Ben Carson: White liberals don’t like me because they’re racist.

Matt Yglesias patiently read through the National Review’s latest prescription for a conservative alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and here’s what he found.

The core of a replacement would be a change in the tax treatment of health insurance. The tax break for coverage would be flattened and capped so that people would not get a bigger break the more comprehensive their insurance. The break would also be extended to people who do not have access to employer coverage. People would be allowed to purchase health insurance across state lines. Medicaid and Medicare would be converted into subsidies–essentially add-ons to the tax break or credit for coverage–for people to buy private coverage and pay for out-of-pocket health expenses.

Matt also did the yeoman’s work of explaining for the umpteenth time why these ideas won’t work. But what I’m interested in is how persistent this particular conservative fixation is. Read More

Connecticut priest allegedly making more than $300k as a meth dealer.

Father of Newtown victim appears at NRA school violence event, applauds new NRA proposal.

And the Jon Stewart Jon Stewart defends the Egyptian Jon Stewart (aka Bassem Youssef).

A bracing, weird, fascinating and horrifying look at a year in the life of the NRA through 16 covers of their flagship magazine. Definitely give this a look.

Last Friday I did a post on how social conservatives are now complaining that they are now in a threatening climate where it’s no longer acceptable for them to say that homosexuality is wrong or that the law should discriminate against gays. It’s an odd or ingenious victimization jujitsu in which the opponents of equality claim they’re losing their rights to call gays sinful or gross or weird.

There was a good example of this this afternoon on Fox. Watch after the jump … Read More

Yet more suggesting those assassinations of the prosecutor and DA in Kaufman, Texas are the work of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.

Remember the guy who’s suspected of assassinating the Colorado prisons chief just after being released from prison? Turns out he was released four years early because of a clerical error.

If you listen to the cable chat shows, you hear that Marco Rubio is the key player who is required to make immigration reform happen. Only that’s almost certainly not true. Immigration reform was pretty clearly going to happen without Rubio’s involvement, albeit quite possibly more painfully for the GOP. And even on top of that reality, at least so far, Tea Partiers in the House have ended up being considerably more flexible on the issue than many folks would have anticipated. Rubio’s not the one who’s going to make reform happen. If anything, he’s made himself the one best positioned, if he chooses, to kill it. Read More