"I wanted that kid to lose sleep that night," a grinning Xinos says Wednesday, as he invites me for a nearly two-hour interview in his Mercedes-Benz in the gated Oak Brook community where he lives. "This is the real world and the lesson, you folks who brought your kids here, is if you want something, pay for it." [more inside]
posted by ignignokt on Oct 8, 2009 - 114 comments

Conservative Republican California State Assemblyman Michael Duvall (Orange County) didn't realize his mic was live, moments before the start of a legislative hearing this past July. So when the 54-year-old married father of two began describing his ongoing affairs with two different women in very graphic detail for the benefit of a colleague seated next to him, he had no idea that he was being recorded. The story was picked up by KCAL, who cited unnamed sources that said Duvall was describing affairs with two married lobbyists. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Sep 9, 2009 - 216 comments

Next Tuesday, Sept. 8, speaking at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. President Obama will address the youth of America during a live television broadcast urging them to stay in school. Some school districts, bowing to parent pressure, have decided not to show the speech during school. [more inside]
posted by Secret Life of Gravy on Sep 4, 2009 - 588 comments

Robert Novak, "The Prince of Darkness," died at his home early Tuesday. He was 78. [more inside]
posted by T.D. Strange on Aug 18, 2009 - 168 comments

The conservative movement continues to suffer problems, within the Republican Party, without, and, well...
posted by StrikeTheViol on Jul 17, 2009 - 125 comments

Breaking from established educational models, the American Indian Public Charter school has created a back-to-the-books, minority-focused, and no-excuses academic system-- and has been wildly successful. [more inside]
posted by gushn on May 30, 2009 - 43 comments

The Young Conservative Anthem. Meet Stiltz & Serious C, Dartmouth rappers.
posted by CunningLinguist on May 29, 2009 - 46 comments

I Want To GOP To There. 30 Rock has a weird conservative streak. Or does it?
posted by you just lost the game on May 6, 2009 - 71 comments

These strange alien structures are among the seeds and pollen conserved at the Kew Millennium Seed Bank
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Apr 12, 2009 - 9 comments

Little Mr. Conservative. The interview concluded, Jonathan wistfully handed his mother her cellphone. His parents still won’t let him have one, even though he turned 14 last Sunday, right after he became an instant news media darling and the conservative movement’s underage graybeard at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
posted by psmealey on Mar 8, 2009 - 175 comments

"The crisis is an opportunity to sweep away the rotten postwar settlement of British politics. Labour is moribund. But David Cameron has a chance to develop a "red Tory" communitarianism, socially conservative but sceptical of neoliberal economics" [more inside]
posted by doobiedoo on Feb 15, 2009 - 22 comments

"George Bush was not a conservative, but rather a curious hybrid of reactionary and progressive." "The Obama presidency is not a revolution, but instead a restoration. The "values upon which our success depends", Obama reassures America, "these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout history". He asks for a "return to these truths". Nothing new is needed, neither fresh ideas about the human condition's betterment nor utopias; merely a return to and vindication of the past."
posted by leotrotsky on Jan 26, 2009 - 83 comments

Christopher Buckley endorses Obama and then is forced to resign from the National Review. Is he serious, or does he just want to let the Democrats f**k things up for a change? [more inside]
posted by sararah on Oct 14, 2008 - 41 comments

The Politics of Fear: Some Political Views May be Related to Physiology video, audio [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Sep 21, 2008 - 38 comments

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress.
posted by bjork24 on Sep 10, 2008 - 266 comments

Our editorial slant is big tent right-of-center -- as open-minded about what we publish as The New Republic, The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine, but on the center-right rather than the center-left. A new conservative online magazine and community, Culture11, quietly debuted on Wednesday. [more inside]
posted by Knappster on Aug 27, 2008 - 60 comments

Intense debate about weighty issues like racism, abortion, and immigration... between animals in funny hats! This is the silly punditry of Scenario: Dog v. Cat: Round 1, round 2, round 3.
posted by hjo3 on May 28, 2008 - 7 comments

Rush Limbaugh may be facing indictment for a fifth-degree felony after encouraging Republican voters to cross party lines and vote for Hillary Clinton ("Operation Chaos"), but if you hurry you can still buy the shirt. Previously.
posted by misha on Mar 28, 2008 - 87 comments

Are Liberals and Conservatives Different Species? Get this: Everyone in our sample was an American, a teenager, and belonged to the same major religious tradition of Protestantism. In these respects they were culturally uniform. But some belonged to conservative denominations such as Pentecostal and others to liberal denominations such as Episcopalian. As Ingrid combed through the data, which involved tedious hours in front of the computer, the differences that began to emerge were astounding. It was as if these conservative and liberal religious youth were--different species. [via 3quarksdaily] [more inside]
posted by sisquoc15 on Feb 29, 2008 - 86 comments

