To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.

— Greg Sargent, Washington Post columnist, in a splendid piece titled, “How Much Does Right-Wing Rhetoric Contribute to Right-Wing Terrorism?

Tea Party Topples House Majority Leader, Former ‘Young Gun’ Eric Cantor

Brat

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, once one of the self-proclaimed GOP “Young Guns,” lost his seat today representing Virginia’s 7th District to a tea bagger professor, Dave Brat. Hard to believe, but even Fox News confirms it:

In a stunning upset, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost the GOP Virginia primary Tuesday night to Dave Brat, an economics professor and political novice.

The Associated Press called the race for Cantor about an hour after polls closed at 7 p.m. ET.

Cantor is the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House and was widely seen as the next in line to succeed House Speaker John Boehner.

Cantor’s loss to a political novice with little money marks a huge victory for the Tea Party movement, which supported Cantor just a few years ago.

The Political Memoir Title Generator

To mark the publication of Hillary Clinton’s political ad, er, memoir, TIME magazine has created a Political Memoir Generator that operates off of several time-honored memoir-naming schemes. Now you too can have an aptly — and automatically — named memoir with inspiring cover art.

I tried several different designs and finally chose “Buck Banks: Earnest Grit,” as being most representative of my political career. Share yours in the comments section.

Tea Party Spawns Terror Attack

Gadsden flag, then and now: left, J.B. Stoner speaks in front of the Gadsen “Don’t Tread on Me” flag at a KKK rally in 1964; right: Tea party agitator Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, leads an anti-government rally in October 2013

Let’s call Jerad and Amanda Miller, the Indiana couple who fatally shot two police officers as well as an armed citizen in Las Vegas on Sunday, what they were: right-wing domestic terrorists. To be specific, they were tea party-inspired terrorists.

The national media won’t go there, of course, because they fear offending the Republican Party and of being labeled with the dread word, “liberal.” But facts are facts. The Millers were unlike other recent mass shooters in that they weren’t simply off their meds. It is clear now that they were inspired by tea party racism and anti-government libertarianism, which has been fostered, not just by the GOP, but in the bosom of the media establishment itself, which is to say Fox News.

[…]