It's happening! Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is due to officially announce his candidacy for president Tuesday, featuring the actual campaign slogan: "Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream." Knowing how often Paul flip-flops on the issues, next week it'll be "Defeat ...read more

Yesterday on his MSNBC telecast, Ronan Farrow, like too many other seemingly naive members of his generation, confessed to being a fan of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in spite of the fact that Farrow, seconds earlier, aired a clip of the senator vocally endorsing the idea of ...read more

Sen. Rand Paul has a white supremacy problem, and it isn't MSNBC's (completely true) "lousy lies" about the Civil Rights Act, or his defense of the Southern Avenger, or his dad's racist newsletters. Instead, it's with his devotion to protecting the white supremacist status quo, ...read more

RT is state-funded by Russia and predictably has a bug up its ass about the United States. It's for this reason that the network is one of the few "mainstream" news outlets still willing to pay any attention at all to Ron Paul. Sane, relatively well-adjusted people look at Paul ...read more

In what surely won't be the last revelation in the internet vapor trail of Kansas shooting suspect Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., radio host David Pakman has unearthed a lengthy 2010 interview with the man who would go on to be arrested for deadly shootings at the Jewish Community ...read more

"I hated you [President Obama] more than I hated George Bush because I felt personally betrayed by all of the lies that you told. But really I should thank you now because a few years out from realizing what a scam you were, I understand that it's not just you....it is the ...read more

Occupy Wall Street was a failure because its millennial leaderless co-leadership refused to employ the basic and well-known template for successful activism. The main problem was its lack of a coherent message or legislative agenda, which stemmed from its aforementioned lack of ...read more

While Rand Paul is actively defending himself against the question Is there anything you haven't plagiarized?, his doddering old man, Ron Paul, again embraced the nefarious concept of nullification -- this time with regards to the Affordable Care Act. "Jefferson obviously was ...read more

The tea party put on quite a show on Sunday. Billed as the "Million Veterans March," roughly 300 people turned out to hear Sarah Palin and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) deliver brief remarks about "the Obama shutdown," followed by a ceremonial gathering of government barricades from ...read more

Tuesday afternoon, Matt Drudge, the notorious paleoconservative fire-eater and former mentor to Andrew Breitbart, tweeted, "It's now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs. Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties..." He rapidly followed it ...read more

By Robert Parry Some readers have questioned my recent historical reporting on the deep-rooted connections between “libertarianism” and racism in America. These readers don’t want to accept that an ism derived from the word “liberty” could have longstanding ties to slavery and ...read more

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has a racism problem. It's not the same as Paula Deen's racism problem. He didn't try to serve up "Sambo burgers" or hire actors to play slaves at a wedding. That we know of (kidding... maybe). But a trend is developing in which he bashes face first into ...read more

I managed to make it through a 1,300 word column on Alex Jones yesterday without giving myself the kind of excruciating migraine that usually leads me to spend hours hovering near the sink out of fear that I'll need to throw up into it at some point. Jones has that kind of ...read more

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, answering questions while campaigning in New Hampshire in 2008. (Photo credit: Bbsrock) By Robert Parry: Rep. Ron Paul, an icon to the libertarian Right and to some on the anti-war Left, gave a farewell address to Congress that expressed his ...read more

By Bob Cesca: Four years ago yesterday, John McCain and Sarah Palin were 1.9 percentage points behind then-Senator Barack Obama in the RCP poll-of-polls. Today, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are 2.8 percentage points behind President Obama in the RCP poll-of-polls. Romney is ...read more

By Bob Cesca: Yesterday, I covered the new Reuters/Ipsos poll showing the infuriatingly contradictory views on the Affordable Care Act. But what I didn't note was that Republicans, naturally, are the most infuriatingly contradictory of bunch. Okay, I know. Duh, right? ...read more

By Bob Cesca: A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the disconnect among senior citizens regarding the healthcare law and who they're intending to support in the election. Once again, seniors are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act more than any other demographic group ...read more

Welcome to this weeks edition of The Daily Banter Mail Bag! Today, we discuss the continued idiocy of austerity, whether there is a double standard when it comes to racism, and the point of Wolf Blitzer. The questions: Greece is about to default on its debt, Spain has 25% ...read more

By Ben Cohen: A note to our readers, I will be discussing the double dip recession in the UK on the RT network at 4pm ET with Abby Martin, so please tune in if you have time. I wrote a piece yesterday about the crisis, arguing that the austerity measures passed by the ...read more

Two giants in economic thought squared off last night to debate their competing economic theories on Bloomberg TV. On the Right was Congressman Ron Paul, champion of extreme libertarianism, and on the Left, Paul Krugman the most prominent advocate of Keynesian economics. The ...read more

Mitt Romney will win all five Republican presidential primaries Tuesday night, completing a sweep of contests in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware, CBS News projects. Romney boasted more than 50 percent of the vote in all five states, according to ...read more

