By Tom Johnson | December 14, 2015 | 5:25 PM EST

Several weeks ago, there was an Internet meme about whether it would have been ethical to kill the infant Adolf Hitler. Michael Tomasky poses a (somewhat) less-weighty back-in-time question: Could the Republican party’s current Donald Trump problem have been avoided?

Tomasky suggests that it could have been, but instead, during Bill Clinton’s first term in the White House, GOPers “played footsie with the then-burgeoning far-right militia movements in the run-up to the [Oklahoma City] bombing…Fringe elements never properly denounced then are now, under Trump, becoming an in-broad-daylight part of the Republican coalition.” In part because of that long-ago malignant neglect, Tomasky argues, “The Republican Party of Trump is becoming a white-identity party, like the far-right parties of Europe."

By Mark Finkelstein | December 13, 2015 | 9:14 PM EST

What's been implicit in TV commercials for years—that American husbands are feckless wimps—has now become explicit . . . 

Tuning in to watch a simple Sunday Night Football game, we were treated to a Kia ad. Wife at the wheel as the family pulls into a crowded parking lot for their boy's football gameWimpy husband suggests they go back and park someplace safe. We get to read the wife's mind as, driving it up a hill, she says "or, we could run it right up the gut." She then adds the coup de grace: "someone's got to wear the pants in this family." Take that!

By Brad Wilmouth | December 13, 2015 | 3:12 PM EST

On her eponymously named Sunday morning show, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry went into a mini-rant about racism in Star Wars as she complained about villain Darth Vader being "totally a black guy" when he was "cutting off white men's hands" who did not "claim his son," but then became a white man after he "claims his son and goes over to the good."

During a segment about the upcoming The Force Awakens sequel, after a discussion about Princess Leia's slave girl costume from the 1980s, the MSNBC host admitted to having mixed feelings about the popular movie series.

By Tom Johnson | December 12, 2015 | 12:25 PM EST

According to David Roberts, activist conservatives are “bending the political system to their will” not by scoring policy victories but by taking their cues from “fever dreams” (i.e., conspiracy theories).

In a Thursday article, Roberts suggested two reasons why conservatives generally are more inclined than liberals to buy into CTs. One is that for conservatives, not trusting “the political system [is] built into the ideology.” The other is that even though right-wingers are “politically engaged and intense,” their sources of information tend to be, in Roberts’s estimation, unreliable.

By Alexa Moutevelis Coombs | December 11, 2015 | 9:40 PM EST

Your Friday night funny: Tim Allen, as Mike Baxter in the ABC comedy Last Man Standing, gets in hits at the Nanny State and King Obama in this scene from the episode "Gift of the Wise Man."

By Kristine Marsh | December 11, 2015 | 3:46 PM EST

As it turns out, Jenner isn’t all the left hoped for.

After months of celebrating Bruce Jenner’s transition to Caitlyn Jenner earlier this year, the liberal media are turning on their former “hero” for not being “transgender” enough. Apparently, Jenner doesn’t say all the “right things” that a true liberal icon should – and so now, the left is eating one of its own.

By Matt Philbin | December 11, 2015 | 11:02 AM EST

Writer Phoebe Maltz Bovy has done the United States a service. (Actually, two – it seems she’s expatriated to Canada. Your grateful homeland salutes you, Ms. Bovy!)

Bovy has given free range to her progressive id with a screed in The New Republic (or what’s left of it) demanding a ban on guns – “Yes, all of them.” Hers is the latest in a trickle of admissions from the left about their real long-term goals on guns. Conservatives need to pay attention.

By Tom Johnson | December 10, 2015 | 9:09 PM EST

Between Christians and Muslims, which group poses the greater threat to religious liberty in America? To  Marcotte, there’s an obvious answer: Christians. In a Wednesday Salon column, the lefty pundit claimed that “the big difference between conservative Muslims and Christians in this country is that only the latter have a massive, organized movement that is backed by an entire political party to force their theocratic views on the non-believers.”

Marcotte’s peg was Sean Hannity’s recent statement on his radio show that we ought to find out whether would-be Muslim immigrants to the U.S. favor sharia. Marcotte deemed Hannity’s remark “breathtaking in its hypocrisy,” given that Hannity, “like nearly all conservatives these days, is a strong believer in the Christian version of ‘sharia law,’ i.e. forcing conservative religious beliefs on the non-believers by law.”

By Matthew Balan | December 10, 2015 | 7:36 PM EST

CNN did a 180 in its coverage of Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter attacking Donald Trump as an "asshole" on Tuesday over the presidential candidate's controversial proposal to ban Muslim immigration to the U.S. On Tuesday's OutFront, Erin Burnett spotlighted how the Democratic mayor "spoke out" against Trump with his crass term Burnett's program ran the soundbite of Nutter uncensored, and an on-screen graphic trumpeted, "Philadelphia Mayor: Trump's An 'Asshole'". Just over 24 hours later, Anderson Cooper confronted the outgoing mayor on his CNN program on Wednesday over the crude retort.

By Matthew Balan | December 9, 2015 | 12:46 PM EST

Fox News Channel's Kelly Wright detailed on Wednesday's Fox & Friends First how Christians in Wadena, Minnesota launched a silent rebellion, after the nativity scene in their town's square was taken down due to the threat of a lawsuit from the atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation. Hundreds of Wadena residents set up nativity scenes outside their own homes once the Christmas creche was removed.

By Tom Johnson | December 9, 2015 | 11:56 AM EST

A lot of people (not all of them liberals) consider Donald Trump a demagogue, but Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Marshall thinks Trump is as much of a collaborator as he is a leader. In Marshall’s telling, Trump’s invective derives in large part from an audience that’s been primed by Fox News’s nonstop emission of “hate, lies, nonsense and febrile fear.”

By Kristine Marsh | December 7, 2015 | 11:33 AM EST

In the wake of the San Bernardino mass shooting by Islamic terrorists last week, President Obama called for more punitive measures on Americans who want to buy guns instead of addressing specific measures against Muslims adhering to a radical ideology.

In a speech from the White House Sunday night, the President declared access to guns a matter of “national security.”