During a time of economic decline, persistent cultural strife, deepening American involvement in far-off military conflicts, and rapid environmental deterioration, is there any wonder that so many Americans believe in salvation fantasies promising them both a transcendent, everlasting future and violent retribution against perceived evildoers? A 2002 CNN poll...

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com.

Sarah Palin's heavily publicized book tour begins in earnest this Monday, but weeks before, her ghostwritten memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, had already vaulted into the number one position at Amazon. Warming up for a tour that will take her across Middle...

On October 25, while an overflow crowd of 1,500 poured into the first convention of the progressive-leaning, Israel-oriented lobbying organization J Street, Elie Wiesel addressed a crowd of 6,000 Christian Zionists at Pastor John Hagee's "Night To Honor Israel." According...

Before I first appeared on Morning Joe on September 22, I was warned about Joe Scarborough's tendency to filibuster guests he does not agree with, and to do so in a belligerent manner. But to my surprise, the former Republican congressman proved a remarkably genial host, presiding over a civil...

By the time Irving Kristol died on September 18 at the age of 89, he had transformed the Republican Party through the neoconservative philosophy he helped pioneer. A former Trotskyist, Kristol promoted the supply-side economic theories that formed the foundation of the Reagan administration's domestic agenda. At the same time,...

While Fox News cameras covering the so-called 9.12 Project on the National Mall lurched away from signs morphing President Barack Obama's face into Adolph Hitler's, I zoomed in. Histrionics and manufactured paranoia were hard to avoid at the massive September 12 anti-Obama rally orchestrated by Fox News host Glenn Beck...

In February, I went to the Conservative Political Action Conference with a mock copy of my book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party. The book is an intimate, journalistic portrait of the GOP in the thralls of the radical Right, detailing through historical analysis and first-hand...

In October 1995, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before thousands of right-wing demonstrators in Jerusalem's Zion Square to deliver a stinging denunciation of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords he had signed two years earlier. "Death to Rabin! Nazis! Judenrat!" the demonstrators chanted. Many waved...

For over a week, major American news outlets have broadcast on a virtual loop the video of the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, an unarmed 26-year-old Iranian woman, by Iranian security services. The poignant footage of Neda dying before a throng of grief-stricken bystanders crystallized the vulnerability experienced by the millions...

JERUSALEM--The Israeli government has repeatedly announced plans to forge ahead with plans to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank in direct opposition to President Barack Obama's demand for an absolute settlement...

JERUSALEM -- I just spent the evening in a small park overlooking occupied East Jerusalem at a gathering of the Israeli settlement movement's movers and shakers. The settlers were there to cheer three of their leaders who would be presented with the Irving Moskowitz Prize for Zionism. Few of...

On January 11, an estimated 10,000 people rallied in front of the Israeli consulate in midtown New York in support of Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip. The rally, which was organized by UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York in cooperation with the...

While much of the neo-Nazi fringe remains opposed to the existence of Israel, the whites-only British National Party recently declared its full-throated support for Israel's attack on Gaza. The shelling of Gaza City by Israeli forces has brought joy to the heart of BNP head of legal affairs Lee...

Almost as soon as the first Israeli missile struck the Gaza Strip, a veteran cheering squad suited up to support the home team. "Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life," Charles Krauthammer claimed in the Washington Post. Echoing Krauthammer, Alan Dershowitz called the Israeli attack on Gaza, "Perfectly...

Pioneering conservative activist Paul Weyrich died on December 18 at the age of 66. Though Weyrich was commonly regarded as a behind-the-scenes Beltway operator, he achieved one of his most enduring goals in the backwaters of the South.

In 1971, before the Roe v. Wade decision riveted America, the...

What would Christmas be without warnings of the secular crusade to destroy it? Thanks to the fulminations of cable news cranks and evangelical moralists, the War on Christmas has become an annual outrage. A far-right state senator from Utah, Chris Buttars, fired the opening salvo in this year's Christmas war,...

Lawrence Summers is on a very short list of possible nominees for Secretary of Treasury. His selection has been complicated, however, by his destructive performance as president of Harvard University, a rocky term he finally sabotaged by revealing his opinion that women lack the mental aptitude to succeed...

Who is funding California's Prop 8, the country's most controversial ballot measure? The Mormons' donations are well known, and are a source of outrage among the church's more moderate elements. But little attention has been focused on two of the proposition's biggest individual donors: Elsa Broekhuizen, the mother of Blackwater...

On April 29, 2008, 14 leaders of Alaska's black community met with Gov. Sarah Palin to voice discontent with her minority hiring record. Palin's response, which was first reported by journalist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, only compounded her icy relationship with her African-American constituents.

Wasilla, Alaska

On September 20 and 21, I attended services at the church Sarah Palin belonged to since she was an adolescent, the Wasilla Assembly of God. Though Palin officially left the church in 2002, she is listed on its website as "a friend," and spoke there as...