Free Republic

Scratch a liberal, find disdain for the intelligence of conservatives. For that matter, no scratching required when it comes to Joe Conason, who proudly flaunts his contempt for conservatives. Appearing on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show today, Conason—who’s made a career out of defending the Clintons—sneered that investigating the Clintons: “sells to boobs out there on the right.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Hillary Clinton must be worried if she's willing to trot out a bottom-of-the-barrel dead-ender like Joe Conason to defend her. Conason slithered onto the Morning Joe set today and it didn't take him long--quoting Winston Churchill--to compare Joe Scarborough to Nazis. Even then, Conason couldn't tell the truth, claiming Churchill hadn't been referring to Nazis, when he explicitly had. View the video here.

Boston, Mass — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of the late senator and nephew of the late president, told an audience in Cambridge, Mass. Monday that President Bush has brought fascism to America. Kennedy appeared at a forum, "Books, Politics, and the Culture War," sponsored by the Harvard Book Store and the Progressive Book Club. A longtime environmentalist, he delivered an extended criticism of the Bush administration's environmental policies before alleging that the president has, in effect, created a fascist system of government in America. "I was taught that Communism leads to dictatorship and that capitalism leads to democracy," Kennedy...

Among the most revealing aspects of life during the Obama presidency is the panoply of responses to a black family in the White House. What made so many of us proud of our country on Jan. 20, 2009, has increasingly provoked expressions of hatred from the far right. That is troubling, but not nearly as troubling as the behavior of conservatives who excuse, embolden or simply pretend to ignore the bigots surrounding them. Last spring, after unruly Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill were accused of spewing racial epithets at civil rights hero John Lewis, an African-American congressman from Georgia,...

The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30....

You want to know what caused all those earthquake deaths in Haiti as compared to Chile? A Tea Party mental disorder. That is the laughable premise put forward by Joe Conason in a supreme stretch. If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life — while right-wing ideology may kill you someday. For those of us unfamiliar with geological terminology, it may come as a shock that the Chilean quake, rated 8.8 on the Richter scale, was...

Joe Conason's column should be as chilling to conservatives as it is meant to be comforting to liberals. His message: don't be distracted by the centrist-seeming appointments Pres.-elect Obama has made to his economic team. He remains as committed as ever to his radical agenda. Conason's commentary appears this morning at Rasmussen Reports. Key lines [emphasis added]: "[W]hen liberals point to Summers and other members of the Obama team, crying betrayal, they misunderstand the strategy behind those appointments. The most important thing to remember about the president-elect as he prepares to govern is that he takes the long view --...

It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Having served as governor of Alaska for less than two years -- and as mayor of a small town before that -- her qualifications for national office are minimal. Palin is the epitome of tokenism, exactly what conservative Republicans have always claimed to scorn, until today, as the politics of quotas and political correctness. Even Rush Limbaugh is a feminazi now (at least until Election Day). But if Palin's résumé is limited, to...

Disturbed by troubling connections and unflattering publicity, John McCain has just purged several prominent Washington lobbyists from his presidential campaign. Surely his intentions are laudable, but if Sen. McCain is consistent in ridding his campaign of such compromised people, he will find himself riding lonesome on the Straight Talk Express. That's because nearly all of his advisers, fundraisers and top staffers have worked on K Street, starting with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and his senior adviser and spokesman, Charles Black. From the beginning, the McCain team has been thoroughly infested with representatives of corporate special interests, from the campaign's...

A Republican victory in 2008 could sink America's reputation in the world even lower. Even if George W. Bush is the most awful American president in modern times, as many historians believe, and even though he has brought the United States into unprecedented disrepute around the world, as opinion polls indicate, the bombastic tone of the candidates seeking to succeed him from his own party raises a disturbing possibility. If the next president is a Republican, this truly bad situation could become still worse. Concerning the Iraq war, of course, there is no discernible difference between the current president and...

