Politics, Corruption & Criminality

Religious charlatans like Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson, exploiting a basic human urge to know the unknowable, to touch the mystery of life, are the most dangerous of all the various types of con men on Earth.

As one of Mike Johnson's first acts as speaker, he's chosen to protect serial liar and indicted fraudster George Santos. That speaks volumes about his willingness to stand up to corruption.

Florida's Scott, Trump, Rubio, and DeSantis all claim to love Jesus. Non-wingnut Christians frown on collective punishment, guilt by association, and indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatants, but End Times folks are OK with all of that.

Election officials brace for surge in AI-generated misinformation, and lawmakers face complex challenges in containing it.

Ron DeSantis spoke at the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation to clearly delineate how far out of his depth he is on foreign policy issues.

In MAGA Mike Johnson (what Trump calls him), Republicans have found the perfect embodiment of their deplorable basket of hatreds. The only “loves” they have are rightwing billionaires and the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, Trump’s good buddy Vladimir Putin.

Leonard Leo was instrumental in packing the US Supreme Court with the conservative supermajority. But he has also been busily at work packing state supreme courts as well.

Though voter fraud has not been a problem, getting in the way of people voting isn’t a new phenomenon in Alabama. Neither is using election security to justify it.

The huge question here is why billionaires like Reed Hastings and John Arnold, as well as the DeVos family are throwing money at a school board election campaign.

In their blind loyalty to their mega-donors, Republicans' fixation on giant tax cuts for billionaires has created a revenue problem.

A behind-the-scenes pressure campaign to shore up support for Jim Jordan as Speaker, which included anonymous threats to at least one member of Congress, appears to have backfired.

The right wing faces crises with incompetence or cynical exploitation: Bush and Hurricane Katrina; Netanyahu and Gaza; Trump and Covid, or tossing paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.

As we come to another contentious election cycle, understanding dark money will become increasingly important. Here are some of the basics.

Russia is close to having the upper hand Ukraine because of Putin’s ability to get American Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.

Jim Jordan does not even qualify for Congress, much less Speaker. He was all in on the subversive plot to seize an unearned second term for the defeated president by invalidating millions of legitimate American votes.

DeSantis is using the horror of the Israel-Hamas war as a campaign stunt, to protect Florida from non-existence violence and calling himself the “most pro-Israel governor” in the country.