Rage on the Right

The Year in Hate and Extremism

By Mark Potok
Southern Poverty Law Center

The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.
Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost [...]

March 27, 2010
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Whose Country Is It?
By CHARLES M. BLOW
The far-right extremists have gone into conniptions.
The bullying, threats, and acts of violence following the passage of health care reform have been shocking, but they’re only the most recent manifestations of an increasing sense of desperation.
It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: [...]

The Unbearable Lightness of Reform
Saturday 27 March 2010

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

That wickedly satirical Ambrose Bierce described politics as “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
Bierce vanished to Mexico nearly a hundred years ago - to the relief [...]

March 26, 2010
New York Times

Op-Ed Columnist
Going to Extreme
By PAUL KRUGMAN
I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law. But a few days later, it doesn’t seem quite as entertaining — and not just because of the wave of vandalism and threats aimed at [...]

March 25, 2010
New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor
The Fight Is Over, the Myths Remain
By BRENDAN NYHAN
Ann Arbor, Mich.
AT the White House signing ceremony for health care legislation on Tuesday, President Obama declared, “In a few moments, when I sign this bill, all of the overheated rhetoric over reform will finally confront the reality of [...]

True Colors
Monday 22 March 2010
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
There was an awful lot of stupid flying around Washington, DC, in the run-up to Sunday night’s historic House vote on President Obama’s health care reform initiative, and it didn’t stop with the dawn. A New York Times [...]

March 23, 2010
New York Times

Op-Ed Columnist
An Absence of Class
By BOB HERBERT
Some of the images from the run-up to Sunday’s landmark health care vote in the House of Representatives should be seared into the nation’s consciousness. We are so far, in so many ways, from being a class act.
A group of lowlifes at [...]

March 23, 2010
New York Times

Editorial Notebook
Two Rallies
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
A few hundred Tea Party-types clustered on the south end of the Capitol on Sunday, trying to kill health care reform, fouling the crisp spring air with shouts of violence and loathing.
Instead of pitchforks, they hoisted revolting signs. Some showed Barack Obama as a [...]

Cindy Sheehan plans tent-city protest
March 11, 2010
Lee-Anne Goodman

WASHINGTON—Cindy Sheehan was a long-time thorn in the side of former president George W. Bush, famously camping out in front of his Texas ranch to protest the war that claimed the life of her son in 2004 as he served in Iraq.
But Sheehan, 52, isn’t [...]

A Place to Make Sparks
Sunday 14 March 2010
by: Barbara Andreassen and William Astore, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
We’re all tired of the suffocating parameters of “left versus right,” of “blue America versus red America,” of manufactured conflict - the evil twin of manufactured consent. We’re tired of the haters, [...]