It may well be true that Scott Walker opposes marriage equality and his wife and kids support it. But I feel like this is the next stage or perhaps the last stage of the marriage debate: GOP pols who, for whatever reason, remain adamantly opposed to equal marriage rights but who nevertheless put their families forward to say they disagree with them and are perfectly comfortable with gay people and LGBT equality.
To be clear, in this case, I’m not saying Scott Walker’s wife and kids aren’t telling the truth. I’m sure they are. But politically, I think the message is: ‘Look, I can’t be that big a hater. Even my family doesn’t oppose this!’ Not only does it soften the pol’s image. It’s an implicit signal, for those who want to receive it, that the candidate probably doesn’t believe it either. He’s just stuck in this position out of political necessity or inertia.
The plan to gut Wisconsin’s public record law did not survive the holiday weekend.
It’s not too early to say it and we shouldn’t be afraid to face facts: We’re entering a new Golden Age of Donald Trump news. I know many of you are impatient with the attention we sometimes give Trump – despite reading the same news assiduously (we’ve got data, don’t deny it!). Even I get sort of bored and impatient with it. But not now. Now we’re in new territory. As we know, over recent years, Trump has ditched his old brand as a cartoonish plutocrat, comfortable in the multi-cultural world of New York media and celebrity culture, to rebrand himself as an clown-car racist and populist xenophobe. And now finally the chickens or whatever farm animals Trump cavorts with are coming home to roost. Whatever damage he’s doing to his own businesses, he has become the doofus bull, enraged and ridiculous, let loose in the China shop of GOP electoral vulnerabilities.
Some delightfully revealing developments out of Wisconsin, where Scott Walker’s Republican legislative majorities have passed out of committee a provision canceling Wisconsin’s ‘open records’ law, some form of which exists in almost every state, though more comprehensively than most in Wisconsin. As the State Journal puts it, “The proposal blocks the public from reviewing nearly all records created by lawmakers, state and local officials or their aides, including electronic communications and the drafting files of legislation. The language was included in the final version of the state’s 2015-17 budget, which passed the Legislature’s budget committee on a party-line vote late Thursday. The budget bill next goes to the full Assembly and Senate.”
July 4th, 1876: First newspaper report of General Custer killed at Little Big Horn.
Where did the Pledge of Allegiance come from and when did we start doing it? Here’s the story.
TPM is looking for a Features Intern to assist with TPMCafe, our op-ed section, and The Slice, our features section that gets to the gut-level, human side of (mostly) American culture and politics. The Slice publishes researched essays, personal narrative and voicey reported pieces on things like politics, sex, identity, crime, history, pop culture and family. Read what we’ve published so far here, and read more from the editor here and here.
We’re hiring a new Junior Front End Developer to help us build out the publishing platform that will shape the future of digital journalism. Interested? Full listing after the jump …
Jindal’s massive resistance enters Monty Python/Holy Grail phase.
A look at two 1939 political rallies, one by German-American Bund (effectively the American pro-Nazi or simply Nazi party) at Madison Square Garden and another by the Communist Party USA in Chicago. See how each appropriated one US President (Washington for the Nazis and Lincoln for the Communists) as their claim to embody American history.