George Allen says he’s done running for office.

Thank God. What an embarrassment it would have been for Virginia if this casually vicious racist had won. He fashioned himself in the image of the unreformed old southern racists of the 1960s, and never bothered to update his mindset, only how to fake it for brief stretches. In the meantime, Virginia—and the whole US—changed …

“Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America.”

In 2008, Focus on the Family wrote this letter from the future, warning their members about life in 2012 if Barack Obama were elected president. It’s hilarious. Comedy gold. Everybody’s gay, children watch porn, electricity is all but illegal, prayer isn’t allowed…it’s a hoot. If it wasn’t for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, …

Greene County Republicans call for armed overthrow of the government.

In the March issue of their newsletter, a “Whitehouse [sic] Watchdog” column signed by newsletter editor Ponch McPhee concludes by declaring that “we shall not have any coarse [sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November.” (It’s on page 7 of the PDF.) “Treason” is the word that …

House Republicans are looking to bring back the earmark.

Quiet discussions are beginning, behind closed doors, about bringing back earmarks. Why? Because legislators can’t pass spending bills on their own merits. In order to get 218 votes, they need to festoon bills with funding for congressmen’s pet projects. It’s easy for legislators cast spending as “wasteful spending” if it doesn’t funnel money directly into …

PPP’s survey of likely Republican voters in Mississippi and Alabama is really something.

Forget the presidential race—the other responses are pretty amazing. Only 14% believe that the presidentis is Christian (45% believe he’s Muslim, 41% don’t know). Just 26% believe in evolution. One in five believe that interracial marriage should be a crime, with just 67% supporting its legality. It’s little wonder that these two states generally show …

Links for October 14th

Science News: Columbus Blamed For Little Ice AgeHere's a fun theory of the origin of the Little Ice Age, lasting from around 1550–1850: that massive losses of New World population, as a result of disease spread by explorers, resulted in reforestation of huge swaths of the Americas, removing billions of tons of CO2 from the …

Links for October 6th

New York Times: Herman Cain is a Candidate Writing His Own Campaign RulesRunning for president? Nah. Herman Cain has decided he'd rather go on a book tour. Much like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, Cain appears to view running for the Republican nomination as a cheap method of getting national press. MSNBC: Secret panel can …