TPM Reader JB picks up the thread on cracked parties and decapitated leaderships …
About your post this evening…it goes back just a couple of years, to the last government shutdown crisis in 2011, and I don’t think that’s far enough to understand what’s happened to the Republican Party, or at least to the GOP in Congress.
Remember that up to the beginning of 2007 the Republicans had not only the White House but majorities in both houses of Congress. They’d held them for some time. They had the power to set the agenda for the country, for several years, and then they lost it.
It wasn’t an AR-15 or an automatic weapon. It was a common shotgun that Aaron Alexis used to carry out the Washington Navy Yard massacre earlier this month. We’ve detailed the history of that gun, the Remington 870, today. It’s a worthwhile read, especially if you want a better understanding of the tools being used to carry out these horrific crimes. Similarly, we also published a history of the AR-15 rifle in December, following the Sandy Hook massacre.
That’s what we’re discussing right now at The Hive (subscribers only).
Pope Francis announces date – April 27, 2014 – when John Paul II and his (twice removed predecessor) John XXIII will be declared saints.
My thoughts on ‘broken windows theory’ and state decay in the Tea Party era.
Sen. Collins denounces Tea Party legislative hostage taking strategy.
At the height of Cruzapalooza, a number of conservatives claimed the press was ignoring Cruz’s ‘filibuster’ while they’d all but gone giddy over Wendy Davis’ filibuster in the Texas state legislature. Some reporters even fell for it. Tone can be subjective. But at least in terms of the quantity of press, the claim seems demonstrably false inasmuch as the national political news has been consumed by Cruz both before and after as well as during his ‘filibuster’ speech.
But look at this.
Last week TPM hosted a rooftop party atop our DC office to celebrate the launch of our new publishing platform and the relaunch of TPMPrime. There I got a chance to meet Jamelle Bouie, one of several young journalists whose work I admire greatly but who I hadn’t yet had a chance to meet in person. We got to talking about the under-appreciated dangers of what amounts to our current Tea Party governance. Read More
Former Sen. Alan Simpson and his wife have each published letters in the local paper in Cody laying into Lynne Cheney for telling Alan to “shut up” then lying about it.