Karl Rove Under the harsh but savvy tutelage of Karl Rove, Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated their adherence to a venerable cliché: In politics, as in sports and warfare, the best defense is always a good offense—and the more offensive, the better. It’s an effective strategy, as John Kerry and many other hapless victims have learned, and at this point also a highly predictable one. Circled in a bristling perimeter around the White House, the friends and allies of Mr. Rove can soon be expected to fire their rhetorical mortars at Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the White House exposure...

Despite all the heavy-breathing hype generated to promote the forthcoming "attack biography" of Hillary Clinton by Edward Klein, citizens hoping to discover anything new about the famous junior Senator from New York shouldn’t waste their time or money on his unoriginal and unreliable rant. I know because a copy showed up in my office the other day ahead of the publisher’s embargo. Only the latest in an ever-expanding catalog of bad books claiming to tell us the "truth" about the former First Lady and potential Presidential candidate, Mr. Klein’s poisonous invention reveals far more about its author—and its publisher—than about...

Journalists typically condemn attempts to force their colleagues to disclose anonymous sources, saying that subpoenaing reporters will discourage efforts to expose government wrongdoing. But such warnings seem like mere self-congratulation when clear evidence of wrongdoing emerges, with no anonymous sources required-- and major news outlets virtually ignore it. A leaked document that appeared in a British newspaper offered clear new evidence that U.S. intelligence was shaped to support the drive for war. Though the information rocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign when it was revealed, it has received little attention in the U.S. press. The document, first revealed...

I just noticed that if you type in swiftboatvets.com instead of the proper swiftvets.com you get directed to a pro-Kerry Salon piece by Joe Conason. Cute. Now how bout those medical records, Senator Kerry, and by the way, where were you on Christmas Day 1968?

"Dishonest and dishonorable" is how John McCain described the attack ad now appearing on television in several swing states, courtesy of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Dishonest because the men who appear in the ad make false claims about John Kerry's wartime conduct and decorations. Dishonorable because these men have waited three decades to publicize their slurs, with partisan motives, during a presidential campaign. **********SNIP SNIP SNIP******************** The hired help employed by the Swift Vets committee is thoroughly partisan, too. Aside from Spaeth and Thomas Rupprath, the private detective she recommended to provide research services, the group's IRS filing...

New York's summer social season started not at the Hamptons, but tonight at the Museum of Modern Art with the book party for former President Bill Clinton's memoirs, My Life. Tout le monde came and went to bask in Clinton's afterglow and to pay homage to the only Democrat in the last quarter century to occupy the White House.While they may say they came to celebrate his presidency, deep inside they know they really came to see the man who brought Monica Lewinsky to her knees in the Oval Office.Outside the museum, two FReepers (Doctor Raoul and firebrand) stood across...

The "swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago. The latest conservative outfit to fire an angry broadside against John Kerry's heroic war record is "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" , which today launches a campaign to brand the Democrat "unfit to serve as commander in chief." Billing itself as representing the "other 97 percent of veterans" from Kerry's Navy unit who don't support his presidential candidacy, the group insists that all presidential candidates must be "totally honest and forthcoming" about...

Activist rocker Moby raised Republican hackles last week when he advised President Bush's enemies to engage in political mischief. Moby told my fellow gossips Rush & Molloy: "For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion." Now the incorrigible Larry Flynt says he plans to market a Bush abortion story as genuine - in a book to be published this summer by Kensington Press. "This story has got to...

The always provocative Spy takes the plunge - some might say right into the sewer of sleaze and unnamed sources. The cover story of its July/August issue discusses George Bush's supposed infidelities and publishes the name of longtime aide Jennifer A. Fitzgerald, around whom rumors have long circulated. The piece by Joe Conason also details other supposed liaisons, including a 1980 relationship with ''Ms. X,'' then a 30-ish news agency employee.

There he goes again!Matt Drudge and the GOP smear machine are back in the Democrats' pants. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Joe ConasonFeb. 13, 2004  | Is American politics suddenly returning to the bad old days, when Washington journalism became frenzied with sheet sniffing and keyhole peeping? That seems to be the default program of the right-wing media machine whenever Republican poll numbers sink into the red zone. Late Thursday morning -- with George W. Bush's credibility damaged on several fronts as reporters demanded answers to questions about his National Guard service that...