I'm old enough to remember when American liberals cherished the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. They celebrated especially the freedom accorded those with unpopular beliefs and protested attempts to squelch the expression of differing opinions.
The tea partyers made a serious blunder in Mississippi, costing them a runoff win: They carelessly slipped their magic passion potion to the opposition.
Establishment Republicans across the country are saying “Thank God for Mississippi,” but not in the derisive way that political scientist V.O. Key describes it above. The state’s Republican voters, and probably quite a few Democrats, allowed the GOP establishment to fend off a Tea Party challenge to a sitting senator. In the process, they kept Democrats from potentially expanding the Senate’s general election playing field in November and from giving anti-establishment forces in the Republican Senate caucus another ally.
Mississippi, a state often ignored by the national political world, managed to do something rarely seen in politics: Produce two upsets in the same race in a three-week span. And it bucked a trend of generally pathetic turnout in primaries nationwide to produce the second and then first-largest primary turnouts in the history of Mississippi Republican politics.
Mississippi, a trailblazing leader in voter participation? It has been a very odd primary season indeed.
Reporter Sharyl Attkisson's story sounds familiar to me: A major network got tired of her reports criticizing government. She no longer works there.
What should Republican lawmakers do about immigration? That's been a simmering source of controversy ever since George W. Bush's push for so-called comprehensive immigration legislation, with legalization and enforcement provisions, in 2006.
Most liberals and many economic conservatives argued that support for such legislation was a political imperative for Republicans. Otherwise, they would continue to lose Hispanic voters, an inevitably increasing segment of the electorate, by 2-1 margins.
It's the darnedest thing. Only a select few sites grace the bookmark bar topping my Web browser. Amazon.com is one. And Amazon is the only retailer to make the cut.
That it lets me buy ant traps online in 40 seconds, gets them to my house in two days and charges a good price for it all is kind of miraculous, don't you think?
Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM
In the years since the terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, his aide Sean Smith and CIA officers Tyrone Smith and Glen Doherty in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, President Barack Obama's congressional critics have complained long and loudly about his failure to immediately apprehend the perpetrators. Republican experts like Ted Cruz and Darrell Issa, along with the right-wing media machine, even insinuated that Obama might not really want to catch the Benghazi perps.
America's two political parties seem to be coming apart.
Have you stopped using your hands? Do your fingers struggle to sign your name? Is chopping an onion with a knife hard work? Must you call someone to fix a cabinet door off the hinges? Is it agony to sew on a button?
For many, computers and laziness have sapped our manual skills. This is not progress.
Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM
Analysts are noticing the Democrats’ efforts to meddle in Republican primaries. In a Wall Street Journal article from last month, Janet Hook writes “Democrats increasingly are running ads against GOP candidates even before they win their party’s nomination. By attacking GOP candidates while they are still embroiled in a primary election campaign, some Democrats have seen an opportunity to promote the GOP candidate they think is easiest to beat, or to weaken the one they consider strongest.”
Ray Kurzweil -- inventor of things like machines that turn text into speech -- has popularized the idea that we are rapidly approaching "the singularity," the point at which machines not only think for themselves but develop intellectually faster than we.
At that point, maybe we no longer talk about "human history." It will be "machine progress," with us along for the ride -- if machines keep us around. Maybe they'll keep us in a zoo, like we do with our monkey ancestors.
Polls show that most Americans wanted the United States to withdraw from Iraq. Barack Obama did indeed withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, not troubling to negotiate a readily negotiable status of forces agreement that would have left a contingent of American soldiers there.
Right-wing primary voters booted Eric Cantor over signs he might back "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, it is said. If so, the partisans are once again taking a position totally opposed to what they claim to want. Legalizing the status of most undocumented foreigners is the condition for closing the door on future illegal immigration. There is no other politically passable road to get there.
One may err in assuming that the hard right actually desires to solve the problem, punishing others being the more satisfying activity. The targets would include both Republicans not dancing to the right's dissonant tune and brown people in general.
Divided between neoconservative ultra-hawks and libertarian isolationists, today's Republican Party is hardly a steady influence on American foreign policy. But there is one thing that can be reliably expected from every right-wing faction in Washington: Whenever disaster threatens, they eagerly cast blame on President Barack Obama -- and utter any falsehood that may be used to castigate him.
What is the most shocking takeaway from the story of the two 12-year-olds who repeatedly stabbed their friend -- nearly to death -- on the imagined orders of a fantasy character?
An old country phrase best describes the possibility of a turnout increase saving Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in an upcoming runoff: That dog don’t hunt. But it’s also far from clear whether a bigger turnout would naturally help Cochran in the runoff anyway. Mississippi Republicans voted at record levels in the regular primary, and that of course wasn’t enough to push the incumbent over 50%.
As to the first point, turnout generally falls in runoffs held after primary and general elections –significantly.
Both libertarians and conservatives want to keep America safe. We differ on how best to do that. Most libertarians believe our attempts to create or support democracy around the world have made us new enemies, and done harm as well as good. We want less military spending.
As dawn creeps over New York's Jamaica Bay, flocks of wide-bodied red-eyes -- overnight flights from the West Coast -- land at JFK International Airport. The minute the wheels touch, cellphones click into action.
Mine shows a message (now lost) going something like this: Avoid the taxi lines. Use Uber instead.
What the Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl saga demonstrates beyond question -- to anyone who still nurtured any doubt -- is that the Republican right will junk just about any basic American value to satisfy its hatred of President Barack Obama. Fair play, due process, respect for families and the military: To most, if not all, so-called conservatives, none of these fundamentals matters nearly so much as the urge to undermine the nation's first black president. Which is another reason, among many, why they no longer deserve the honorific "conservative."
President Obama evidently was caught by surprise by the scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
So, apparently, was VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, who evidently took at face value the corrupt VA statistics -- and who, after a distinguished military career, resigned last week.
One who was probably not taken by surprise is longtime Yale Law Professor Peter Schuck, who identified the problems at the VA before the scandal broke in his recently published book, "Why Government Fails So Often and How It Can Do Better."
