Grover Norquist is among the worst of the old time Radical Wrong. He’s famous for an anti-federal viewpoint so extreme that he has said he wants to starve the federal government (no taxes) until it is weak enough to drown in a bathtub. Charming. At lease he didn’t say he wants to shoot the federal government in the head or lynch it and drag it behind a truck (as other anti-feds have). Even though I’ve lived long enough to see Republicans move so far beyond the conservative that Tricky Dick is too liberal, I’m still amazed when the old demons sound sensible compared to the new ones.

ThinkProgress » Norquist: The Right Has To ‘Marginalize’ Islamophobia, ‘There’s No Place For That’ In The GOP

Referring to Gingrich’s anti-Muslim fervor, ThinkProgress asked whether there is a place for Islamophobia in the GOP 2012 presidential primaries. “I don’t think there is,” Norquist replied:

TP: This sort of fearmongering about Islam. I don’t think Gingrich has gone as far as Gaffney has but he’s kind of right there. He’s near that edge and I’m wondering do you think there’s room for that on the presidential campaign.

NORQUIST: I don’t think there is. I don’t think you’ll see it because the people who support you is broader. … . I don’t think that it will work because it doesn’t work. I think it will go away because it doesn’t work. I would like it to go away because it’s the wrong thing to do. But I’ll take it doesn’t work.

Also during the interview, Norquist praised Democrats for their ability to be an inclusive party. “Democrats have doing it with the mosque in Iowa forever. They just have this natural understanding of, ‘Oh there’s a mosque? Let’s go!’ … You know there’s an incredible understanding of diversity [within the Party].”

ThinkProgress » Norquist: The Right Has To ‘Marginalize’ Islamophobia, ‘There’s No Place For That’ In The GOP

What makes Norquist so … progressive (throwing up now): Could it be the fact that his wife is Muslim?

Eugene Robinson – The GOP’s selective memory on Ronald Reagan

The Republican Party … has moved so far to the right that it now inhabits its own parallel universe. On the planet that today’s GOP leaders call home, Reagan would qualify as one of those big-government, tax-and-spend liberals who are trying so hard to destroy the American way of life. …

Meanwhile, the Republican Party has lost its mind. The GOP argues for deep across-the-board budget cuts of a kind that Reagan ultimately rejected. Party leaders denounce the belief that government can do any good for anybody as "socialism."

Eugene Robinson – The GOP’s selective memory on Ronald Reagan

The following quote, slamming Beck, is not from a flaming progressive. It is from the immoderate Bill Kristol, no stranger to loony-conservatism. It’s good to see some conservatives stand up to the extremists, instead of exploiting them. (Pallin™ anyone? Someone should trademark Reagan™ to stop people from using his name. So long as Raygun stays in the public domain.)

[H]ysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

ThinkProgress » Bill Kristol Slams Conservative ‘Hysteria’ On Egypt, Calls Out Beck’s Delusional ‘Caliphate’ Theory

ThinkProgress » 10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan

But Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to unite the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill. ThinkProgress has compiled a list of the top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan [mjh: follow the link for supporting documentation for each item]:

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.”

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act.

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden.

Conservatives seem to be in such denial about the less flattering aspects of Reagan; it sometimes appears as if they genuinely don’t know the truth of his legacy.

ThinkProgress » 10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan

From Al Gore (via Ed Bott, hat tip):

Al’s Journal : An Answer for Bill February 1, 2011 : 11:43 AM

Last week on his show Bill O’Reilly asked, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” and then said he had a call into me. I appreciate the question.

As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming:

“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”

“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”

Al’s Journal : An Answer for Bill

ThinkProgress » Tea Party Judge Roger Vinson ‘Borrows Heavily’ From Family Research Council To Invalidate Health Law

[A] closer read of his analysis reveals something peculiar. In fact, as Vinson himself admits in Footnote 27 (on pg. 65), he arrived at this conclusion by “borrow[ing] heavily from one of the amicus briefs filed in the case for it quite cogently and effectively sets forth the applicable standard and governing analysis of severability (doc. 123).” That brief was filed by the Family Research Council, which has been branded as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

“The Family Research Council (FRC) bills itself as ‘the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,’ but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians,” SPLC says.  …

Here is how Vinson lifts FRC’s argument:

Vinson’s opinion:

Severability is a doctrine of judicial restraint, and the Supreme Court has applied and reaffirmed that doctrine just this past year: “‘Generally speaking, when confronting a constitutional flaw in a statute, [courts] try to limit the solution to the problem,’ severing any ‘problematic portions while leaving the remainder intact.’” […]

The question of severability ultimately turns on the nature of the statute at issue. For example, if Congress intended a given statute to be viewed as a bundle of separate legislative enactment or a series of short laws, which for purposes of convenience and efficiency were arranged together in a single legislative scheme, it is presumed that any provision declared unconstitutional can be struck and severed without affecting the remainder of the statute. If, however, the statute is viewed as a carefully-balanced and clockwork-like statutory arrangement comprised of pieces that all work toward one primary legislative goal, and if that goal would be undermined if a central part of the legislation is found to be unconstitutional, then severability is not appropriate. As will be seen, the facts of this case lean heavily toward a finding that the Act is properly viewed as the latter, and not the former.

Family Research Council:

Severability is fundamentally a doctrine of judicial restraint. “Generally speaking, when confronting a constitutional flaw in a statute, we try to limit the solution to the problem.” […]

The question of severability is a judicial inquiry of two alternatives regarding the nature of a statute. One possibility is that Congress intended a given statute as a bundle of separate legislative embodiments, which for the sake of convenience, avoiding redundancy, and contextual application, are bundled together in a single legislative enactment. This makes a statute a series of short laws, every one of which is designed to stand alone, if needs be. The second possibility is that a given statute embodies a carefully-balanced legislative deal, in which Congress weighs competing policy priorities, and through negotiations and deliberation crafts a package codifying this delicate balance. Congress is thus not voting for separate and discrete provisions. Instead, Congress is voting on a package as a whole, any modification of which could result in the bill failing to achieve passage in Congress. As both Plaintiffs? briefs and the following argument shows, the Individual Mandate falls within the latter category, not the former.

ThinkProgress » Tea Party Judge Roger Vinson ‘Borrows Heavily’ From Family Research Council To Invalidate Health Law