Last night on Anderson Cooper 360, panelists Jeffrey Toobin and Kirsten Powers found themselves having to calm down Michael Caputo, whose defense of Brett Kavanaugh turned into a full-on temper tantrum when they called him out on his lies. Caputo, a Republican aide, has worked ...read more
Last Friday, Anderson Cooper 360 aired a panel discussion led by CNN correspondent Randi Kaye where she talked with five Republican women about the allegations made against Judge Brett Kavanaugh by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. She started out by asking if they believed Kavanaugh ...read more
In 2018, Republicans have come a long way when it comes to their basic sense of decency. Back in 2016, they were absolutely fine with electing a self confessed sexual predator to the highest office in the land. In 2017, they were fine with electing an alleged pedophile to the US ...read more
Since Doctor Christine Blasey Ford went public with her allegations that Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her in high school, Senate Republicans have tried to frame the debate as "he said/she said," with only two people to be questioned. Their efforts to stonewall an FBI ...read more
Although the Brett Kavanaugh hearings will reopen on Monday, with Doctor Christine Blasey Ford testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the White House still refuses to ask the FBI to investigate her allegations of sexual assault and attempted rape, much to the ...read more
The discussion about Donald Trump’s hair creeps into conversation often enough -- or depending on which way the wind blows. And the winds were strong the other day when Trump boarded Air Force One to head to Mar A Lago. This resulted in a lot of commentary on his questionable ...read more
The Banter Long Read: As hard as it might be to swallow for the left, it is now the time to disavow Bill Clinton and exorcise him from public life. After the wave of naming and shaming high profile celebrities and politicians for their grotesque behavior towards women, there can ...read more
Sometimes it helps to take a break from Trump Trump Trump all the time and remind ourselves just how rancid conservative ideology truly is: North Carolina is the one state where the law explicitly says you cannot revoke consent once it's given. A bill that would remove this ...read more
They should call it the Bill Cosby Loophole. It turns out that in Oklahoma, you can rape a woman by inserting your penis into her mouth without her permission -- she only has to be passed out from too much alcohol at the time in order for it to be legal. Yes, you read that ...read more
Am I a rapist? At first blush it's an absurd question to ask. I've never sexually forced myself on anyone; on the contrary, I've always believed that if a woman isn't interested in me, what joy would I possibly get out of trying to compel her to be? I was always more into being ...read more
Amazingly, 55 women's accounts of sexual assault and rape is not enough evidence to convince some people that Bill Cosby is a sociopathic sexual predator. A quick glance at Cosby's Facebook fan page reveals the truly alarming level of devotion his supporters still have for the ...read more
Jezebel's Anna Merlan flagged the story of a 12 year-old girl who was allegedly raped in the bathroom of a CVS pharmacy in Texas on October 16. Well, maybe not rape-raped, if you know what I mean. According to ABC affiliate KTRK's headline, the man "Had Sex With 12 Year-Old ...read more
(pic: Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun Time) According to Chicago Sun Times columnist Mary Mitchell, rape is only rape if the woman isn't a sex worker. Yes, you read that right - prostitutes aren't actually human beings because they sell their bodies for sex. 29 year old Austin ...read more
The latest controversy to light up the sky in the political fireworks show that is Donald Trump involves a Trump Organization attorney named Michael Cohen, who responded to a Daily Beast reporter's questions about a decades-old (and mostly-recanted) accusation rape by claiming ...read more
For as long as recorded history, men have used sex and violence as a weapon against women to assert their dominance. While much of the world has made little in the way of progress when it comes to the treatment of women, the west has much to be proud of when it comes to ...read more
There were a couple of news stories this weekend that really fleshed out the contours of the culture war on abortion rights in completely different, yet related, ways. First, there was West Virginia State Delegate Brian Kurcaba, who became nationally famous for saying that ...read more
Photo: Chuck C. Johnson* By now, many of you are familiar with conservative blogger and hack-fraud Chuck C. Johnson (not to be confused with Little Green Footballs blogger, Charles Johnson), who's made a name for himself by exposing and smearing alleged rape victims, among ...read more
He's once and forever the worst person in the world. Erick Erickson, frequent Fox News analyst and incurably squinty founder of Red State, thought it might be hilarious to attempt a joke about these three things: President Obama, college and rape; yet again proving the theory ...read more
(Photo: Michael Buckner/Getty Image Entertainment) *** Updated Below *** It's been a really bad couple of weeks for rape victims and their advocates. This isn't the kind of thing anyone should take satisfaction in, but it's also something that can't reasonably be denied. What's ...read more
If you think the much-maligned f-word doesn't deserve the "bad word" status that's been forced on it by an uncaring society, then you'll love the good use these little girls (and one little boy) put it to. The website FCKH8.com, purveyors of clothing with a message and a ...read more
Photo: Jeff Miller/UW-Madison My father has been in law enforcement for most of his life. When he wasn't a cop with the Miami-Dade Police Department, he was a cop with the Broward County Sheriff's Office or the executive director of Broward County's Crime Stoppers organization. ...read more
There's nothing less funny than trying to explain why a joke is funny. But given the subject at hand, I guess we're left with no other choice. In one of the best scenes in the original British version of The Office, Ricky Gervais's pompous and delusional branch manager David ...read more
The problem with an apology that's demanded is that it's an apology that's insincere. If the world is coming down on top of you and people are calling for your head and insisting that you agree to an act of contrition to make amends for your sins, by its very nature that act ...read more
A new report from Sen. Clair McCaskill (D-Mo.) and the Senate Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight has found that although one in five women experience sexual assault during the course of their college careers, 41% of colleges and universities haven't conducted a ...read more
