The governor of Maine is a sociopath:

Paul LePage. Bobby Jindal, Rick Scott, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Jan Brewer – when will people learn that electing batshit GOP governors is always a losing proposition.

“Conservative website WorldNetDaily has seized on news that Jane Pitt, mother of actor Brad, penned an op-ed praising Mitt Romney and blasting President Obama for being a ‘liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.’ … They also claim ‘Pitt has every reason to be frightened,” because some random wackos wrote violent tweets and the “mainstream media have painted her in a vilifying light.'” [Towleroad]

Nugent:

Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers’ concept of limited government is dead.

They have never gotten over it. And they never will.

First the child support, now this:

How do these people keep their jobs? “Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is arguing that President Barack Obama’s health care reform law should be repealed because rights come from ‘nature and God,’ not the government.” [Raw Story]

Should have dealt with this when it came up earlier in the week, because it’s too awful to ignore. Stupid, stupid people. From the Texas Republican Party Platform:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

TPM believes the Texas GOP when they said this was a mistake, but given the rest of the platform, it was clearly no mistake.

And it gets worse.

Read more »

Fallows thinks we’re fucked:

• First, a presidential election is decided by five people, who don’t even try to explain their choice in normal legal terms.
• Then the beneficiary of that decision appoints the next two members of the court, who present themselves for consideration as restrained, humble figures who care only about law rather than ideology.
• Once on the bench, for life, those two actively second-guess and re-do existing law, to advance the interests of the party that appointed them.
• Meanwhile their party’s representatives in the Senate abuse procedural rules to an extent never previously seen to block legislation — and appointments, especially to the courts.
• And, when a major piece of legislation gets through, the party’s majority on the Supreme Court prepares to negate it — even though the details of the plan were originally Republican proposals and even though the party’s presidential nominee endorsed these concepts only a few years ago.

Until people who vote can be made to understand that the GOP is their enemy, not their friend, we will not have nice things.

5 Signs of a Radical Change in U.S. Politics [The Atlantic]