From unprecedented chart-topping, to crossover appeal, to the bizarre image change and retirement from music, he was truly country's Michael Jackson. While many of us may not have cared for his music or paid much attention to his core audience, those of us who were inspired despite ourselves by the (previously posted) Will.i.am video might just find something in the surprisingly liberal prince of the red states. [more inside]
posted by Navelgazer on Feb 14, 2008 - 69 comments

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was an animated drug prevention television special starring many popular cartoon characters from American Saturday morning television. Airing in 1990 and financed by McDonald's, it was simulcast on all three major American television networks. The VHS home video edition of the special also opened with an introduction from then-President George Bush Snr and Barbara Bush. And thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, you can watch the whole thing here. And you really should. After all, where else are you going to get to hear cartoon characters like Garfield and Winnie the Pooh talking about smoking crack and shooting juice? [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 on Dec 3, 2007 - 48 comments

Boris Johnson, poet.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Nov 9, 2007 - 16 comments

Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid.
posted by veedubya on Sep 22, 2007 - 56 comments

In an experiment reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at NYU and UCLA demonstrate that political orientation is related to basic differences in cognition - how the brain processes information. Psychological studies in the past found conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments while liberals are more "open to new experiences." The latest study finds these traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions. [more inside]
posted by uaudio on Sep 11, 2007 - 57 comments

My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example: God, college, flag, liberal, and World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted by washburn on Aug 15, 2007 - 105 comments

We've discussed David L. Cunningham before, especially the controversial 9/11 docudrama he made. But there's more to the man who's the son of Christian reconstructionist and University of the Nations founder Loren Cunningham. There are a lot of movies he claims to have directed on his IMDB page that don't have any external verification outside of self-published websites, which seems to contradict IMDB policy. Then there's the fear from both pagans and various political bloggers and fans of the books that his upcoming adaptation of the The Dark is Rising fantasy books is going to completely butcher the source material. The movie is produced by Walden Media, the production company owned by conservative christian billionaire Philip Anschutz, who's trying to "clean up Hollywood", in association with 20th Century Fox.
posted by Joakim Ziegler on Aug 14, 2007 - 9 comments

"Even the greatest cities have further greatness in them. I will stand for a greater London and for putting the smile back on London's face." Boris Johnson announces his candidacy for Mayor of London, though he is yet to be endorsed by the Conservative Party. Though decidedly right wing in his views (this clip, perhaps more than any other summarises his view on Europe, for example) his very English brand of buffoonery lends him unique appeal (though not universally).
posted by nthdegx on Jul 16, 2007 - 44 comments

Terribly Exciting Interesting article from Ben Stein, regarding business, the economy, and the American middle class. and just when I thought I figured him out..
posted by ShawnString on Mar 13, 2007 - 67 comments

Apparently it's time for conservatives to take humour seriously. Warning: may cause your ass to bleed with sadness.
posted by unSane on Feb 6, 2007 - 88 comments

What is a "Crunchy Conservative"? A new political buzzword or a lifestyle manifesto, the Crunchy Con may even be a new political species, unless you're a Contra-Crunchy Con.
posted by stbalbach on Jan 26, 2007 - 52 comments

So This Is (a Conservative) Christmas via the nobody'd-mistake-him-for-a-liberal Glenn Beck. Breaking news: Groups Turn Profit Defending Christmas. And the almost-50-years-young rebuttal to anyone who believes that the spiritual holiday of Christmas is cheapened by commercial entities that do NOT specifically invoke the name: Stan Freberg's Green Chri$tma$
posted by wendell on Dec 26, 2006 - 33 comments

Described as "the View meets the Daily Show and takes a right turn," The America Show, Episode 1 and Episode 2 are pilots that are being floated for possible TV broadcast. Weigh in on their potential. The driving force behind the show is conservative comic Julia Gorin, who also recently launched Political Mavens as "a celebrity-studded conservative answer to Arianna's Huffington Post."
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 27, 2006 - 247 comments

"If your soul needs healing, the prescription you need is not Chuck Norris' tears, it's Jesus' blood." Right-wing online magazine World Net Daily proudly welcomes Chuck Norris as its newest columnist.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Oct 25, 2006 - 62 comments

Canada's governing Conservative Party has expelled one of its Members of Parliament -- for blogging. Garth Turner, Conservative MP for Halton, author of "The Turner Diaries Report" (link) was today suspended from the ruling party's caucus because of his blog. "There is [sic] attacks that were made on individuals, including the Prime Minister," explained Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer. "The theme of confidentiality was not being respected, in their opinion, and it restricted the ability for members to operate in a confidential way." At least one national pundit compares the exiling to 1984.
posted by docgonzo on Oct 18, 2006 - 75 comments

18DoughtyStreet Talk TV - 'the home of anti-establishment TV' launches today (they do seem to have fallen a bit behind on their blog though). [trailer] The two main presenters are Tim Montgomerie and Iain Dale. Anti-establishment?
posted by tellurian on Oct 10, 2006 - 6 comments

