3/4ths of Senate GOP Doesn't Believe in Science -- When Did Republicans Go Completely Off the Deep End?

You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 for a precedent to the anti-science mania that is currently sweeping the GOP. Then, the issue was teaching Darwin’s work on evolution in the schools. Today, the issue is global warming. Then, as now, large numbers of politicians tapped into the stratum of popular culture that simply rejects science as the basis for public or personal decisions. The chief prosecutor of high school teacher John Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, gloated that literal interpretation of the Bible trumped scientific knowledge. This resonated with large masses of ordinary folks, the ones H. L. Mencken and the liberal press were calling “yokels” and “morons.”

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Goon-Squad Politics: How the Wisc. GOP Trampled Democracy to Appease Their Wealthy Backers

Posted on March 9, 2011, Printed on March 10, 2011When Wisconsin Republicans did an end run around Democrats on Wednesday night in order to pass a bill that would strip public employees of most of their collective bargaining rights, they showed themselves to be liars. This was supposed to be about balancing Wisconsin's budget, remember? The collective bargaining rights revocation was all of a piece with an ironically named "Budget Repair Bill," and Gov. Scott Walker, darling of billionaire union-hater David Koch and his astroturf group, Americans For Prosperity, swore up and down that it was only the budget he cared about in this fight.

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Get Ready: The GOP Has Declared War on the Environment

Many who follow environmental issues find themselves routinely disappointed with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its failure to adequately protect the environment (and thus the health of the American people). Even with the EPA acting as environmental cop on the beat, the U.S. is still home to fish too contaminated to eat, dead zones off our coasts (such as one the size of Massachusetts in the Gulf of Mexico), and an unthinkable amount of pesticides applied to our lands. In fact, according to Pesticide Action Network, some two-thirds of all active ingredients in pesticides were legalized by the EPA in a process known as "conditional registration." That's the legal equivalent of saying "Go ahead and use it, and tell us later whether or not it's safe." Once conditionally registered, pesticides are rarely, if ever, removed from the market once the safety studies are completed.

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The Real Effect of 'Reaganomics'

Ronald Reagan promoted the idea that conservatives prefer to leave the economy to the market. Nonsense – we've been gulled.

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GOP, Big Business Deregulation 'Wish List' Targets EPA, Other Protections

House Republicans are scrutinizing a wide array of existing and proposed Obama administration regulations in areas as diverse as the environment and Wall Street, and they are taking guidance from industry groups that say the rules threaten jobs.

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The New Congress and the Coming Class War

According to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, the president recently told friends, "All I want for Christmas is an opposition I can negotiate with." Well, he had one, briefly, so long as he was willing to cave in to its demands to bust the budget with a massive gift of more than $130 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of the country and the gutting of the estate tax. That cleared the decks for other "victories" and "compromises" and led to widespread insider approval of Obama's ability to "make the system work." Like 13-year-olds at the movies, pundits love "action," period, never mind its consequences.

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