Just as the GOP is again grappling with the slavery issue, the Southern Republican Leadership Conference kicks off today in New Orleans with most of the party’s headliners in attendance. Wonder what those folks will have to say about Confederate history month and the role of slavery in the Civil War period?

Glenn Beck: “I could give a flying crap about the political process. … We’re an entertainment company.”

When it comes to dog-whistle racial politics, Virginia isn’t alone in celebrating April as Confederate history month.

Larry North, a guy from East Texas, was angry at the government, say federal prosecutors. And that’s what drove him to leave 36 explosive devices, including pipe bombs, in post office boxes in 23 separate locations.

Sean Hannity floats a Palin-Bachmann ticket for 2012, to the delight of the anti-Enlightenment wing of the Republican Party.

Once you put Michael Steele in charge of your organization, you face a lot of tough questions. One a lot of Republicans are now asking is whether they may have to keep Steele at the RNC because if they fired him he still wouldn’t shut up and it would probably get even worse. “If he were thrown overboard you can guarantee he’d be out there slamming a lot of people and saying a lot of things. It’s best to let this one simmer down,” one GOP strategist who works with the RNC told our Christina Bellantoni.

There’s nothing the right, particularly the sectarian right, loves more than the the federal constitution, which by their reckoning is an anti-federal power, libertarian document that hearkens back to the days when the Founding Fathers founded the Tea Party movement. But I’m not sure there’s any better example of what nonsense this is, or the way that the ‘constitution’ has just become a fetish which automatically represents the rightwing wish-list du jour, than the paranoia and rage against the Census. If you’re really devoted to the constitution, by all rights responding to Census should make you something close to giddy since participating in the Census is about as close as you can get to fulfilling an unambiguous and explicit constitutional duty. For a real constitutionalist, it should be like touching the Pope’e garment. Read More

Far-Right Iowa Rep. denounces Humane Society for secret vegetarian agenda.

Former New Orleans cop explains how police gunned down unarmed civilians in post-Katrina incident. Shocking stuff.

Mr. Johnson, the blue Sesame Street muppet, made a special guest appearance as Michael Steele last night on The Daily Show. Watch.