Progressive Opinion

inthesetimes.com — On February 29, Rush Limbaugh said something sexist, and feminists were outraged. This time, unlike the last few thousand times this has happened, he actually paid a price for it. Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke have been endlessly cycled and recycled throughout the Internet: He called her a "slut" and a "prostitute," alleged that she was "having so much sex she can't afford her own birth control pills," said he wanted to see videos of her having sex, and etc. This garnered copious Internet outrage, has been covered everywhere from the New York Times to TMZ, and has cost him 32 sponsorships. But offensive comments like those are exactly what Rush Limbaugh gets paid for.

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thenation.com — Some political operatives work hard to drive wedges between us. And since this nation elected its first black president, these operatives have worked feverishly to stoke fear in the hearts of white Americans. One way they have done this is by literally telling white America that black intellectuals want them dead. I wish I were exaggerating. Last night, Andrew Breitbart (apparently from beyond the grave) was at it again. This time he and his cronies at Breitbart.com released a video clip of a young Obama at Harvard law school hugging Professor Derrick Bell, a world renowned legal scholar and one of the foremost black intellectuals of his time, who passed away October 2011. Breitbart suggests that black people can’t be trusted to govern, by linking Obama to Bell. This latest round of attack on black intellectuals should deeply trouble us all.

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consortiumnews.com — Americans sometimes wonder how the nation’s political process got so unspeakably nasty with vitriol pouring forth especially from right-wing voices like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, to name just a few. Yet, whenever called on this ugliness, conservatives insist that they are the real victims, picked on by the Left. This destructive and whiny dynamic has existed at least since the late 1960s when angry passions spilled over from the Vietnam War and grew worse after Richard Nixon exploited Democratic dissension on the war to win the White House in 1968 – and then continued the war for another four nasty years.

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thedailybeast.com — Are they kidding? Barack Obama hugged Derrick Bell? Wow! This just proves everything, doesn’t it? It’s “the smoking gun,” according to some Breitbartian lickspittle, “showing that Barack Obama not only associated with radicals but believed deeply in their principles—and wanted the rest of us to believe in them, too.” It’s almost sad, watching them try to turn this unremarkable minute-and-a-half into a scandal. But the main point here is that the Bell video affair shows yet again that this “movement” that is constantly invoking the flag and patriotism and saying it represents America is far, far removed from mainstream American reality.

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inthesetimes.com — During his long career as the most famous talk radio host in modern history, Rush Limbaugh has only rarely apologized for his rhetoric--so when he does, it's worth pondering the contrition's deeper meaning. Was his apology last week for calling a Georgetown University student a "slut" just a shrewd move to undercut a potential defamation lawsuit? Was it a frightened response to an intensifying backlash from advertisers? Does it prove the power of the liberal political organizations who have an ideological ax to grind against Limbaugh? The answer to all those queries is yes -- but none of those factors is the genuine news of the matter. Instead, what makes Limbaugh's apology so important is its context. Limbaugh's mea culpa -- however insincere -- is significant because it is proof that America may be both setting some basic standards for political discourse and rejecting the right-wing shrieks about "censorship" and "political correctness."

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prospect.org — Two different guys. As the bleating of the Republican war caucus gets louder and louder, it's beginning to sound a lot like 2002, when the Bush administration was treating us to daily news about the terrifying threat posed by Saddam Hussein's vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, ready to incinerate us all in weeks if we didn't launch a war. Some of the same people who made the case then are making the case now that we need to start bombing Iran. But before we all get too frustrated, it's important to remember one thing: now matter how loud people like Liz Cheney may shout, no matter how much infantile chest-beating we get from the Republican candidates this will be a very different debate from the one we had back then. The reason is simple: We've got a different Decider.

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progressive.org — Dennis Kucinich deserves a lot of credit for holding high the progressive banner in Congress over the past 16 years. Kucinich lost his primary race against another progressive, Marcy Kaptur, the longest serving woman in Congress on Tuesday, by a 55-41 margin. A man of courage and principle, he fought for all progressives—even when he was the only one doing it. Above all, Dennis Kucinich urged us to embrace our best selves. He constantly called on us as individuals, as a people, as a nation, and as inhabitants of the Earth to respect others, to act nonviolently, to preserve the environment, to love one another. And whatever he does next, Dennis Kucinich will surely be carrying that powerful message forward. That’s what he does. That’s who he is.

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consortiumnews.com — Facts are stubborn things, said founding father John Adams, a basic truth Ronald Reagan famously mangled at the Republican National Convention in 1988, when he tried to quote Adams and declared, “Facts are stupid things,” before correcting himself. Nonetheless, in practice, certain of our financial and political leaders seem to embrace Reagan’s verbal misstep as closer to reality than Adams’s original aphorism. Witness the resistance on the part of banking institutions and certain members of the congressional leadership, despite regulations demanding that they allow facts and figures to be reported, information that could keep us from the edge of yet another economic meltdown.

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washingtonpost.com — For Republicans, the presidential primary contest has become a nightmare from which they can’t wake up. Their front-running candidate cannot close the deal; their runners-up cannot surge sufficiently to displace the front-runner. Each candidate’s favorability rating has drooped as the campaign rolls on. None has been able to broaden his support beyond a relatively narrow base. The prospect that no candidate will amass a decisive majority of delegates well before the party’s August convention looks increasingly plausible.

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thenation.com — Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a two-time presidential candidate who for the past decade has been the most consistent critic of war and militarism in the US House of Representatives, was defeated Tuesday in a Democratic primary that pitted him against fellow progressive Marcy Kaptur. Kucinich was the first electoral victim of the current round of redistricting, which saw congressional districts redrawn in states across the country after the 2010 Census. A Republican governor and legislature carved up northern Ohio districts with an eye toward eliminating at least one Democratic seat, and they achieved their goal by forcing Kucinich and Kaptur into the same district. That district favored Kaptur and, after a hard-fought race she prevailed by a fifty-six to thirty-nine margin, with the remainder going to a third candidate. Though the race in Ohio’s 9th District received scant attention compared with the Republican presidential contest in the state, the result will have national consequences.

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