A Wingnut Sh*tstorm Is Brewing In Texas

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What the hell happened in politics this week? Esquire's legendary blogger Charlie P. Pierce has answers

There's a Wingnut Sh*tstorm a'Brewin' Down in Texas in the Next Race for the U.S. Senate

Ken Paxton, the king of the clean getaway, against John Cornyn, the charisma-challenged incumbent and, quite possibly, the most maladroit Texas politician since god was a boy. Paxton, the champion of every bad idea to come out of Texas for the last decade against a guy who is in the Senate leadership because he was friends with Mitch McConnell, who is now as relevant to Republican politics as William Seward.

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The Independent Senator Who's Warning Both Democrats and Republicans About the Dangers of Trump

Ever since the voting public in its infinite meatheadedness made the former president the current president, Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent, has taken it upon himself to be a voice in favor of the national legislature's becoming a coequal branch of government again—to check and balance what is becoming a seriously unchecked and unbalanced executive branch led by an unchecked and a profoundly unbalanced president. Over the past month, he's addressed the Senate in an attempt to convince his colleagues to consult the original owner's manual. He went even further when I spoke with him recently.

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Trump Tariff Adviser Peter Navarro Invented His Very Own, Fictional Economics Expert

Convicted criminal and White House advisor Peter Navarro may have won the House Cup by citing a book written by an expert who didn't exist. (And no, it wasn't noted econometrician Dr. Otto Yerass.) Kindly Doc Maddow busted him on TV last Friday.

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The Trump Administration Just Removed Harriet Tubman from an Underground Railroad Web Page

Never let it be said that our big ship of fools doesn't know how to multitask. While busy lighting the entire 20th century on fire, starting with the national economy, it also finds the time to whitewash the history of the country generally, in ways both grand and petty.

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Republicans in North Carolina Just Won't Admit That a Democrat Won

A party-line ruling by the state's court of appeals could result in more than 60,000 ballots being disqualified. We in the shebeen have been following this one for a while. Tracking it has been easy because this case stinks like week-old mackerel. What Griffin wants, literally, is that the rules of the election be changed ex post facto. The lone Democrat on the appeals court, Judge Toby Hampson, pointed this out in a barbed dissent.

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