The Republican Party seems to be in the midst of a period of soul-searching, heading into the remainder of the primary season. The viewpoints within the party are all over the map, and even the perception of how the 2016 presidential race is going to play out can be vastly different from Republican to Republican. How it all turns out is anyone's guess at this point, but at least one Republican faction will be able to say "we told you so" at the end of the process. The questions are who is going to be right, and what it will mean for the party going forward.

Read Complete Article »

There was some good news and some bad news on marijuana this week, which got us thinking about how the subject of federal marijuana policy relates to the presidential nomination race. So while we'll take care of the news (good and bad) in the awards section, we're going to also devote the talking points section to a list of questions we would love to hear answered by all the candidates. Obviously, the answers from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are the most important, since they'd be the only ones who might actually try to improve the current situation, but it really shouldn't excuse the Republicans from having to answer them as well. Rather than just a quick "Do you support medical marijuana?" question, we really think the issue needs to be addressed in a little more depth.

Read Complete Article »

The incredibly destructive federal war on marijuana may be about to end in a major way. It won't disappear entirely, but even so we may soon see the beginning of the inevitable end to the federal War On Weed. If so, it will become a major part of President Barack Obama's legacy -- even though he's actually the third president in a row who admitted to using marijuana at some point in his life. Obviously the scare stories couldn't all be true, if three presidents' lives weren't totally ruined by their recreational use of what is a fairly benign plant.

Read Complete Article »

President Obama made a big breakthrough in public opinion polling in March, one that is (for once) pretty obvious in his chart. For the first time since May, 2013, Obama's average job approval number for last month was higher than his average disapproval. Take a look at this month's new chart -- it's pretty easy to see how big a deal this is, even on the overall chart of his entire time in office.

Read Complete Article »

Anderson Cooper just made some news, by asking all three Republican candidates for president whether they'd honor their previous pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee -- no matter who won. None of the three candidates now say they'll honor their loyalty pledge, although two of them tried to weasel out of even giving a straight answer. Personally, I can't decide which is more bizarre, the whole spectacle of a party loyalty oath in the first place, or the news that all three Republicans seem to have set a new world speed record by breaking a big campaign promise -- not after getting elected, and not while pivoting to the middle after becoming the nominee, but before the primary season is even over.

Read Complete Article »

That really should be "Copulating Rodents, Batman!" for full effect. Or it should just come right out and use the original term being euphemized. But somehow we couldn't quite bring ourselves to use either one of those in our title today.

Read Complete Article »

You'll have to forgive me for using such a lethal metaphor in that title, but I did not actually come up with the comparison myself -- that dubious honor goes to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. One month after he ended his own presidential bid, Graham addressed the question of which GOP frontrunner he could support, in pretty graphic fashion: "If you nominate Trump and Cruz I think you get the same outcome. Whether it's death by being shot or poisoning, does it really matter?"

Read Complete Article »

That's a pretty ambitious subtitle, but we're not going to get to the deconstruction project until the talking points, we should warn everyone up front. And we could never hope to deconstruct all of the GOP's absurdities in one column, so we'll be focusing just on their all-over-the-map reasoning on why they're not going to do their constitutional jobs in the Senate on President Obama's Supreme Court nomination. So we'll have all that to look forward to. For now, let's quickly review the week just to see where things stand.

Read Complete Article »

George Orwell would be proud of Senate Republicans. Or maybe he wouldn't be "proud," but he certainly wouldn't be surprised. This is because he coined the word "doublethink," which is precisely what these Republicans are now revealing to the world. In fact, the Republican position is fast becoming "triplethink," an even more jaw-dropping feat of mental contortion.

Read Complete Article »

Another week of presidential primary season has slouched by, which means we personally have been watching way too many debates and staying up way too late watching election results come in, once again. Well, actually, that last one was really just a taunt, since living on the Left Coast means we don't have to stay up nearly as late to find out what happened in Hawai'i as everyone to our east. Heh. Every once in a while, being three hours behind works to our advantage!

Read Complete Article »