John Birch Society

The JBS is probably not expecting any dramatic rollback of the nation's environmental or sustainability laws in any event. More likely, it's playing moneyball -- staying in the game, feeding its fundraising machine, keeping its followers stirred up, and throwing sand in the government's gears.

Totalizing, programmatic hatreds are what Freud would have called thanatopsic obssessions -- they are driven by a fear of one's own extinction.

An organization that always turns right can only move in circles, or more accurately, in an ever tightening spiral. Rule and Ruin aims to explain how the GOP came to be drawn into its accelerating tornado of extremism.

Why is the JBS interested in this climate-killing pipeline? Because the fight happening in Congress over the Keystone XL has taken a turn. It is no longer about the tipping point of climate change or jobs, energy security or the Ogallala Aquifer.

Most Americans don't realize that the right wing's main ideas have been pushed for 50 years by the John Birch Society, a group Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr once thought too extreme, but which has since become the intellectual seed bank of the right.

Rep. Paul's earned the treatment by the press he's been complaining about, just on the merits, because his positions on many of his favorite issues just don't stand scrutiny.

During the Vietnam War, an Army major famously told reporter Peter Arnett "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it" Welcome to Dr. Ron Paul's prescription for America. If he ever becomes president, you won't recognize the place.

To honor the fallen this week, we're going to refrain from our usual heated political rhetoric here for a change. It's only fitting, really, after su...

  Tea Party enthusiasts in Massachusetts are falling off the right side of the wharf.   A recent event featured a bevy of well-known aggress...

Instead of legislation aimed at reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States, some leaders of the incoming GOP majority have called for McCarthy-style hearings going after leading climate change scientists.

With six weeks to go before the mid-term elections and 110 before the next presidential one, those who don't think we should go back to the '50s -- the 1850s or 1950s -- can get off the couch to do six things.

At a recent fundraiser and again during an interview with Talking Points , Phyllis Schlafly sent Democratic activists hurtling toward their moral indignation machines™.

Democrats may think their best line is to remind voters that at least they're not crazy; but it will take more than that. In the end, the fight has to be taken to the right; progressives have to remind the country of the truth.

The Tea Party has no right to intimidation and armed violence. The formation of a Tea Party Militia can be construed to serve no purpose other than that.

What's so remarkable is that Rand Paul seems to think his beliefs are perfectly reasonable. Or, maybe not so remarkable. We're all the product of our upbringing, and Paul grew up with the John Birch Society.

You remember the anonymous lady at the town hall meeting last August. In a tremulous voice she declared "I want my America back". Saturday's Tea Par...

The polarization of Washington has not come about because moderates and centrists have no place to go. In fact, moderates are doing just as well as anyone else in today's politics.

The plane took off, and after awhile Schlafly's tightly coiffed head was resting on my shoulder. She lightly snored. Her usually vituperative red mouth was slightly open. And she was drooling.

The only distinguishing feature of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation's "National Defending the American Dream Summit" was its astonishing homogeneity both in thought and in demography.

Conspiracy-mindedness isn't just for fringe political groups anymore; it makes for riveting entertainment. And it is all around us today, a disorder with an entire industry to act as its enabler.

The parallels between the hate speech of the early 1960s and today are numerous and disturbing. But there are also important differences. So, where does the Republican leadership stand on playing with matches?