Their fans actually treat them as reliable sources though (which they complicate by actually including facts from time to time and then tainting them with contortions; it sucks when Michael Moore raises a decent point first, because it becomes worse than useless for anyone else. ) It's the worst form of populist demagoguery, and if it hasn't yet reached the level of a Beer Hall Putsch or Bolshevik Revolution, we may thank God for it, but the day ain't over yet. They add NOTHING to the political equation, and subtract a great deal. Heaven forbid someone get the base outraged about something legitimately outrageous. Those kinds of sensationalist tactics may motivate the choir, but few choirboys need motivation to show up on Sunday, and the rest of us get the idea that if that's the "best" argument they have, maybe they don't have any argument at all.

Left wing "takeovers"? Since when were civil rights or environmentalism conservative issues? Maybe in the muddled world of Dick Armey, where the Federalist Papers argue against the strong central government they only EXIST to defend, but in few others. Even in the days just before and after the Civil War when the Republican Party was synonymous with abolition that was a progressive impulse; the "conservative" brand of US politics were very much the old guard Democrats, apologists for slavery in the South and collaborators in the North. It's a crying shame for the country the Republican Party couldn't have stayed that way, even if the adoption of pro-industrial (and thus anti-agrarian slavery) interests did spell political success.

Having dealt with THAT, when were Suffragettes, labor activists or desegregation forces conservative? Liberal Democrats didn't "takeover" Civil Rights in the '60s, and many long time New Deal Dems like Strom Thurmond never embraced it, while others like Robert Byrd took decades to do so: The Republicans abandoned Civil Rights when they adopted the Southern Strategy. What part of "I just lost the South for a generation" sounds like a liberal TAKEOVER of Civil Rights?

At any rate, just a few years after people were kicked out of their "church" for refusing to vote for Bush, after Bill Frist et alia launched nationally simulcast rallies from "churches" where they accused me of being godless and anti-Christian because I'm liberal, I'd say that's a real threat to the country. When people advance the notion that Christianity is contingent on a particular party ideology, that's dangerous to Christians. How many leave or never enter the Church because they actually BELIEVE those lies? I mean, sure, maybe slandering God costs a few million their immortal souls, but as long as it advances a POLITICAL agenda, what's the harm?

I still think whatever he says gets him in trouble; he's either too emotional for the high stress Presidency if he lashes out or too cold and unfeeling if he keeps his cool. It's wrong to personalize an issue like that; asking about the death penalty for rapists/murderers is one thing, but it's wrong to conjure the image of someones brutalized and murdered spouse just to see their reaction.

Part of civil disobedience is knowingly breaking the law and taking your lumps when you do; often a very accurate gauge of how much a law needs reform is the willingness to do that. Jim Crow was bad enough people were willing to face attack dogs and water cannons to get it reversed; abortion protesters are willing to go to jail to save the lives of the unborn.

Yeah, and guess which one of the three has more national momentum? Cap and trade was declared BEFORE arrival; a salt ban/tax isn't even on the table, nor likely to be. Meanwhile, efforts to ban late term abortions already banned by federal law and reinforce DoMA by making it a Constitutional amendment continue apace.

The evidence nicely supports my statement that no industrialized nation can let the market alone set the price of essential goods and services. That's why most are regulated in most such countries (American health insurance being a glaring exception) and we have things like Section Eight housing and AFDC, not to mention various charitable programs that are hardly market driven even if they aren't necessarily government run or funded. There's WIC, there's SCHIP; there's a plethora of government regulation and even government provided goods and services, and they weren't created just to give government employees something to do, but because of real need. You concede that on the heels of saying the evidence doesn't support my contention that the market alone can't be allowed to set prices in an industrialized nation. What we're debating isn't whether government should play a role, but what and how large that role should be. Which is the proper debate, I grant, not whether we should get "big government" out of our lives completely. There are a lot of people in prison who'd agree fervently, but I'm not convinced that makes abolishing government the proper basis OF government.

EDIT: Got my Texan asshats confused