but he still acknowledged global warming as a problem. In his 2010 book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness , Romney wrote: I believe that climate change is occurring—the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor. I am uncertain how much of the warming, however, is attributable to factors out of our control. In June of 2011, he went so far as to suggest that we should actually do something about climate change . Do what ? Well, definitely not cap-and-trade , but, you know, something: I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer.

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Why the Iowa Caucuses -- and the GOP Clowns Competing in Them -- Are a Total Joke

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Gene Lyons - Jan. 02 (Opinion) - what’s alarming about the GOP contest isn’t the indecisiveness or poor reasoning processes of Iowa voters. It’s the dismal quality of the choices they’re offered. Is this the best that one of America’s two major political parties can do? You’ve got to wonder what would happen if they put “None of the Above” on the ballot.

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On Your Marks

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

otherwords.org - Jan. 02 (Cartoon) - Voter I.D. Laws

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Fact-checking in the Echo Chamber Nation

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. "I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox." My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends. This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies. The paradox ...

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Why the Republican Crackup Hurts America

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - Dec. 22 (Opinion) - America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way - seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010. Newt Gingrich's recent assertion that public officials aren't bound to follow the decisions of federal courts derives from the same tradition. This stop-at-nothing radicalism is dangerous for the GOP because most Americans recoil from it. Gingrich himself became an object of ridicule in the late 1990s, and many Republicans today worry that if he heads the ticket the Party will suffer large losses. It's also dangerous for America. We need two political parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing. Our democracy can't work any other way.

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Professional fact-checking about as broken as professional journalism

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Alex Pareene - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - If I were to, say, swipe your grandfather’s copy of “See, I Told You So” by Rush Limbaugh from his den, and then mail him a gift card good for a portion of the price of an Amazon Kindle, I think your grandfather would be well within his rights to call me a thief and possibly a communist. Politifact disagrees, apparently, as Democrats have been accused of telling the “lie of the year” for arguing that a vote to replace Medicare with a private voucher system does not constitute voting to “end” the program. The government program that would be replaced with a private voucher system. Replacing a thing with something else no longer constitutes getting rid of that thing. FYI. Politifact’s decision, needless to say, frustrated a lot of people. They have been accused of naming this arguably true claim the year’s biggest lie because Rep. Paul Ryan, the man who came up with the Medicare-replacing plan, launched a big letter-writing campaign lobbying for it, complete with a badly lit YouTube video. Paul Krugman and others say that Politifact made this decision in the interest of achieving the illusion of “balance,” because the past couple “lies of the year” have all belonged to Republicans.

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Fact checking the AP fact checker

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Power Line - By Scott Johnson - Dec. 20 (Opinion) - According to Pete Yost last week in a superficial AP fact check story: “Republican presidential candidates have claimed that the Obama administration is cleansing government files of references to radical Islam, an assertion so juicy that politicians keep repeating it — even though it’s a wild exaggeration.” But I think the GOP candidates have it right, more or less, and Yost has it wrong. At least they are closer to the mark than Yost. See, for example, Cliff May’s NRO column “What’s Islam got to do with it?” (May cites a report by the Westminster Institute’s Katharine C. Gorka that notes: “Key national security documents have already excised all terminology that associates terrorism with Islam or Islamic concepts such as jihad.”) See also “Obama administration pulls references to Islam from terror training materials, official says.” (The story quotes purposefully ambiguous comments made by Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole at the George Washington University law school. My call yesterday to the Department of Justice for clarification went unreturned.)

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Jon Stewart & Jon Oliver Take On Mitt Romney's $10,000 Bet (VIDEO)

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart, Jon Oliver - Dec. 13 (Comedy News) - video

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The Most Important Speech of His Presidency

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Robert Reich's Blog - By Robert Reich - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - The President’s speech today in Osawatomie, Kansas — where Teddy Roosevelt gave his “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 — is the most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots, laying out the reasons behind our economic and political crises, and asserting a willingness to take on the powerful and the privileged that have gamed the system to their advantage.

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Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Dan Kennedy - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - If Romney fails to win the nomination, it could be disastrous for the country, for the Republican Party and even for the Obama presidency. Let me take these one at a time.

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Mitt Romney's Immigration Dodge

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Reason Magazine - By Jacob Sullum - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - The former Massachusetts governor's immigration stance precludes the possibility of reconciling policy with reality.

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Jon Stewart Mocks Barney Frank's Retirement Coverage On Fox News (VIDEO)

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Katla McGlynn, Jon Stewart - Nov. 30 (Comedy News) - After nearly three decades of serving Massachusetts' 4th congressional district, Democratic U.S. Representative Barney Frank announced Monday that he will not be seeking re-election in 2012. On Tuesday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart bid farewell to him the only way he knows how: with clips of absurd reactions from the GOP.

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Jon Stewart Mocks Herman Cain's Press Conference

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Nov. 10 (Comedy News) - Jon Stewart's ongoing field day with the Herman Cain sexual harassment scandal continued Wednesday night, with Stewart ripping apart the GOP presidential candidate's damage control...

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Jon Stewart Rips Congressional GOP's 'In God We Trust' Debate: 'You're Doing It To Be D*cks' (VIDEO)

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Nov. 04 (Comedy News) - Whenever you ask a congressperson, a Presidential candidate or just about any political pundit what the most important thing this country needs right now, it's jobs, jobs, jobs. Immigration and war reform, sure, but jobs are key.

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Jon Stewart Mocks Herman Cain's Sexual Harassment Scandal

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Nov. 01 (Comedy News) - Given all the parodies of pornography that involve a pizza delivery guy, it's only natural that Jon Stewart would get some material out of presidential...

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Jon Stewart Takes On 'Crazy' GOP Candidate Rhetoric: Even Pat Robertson Says 'Tone It Down' (VIDEO)

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Oct. 27 (Comedy News) - Even though there is still a year until we find out who wins the 2012 election, Stewart was able to put together a pretty thorough supercut showing the pattern of "crazy" talk that has emerged among the candidates, including Mitt Romney's "Corporations are people" remark and Bachmann's HPV vaccine story.

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Jon Stewart Rips GOP, Fox News Reaction To Gaddafi's Death: 'WTF Is Wrong With You People?' (VIDEO)

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jon Stewart - Oct. 21 (Comedy News) - video

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