By Ben Cohen: Now we know for certain that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for President this year, we can expect a brand new media circus over who he will pick for his running mate.  We'll get fancy graphics, charts, polls, and hours of analysis from the pundits - ...read more

By Ben Cohen: Finally, former Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum has called it a day and suspended his Presidential campaign. This comes as no surprise as a win against Mitt Romney has been unthinkable for several weeks now given the discrepancy in funding and support from ...read more

By Kim Barker: He may be in last place when it comes to delegates, but when it comes to filing expense reports with the FEC, Ron Paul beats everyone. His campaign's hyper-vigilance is notable, verging on fanatical. Every bank fee, every 22 cents at a FedEx, every $1 toll on ...read more

By Bob Cesca: Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday and the issue of the president's targeted predator drone killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki came up. Naturally, since it's one of his pet topics, Glenn Greenwald spoke against the ...read more

Illinois Republicans delivered a decisive victory to Mitt Romney in the state's presidential primary Tuesday, crushing Rick Santorum in what amounted to the first big-state head-to-head contest among the front-runners for the GOP nomination. With 98 percent of the state's ...read more

By Ben Cohen: Poor Mitt Romney. The soon to be elected Republican Presidential candidate is outspending his closest rival Rick Santorum by incredible sums (in the Chicago media market, an astonishing ratio of 20:1), yet his victory margins are dismal in comparison. No matter ...read more

Rick Santorum won Tuesday's Alabama and Mississippi GOP presidential primaries, with Southern conservatives again rejecting Mitt Romney, who earlier in the day said Santorum's campaign was reaching a "desperate end." Newt Gingrich, who had staked his campaign on a Southern ...read more

Mitt Romney has morphed from the inevitable candidate into a Sisyphean character. The former Massachusetts governor, with the looks, pedigree and resume tailor-made for a White House run, was forced to push the rock once again up the proverbial hill on Super Tuesday, falling ...read more

Here's a quick guide to what's at stake next Tuesday in the GOP primary: • Alaska—26 delegates, caucus • Georgia—76 delegates, primary • Idaho—32 delegates, caucus • Massachusetts—41 delegates, primary • North Dakota—28 delegates, caucus • Ohio—66 delegates, primary • ...read more

By Ray McGovern: When CNN interviews a U.S. Army corporal preparing for his third deployment to Afghanistan, should TV viewers be permitted to hear him out on a front-burner issue like Iran’s alleged threat to Israel? For those who might think so, watch what happens when ...read more

Check out this highly entertaining back and forth between Wolf Blitzer and Newt Gingrich on the final Florida GOP debate last night after Blitzer challenged Gingrich on assertions he had made about Mitt Romney's personal finances: < It is incredible to watch Gingrich's ...read more

I sat down to watch the GOP debate in Florida last night, the first time I've done it with the intention of seeing the whole thing through (otherwise, I have just skipped through youtube clips for the best highlights). After about 30 minutes, I couldn't take any more. ...read more

If you add up all the things that Ron Paul believes are unconstitutional, there would literally be no reason to have a government at all: Why on earth this man is viewed as being a serious candidate is anyone's guess, but then looking at the rest of the GOP field, it isn't that ...read more

Paul Krugman on the down side of Ron Paul's ideological consistency: Unfortunately, Mr. Paul has maintained his consistency by ignoring reality, clinging to his ideology even as the facts have demonstrated that ideology’s wrongness. And, even more unfortunately, Paulist ...read more

In a nutshell: I suspect every other Republican would launch a war against Iran. Paul wouldn't. That alone makes a vote for him worthwhile. Sullivan's overall argument is of course, far more nuanced, and it's difficult to disagree with him on many points - particularly the one ...read more

Hard to see how Rick Perry comes back from this epic flop: Andrew Sullivan's live blog captures the mood perfectly: Perry collapses. Cannot remember a list of three federal government departments he wants to abolish past the first two. Seriously. And then he says "oops." He ...read more

If you are a liberal dissatisfied with President Obama and are threatening not to vote for him in 2012, just watch this video from last night's Republican debate where Ron Paul was asked whether he thought someone without health insurance should be left to die. Paul waxed lyrcial ...read more

Yes, Ron Paul really said this: We should be like 1900. We should be like 1940, 1950, 1960. I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district. There's no magic about FEMA. They're a great contribution to deficit financing and quite ...read more

Chez Pazienza boils down the competing theories as to why Ron Paul is largely ignored by the mainstream media, despite his obvious popularity (Paul actually finished second in the Iow straw poll last week - a fact no one seems to recall): There are two contradictory arguments ...read more

Matt Taibbi takes conservative NYTimes columnist Ross Douthat to task for his recent transformation from war hawk to pacifist: The recent conversions to the cause of foreign-policy prudence by people like Douthat would be obnoxious even if they were believable. It’s easy to ...read more

If you've read Rick Perlstein's Before The Storm, this increasingly regular infiltration of the Republican party at the state party level as well as getting involved in arcane ways with the national platform is right out of the same strategy the Goldwater faithful used to take ...read more