Webcameron. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party in the UK, reaches out to the Youtube generation.
posted by greycap on Sep 30, 2006 - 53 comments

Thanks to Peace Moonbeam's weblog, I now truly understand my liberal friends. And for those willing to reciprocate, Shelley the Republican is a similar blog from the opposite end of the spectrum.
posted by CodeBaloo on Aug 11, 2006 - 77 comments

Is George Bush to Stalin as Irving Kristol is to Trotsky? When will we start hearing these sorts of claims from the right?
posted by stemlot on Jul 3, 2006 - 108 comments

'The crowd was chanting "We want Boris" as he limbered up, waving his arms like a slightly rusty blond helicopter. The cheers grew and the cry of "Boris, Boris" became irresistible.': [text, video]. Boris Johnson, blogger. Boris Johnson, British MP for Henley-on-Thames. Boris Johnson, sozzled buffoon and proud of it. Boris Johnson, the man who made it cool to be Conservative?
posted by hoverboards don't work on water on May 31, 2006 - 26 comments

Republican-Approved Rock Music (NYT link). The National Review, the standard-bearing conservative rag founded by William F. Buckley (you know, Gore Vidal's good pal), has published a list of "Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs Of All Time" (NYT again -- not TNR). The explanations for the picks tend toward the obvious, if also occasionally nauseating. The top pick, and many of the others, are just this week's evidence of how irony is lost on much of conservative America.
posted by scatman on May 25, 2006 - 114 comments

Hilarious website showing one mans passion for drawing conservative themed art. The real gems are in the archive. My personal favorites include "Team W" and these creepy Reagan ghost ones [1] [2]. Don't forget his epic comic The Patriot.
posted by DougieZero1982 on May 18, 2006 - 58 comments

Britain's New Labour have very short memories!

They are trying to persuade people to vote for them by highlighting exactly how they got in to power themselves as being a fault in the Conservative Party
posted by catchmurray on Apr 19, 2006 - 35 comments

Are you a Republican candidate for Senate facing a tough election and having trouble getting endorsements from your own party? It's time to take in an all-American baseball game with the Commander-in-Chief, target teh gay menace, and amend the US Constitution so American voters don't have to see any more of this over their morning corn flakes. "I think this will save him," Burress said of DeWine. "I think this move right here, regardless of the reason, will send him back to Washington." Of course, it's not just a GOP thing.
posted by digaman on Mar 31, 2006 - 39 comments

"These are just slush funds for conservative interest groups" --The Compassion Capital Fund ($148 million of our money), and the Community-Based Abstinence Education grant program ($391.7 million of our money)--just 2 of many new programs. ...The distribution of new money to conservative organizations is a small part of an estimated flood of $2 billion a year in federal grants to religious and religiously affiliated organizations.--except it's only to organizations who have policies that agree with Bush and the GOP agenda on social issues, and not about need.
posted by amberglow on Mar 22, 2006 - 61 comments

Things we already knew: Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. ... A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests.
posted by caddis on Mar 22, 2006 - 29 comments

The Book of Ralph. "A True Graphic Novel On Ralph Reed" written by Doug Monroe from Atlanta's Creative Loafing, drawn by Josh Latta of CuteGirlDemographics, and based entirely on potent quotables from Mr Reed himself.
posted by grabbingsand on Feb 18, 2006 - 6 comments

What unites hardliners like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh -- their uncompromisingly conservative take on politics? In a provocative blog post titled Do Bush followers have a political ideology?, Glenn Greenwald persuasively argues otherwise. He believes that the conservative movement -- traditionally against big government, excessive spending, and federal intrusion into the private lives of Americans -- has been hijacked by something much more dangerous: an authoritarian cult of personality, or as Greenwald puts it, "a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate."
posted by digaman on Feb 12, 2006 - 136 comments

"We can't do anything about it. We just have to obey." Fulton (Mo.) High School drama students learn that resistance is futile.
posted by Saucy Intruder on Feb 11, 2006 - 87 comments

Newsfilter: Canada's New Cabinet. Featuring thrills (former Liberal David Emerson crosses the floor to serve as International Trade Minister, and affect the balance of power), spills (Michael Fortier, who is not an MP, will be appointed to the Senate to serve as Public Works and Government Services Minister on the condition that he resign to run for Parliament in the next general election, upsetting some) and chills (everybody's favourite whipping boy, Stockwell Day as Minister of Public Safety). (as a bonus - and for those ignoramuses that care not for the intricacies of Canadian politics - pay some mind to the newly redesigned globeandmail.com, especially the prominence of public commentary on every article - it's the embodiment of newsfilter!)
posted by loquax on Feb 6, 2006 - 85 comments

Jack Bauer isn't afraid to cut the eyes out of any (deliberative) body; or, Rupert Murdoch demonstrates the 17th Amendment's fatal flaw.
posted by orthogonality on Feb 3, 2006 - 37 comments