When some lunatic spews garbage on a fringe website like InfoWars or The Daily Caller, no one really pays attention, but print the same garbage on a site with a more legitimate reputation, and suddenly, it's "even Mediaite says that "blah, blah, blah." With that in mind, it was ...read more
Former Fox host and current conservative media emperor Glenn Beck stunned viewers of his internet TV show today when he tearfully revealed the horrors of rape that have affected his family "firsthand, over multiple generations," including details of the repeated rape of his ...read more
Glenn Beck didn't attend this year's White House Correspondents Dinner, but he's attended once before -- and it was clearly an experience he didn't relish very much because he compared it to, yes, being raped. "My wife and I left, and said, uh, should we go and take a shower ...read more
Sexual assault allegations made years after the fact are tough things to offer a public opinion on. They obviously shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, as the difficulty of proving sexual assault in general is what can lead an attacker not to worry too much about the consequences ...read more
Via Media Matters, Wall Street Journal Editor James Taranto wrote in his weekly column that if both a rapist and his victim are drunk, they share equal blame. No, I'm not making that up. What is called the problem of "sexual assault" on campus is in large part a problem of ...read more
Maybe Bill O’Reilly had a point: sometimes it’s best just to shut up. Certain members of the GOP can’t seem to help themselves, and much like the strategy the Grand Old Party has embraced, it shows no sign of abating. I’m specifically talking about the War on Women. I know ...read more
Fact: the only thing that's like rape is rape. But this self-evident fact seems to repeatedly escape certain doofuses who seem to believe just about everything is like rape. Rush Limbaugh thinks the Senate rule change to eliminate the use of the filibuster against judicial ...read more
Remember the good 'ol days when after you were gangraped, you only had to relive the horror in your head for years on end, not see a play-by-play video of it on the Internet uploaded by your mocking, gleeful attackers? Calling themselves “The Roast Busters” (which I don't ...read more
When I was a senior in high school I had a sex-ed class taught by a priest. There are so many possible jokes in response to this and so much room to express bewilderment that I'm just going to forgo all of it and let you ponder the implications for yourself. Suffice it to say, ...read more
We've seen a lot of creepy political commercials come and go. A lot of the creepiest ones have involved racial dog-whistles as part of the nefarious Republican Southern Strategy: the Willie Horton ad, the "white hands" ad, the ridiculously over-the-top attack ad accusing Janice ...read more
Roman Polanski is a brilliant director. He's also a child rapist who ran away from the justice system of the country in which he committed his crimes and has never been held accountable for what he did on terms that weren't entirely his own. If you're one of those people who ...read more
A kitten yes, but how about an abortion? It has been six months since the Newtown shooting and while we are no where near passing any gun safety bills, the US House of Representatives is poised to take up the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," which would ban the ...read more
It seems the GOP's go to position when it comes to rape and abortion is often "women can't get pregnant from sexual assaults." If anyone needs a "plan b" on this issue, it is these people -- all men -- who just clearly don't know what they are talking about. Congressman Trent ...read more
"I was very proud of the fact that I didn't get anything wrong that I said during the course of the debates. I didn't get anything wrong, and that's a huge arena." Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on her 2012 debate performances. When Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announced she will ...read more
Here's something that I think deserves to be seen far and wide. Last week on FX's Totally Biased, host W. Kamau Bell kicked off a new segment on the show that will, as he puts it, pit comics against feminists. While anyone who's read my stuff over the past year or so knows ...read more
In all the hoopla about James O'Keefe and Rand Paul's filibuster (still support him on that), I completely forgot aout International Women's Day (IWD), which was yesterday. I was impressed to read the list of countries who now recognize the day. IWD has been observed since the ...read more
Defense SecretaryLeon Panetta’s recent decision to lift the ban on women in combat has sparked some heated debate, it seems mostly on Twitter. My personal account has been besieged by people who don’t object to the new policy because women cannot handle the role but who think it ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Huff Post: A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial. House Bill 206, ...read more
By Bob Cesca: It's inconceivable that in the 21st Century we'd be debating the archaic notion of torture in this country as if there was any question about whether it should be used. Now rape has entered the discourse, and there's a very specific reason why it's been so ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Reuters: BURBANK, California (Reuters) - President Barack Obama suspended the levity during an interview with late-night TV talk show host Jay Leno on Wednesday to address a Republican Senate candidate's assertion that pregnancies resulting ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: Here's the thing to keep in mind when you hear Mitt Romney trying to distance himself from Richard Mourdock and the comments the Republican Senate candidate made about abortion last night: He's completely full of shit. The truth is that Romney and his ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Huff Post: WASHINGTON -- Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock declared Tuesday night he opposes aborting pregnancies conceived in rape because "it is something that God intended to happen." Debating Rep. Joe Donnelly ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: When it comes to presenting a unified, impenetrable messaging front, there's nothing more fearsome or impressive than the GOP talking points machine; the Republicans simply know how to stay on point and move as one when they're dishing out their own branding. ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab (via Yahoo! News): TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — His Republican National Convention curtailed by a threatened hurricane, Mitt Romney conceded Sunday that fresh controversy over rape and abortion is harming his party and he accused Democrats of trying to ...read more
