With the conclave upon us, who will be the next pope? Check out our special cheat sheet of the top contenders with bios of each.
From our past: Jackie Robinson’s March 9th, 1965 telegram to LBJ demanding the president take federal action to stop violence in Selma. See the telegram after the jump … Read More
This graf from Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds of why I started TPM and why I so quickly fell in love with the mode of writing it made possible for me … Read More
TPM Reader BC has sparked a lively conversation by questioning the “GOP in Disarray” meme. Now TPM Reader JB responds …
To your correspondent’s point, Republicans have in our modern history been more dependent on strong-looking leaders than have Democrats.
For generations, there was a pretty obvious reason for this: Republicans were members of the smaller of our two parties. Not only that, but a whole region of the country — the South — had large numbers of voters who would only vote for a Republican if the negative value of his party identification was outweighed by his personal qualities. Small wonder that the first Republican to recover the White House after the GOP’s collapse in the Hoover period happened to be the country’s greatest war hero.
Illinois state party to consider firing chairman after he expresses support for gay marriage.
TPM Reader BC has a question …
Look, I love Republican disarray as much as the next guy, but four months after E-day I’m still confused by this notion that the GOP’s now in turmoil because it lacks a “strong leader.”
I want to challenge TPM to question on this narrative a little more – because frankly, the more I think about it, the more it seems like the kind of lazy pseudo-explanation that mainstream reporters fall back on to avoid serious, thoughtful analysis of the party’s woes… And I come to TPM to get away from that.
If you’re a Prime member and haven’t checked out the new Prime 2.0 beta discussion area, definitely drop by. We’ve got some great discussions up and running. We just opened up a thread to discuss my post from earlier today about the morality of Bill Clinton signing DOMA in 1996.
If you haven’t signed into the beta yet, read this first.
When Washington Republicans’ decided to moderate their substantive position on immigration reform but no other issues after the 2012 election, I don’t think they gamed out all the ways it would reinforce the bad habits they established over the last two years.
That choice has actually made it harder for the GOP to dial back the procedural aggressiveness — the constant creation of legislative crises — that destroyed their standing with the public shortly after they captured the House. They managed to put off another debt ceiling crisis, but only by locking themselves into an untenable position on sequestration, and by making a politically perilous pledge to pass a budget that comes into balance within 10 years.
Now the same basic dynamic is complicating GOP efforts not to escalate a debate over funding the government into a full-scale shutdown fight. Read More
Ahmadinejad kisses the casket of Hugo Chavez and some other stellar shots from today’s state funeral, including this and this.
New York high school suspends armed guards program after guard accidentally fires his gun in the hallway during class.