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A Republican County Sheriff in Massachusetts is fielding calls for his resignation after his Obama assassination "joke" made at a Republican breakfast didn't sit well when it was leaked to the public.

via WCVB, Boston.

PLYMOUTH, Mass—Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald said Wednesday he and his family have received more than 100 threatening emails and voice messages because of a joke he delivered at a St. Patrick's Day breakfast in Scituate during the weekend.

"Things have taken a very sinister turn," said McDonald. "I've received all kinds of hate emails, phone messages and voice mails, many of them physically threatening me, my family."

McDonald labeled the joke "political satire" that's been repeated for 150 years. It involves the ghosts of presidents past visiting President Barack Obama in his sleep. They offer advice on how to change the direction of the country. The last President is Abraham Lincoln.

"And Lincoln looks him in the eye and he says, 'Go to the theater,'" McDonald tells the crowd at Sunday's breakfast of about 100 Republicans who laughed generously.

For his part McDonald offered the standard non-apology apology republicans are so fond of:

"To the extent that some individuals seem to be unable to separate satire from reality, if I've offended them, I'm sorry for that," said McDonald Wednesday. "I'm sincerely sorry for that."

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For anyone who didn't think Gov. Rick Perry was a big enough wingnut to suit the state of Texas, there's an even nuttier one waiting to take his place -- secessionist Larry Kilgore. The Daily Show's Jessica interviewed Kilgore and his sidekick, Lynn Troxel, and it was a surreal enough segment that it could have been something you'd find over at The Onion.

Sadly, this guy is actually talking about running for office in Texas: With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas:

Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes.

Sales of bumper stickers reading “Secede” — one for $2, or three for $5 — have increased at TexasSecede.com. In East Texas, a Republican official sent out an e-mail newsletter saying it was time for Texas and Vermont to each “go her own way in peace” and sign a free-trade agreement among the states.

A petition calling for secession that was filed by a Texas man on a White House Web site has received tens of thousands of signatures, and the Obama administration must now issue a response. And Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate from Arlington, a Dallas suburb, announced that he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters. As his Web page, secedekilgore.com, puts it: “Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later.”

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.

But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter. Read on...

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From this Wednesday's The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell took apart "tea party" Rep. John Fleming for his remarks about irresponsible Republicans in the House never voting to increase taxes in the last 100 years -- and reminded everyone why they would be better off not quoting President Lincoln on taxes if they're not in the mood to make fools of themselves.

It seems Fleming repeated during a press conference, the same thing he wrote in an op-ed this week: FLEMING: GOP-controlled House has never raised taxes:

If some Republicans have their way, the party soon will make history for all the wrong reasons.

In the past 100 years, since the authority of Congress to tax income was enumerated in the 16th Amendment, marginal income tax rates have never been raised when Republicans have held the majority in the House of Representatives. For nearly a century, Republican-controlled Houses held the line on tax rates, a Republican coup de pointe to Democratic tax-increase parries. Here’s the question for my fellow Republicans: Do we want to be the first-ever GOP House majority to raise federal marginal income tax rates? [...]

If Republicans really believe in the principles of smaller government and economic liberty — as we have over the past 100 years, and as many of us still do — we should be far more concerned about getting principle right instead of worrying about polls and re-election.

Abraham Lincoln reminded us to “adhere to your purpose, and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.”

Here's more on O'Donnell's response from his site: O’Donnell on why Republicans shouldn’t quote Lincoln on taxes:

He failed to mention what the Republican-controlled House of Representatives during Lincoln’s presidency did with taxes. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell set the record straight on Wednesday’s show:

“That Republican-controlled House actually passed our first income tax which Lincoln signed into law to pay for the Civil War. It was a progressive income tax–3% on annual incomes over $600 and 5% on annual incomes over $10,000. The Supreme Court ruled those taxes constitutional, but decades later in 1895 the Supreme Court reversed the earlier decision and declared federal income taxes unconstitutional–which is why in 1913 it took a Constitutional amendment to re-establish federal income taxation.

O’Donnell also pointed out that Republicans constantly bring up Lincoln any chance they can get “because 21st century Republicans know that Abraham Lincoln is the only Republican that many Americans admire.”

“Abraham Lincoln is also the only Republican president, indeed the only president, who has ever gotten a Republican House of Representatives to raise income taxes. Republicans didn’t just establish the very first income tax as I just described. Two years later, they raised the rates. They doubled the top tax rate from 5% to 10%. That’s back when Republicans were responsible: 150 years ago.”

O'Donnell also reminded his audience that their stance on taxation may be one of the reasons that Americans have not given them control of the House of Representatives for all that many years over the last century.

Sadly, they wouldn't have it now were it not for cheating and gerrymandering.

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As Lawrence O'Donnell rightfully pointed out this Tuesday evening, even if your leaders renounce the likes of Rep. "legitimate rape" Todd Akin, it doesn't mean much when you won't say a word about wingnuts like Rep. Paul Broun, who just said that denying evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang Theory are "lies from the pit of hell." And as he noted, they've yet to denounce this wingnut as well -- Arkansas State Rep: ‘If Slavery Were So God-Awful, Why Didn’t Jesus Or Paul Condemn It?’:

After Arkansas Republicans disavowed a book by state representative Jon Hubbard (R-AR) claiming slavery was “a blessing in disguise” for African Americans, Hubbard’s colleague, state Rep. Loy Mauch (R-AR) has been outed by the Arkansas Times for his pro-slavery, pro-Confederacy letters to the editor over the past decade. Mauch’s run for reelection this year is backed by the Arkansas Republican Party.

In letters to the Democrat-Gazette, Mauch vehemently defended slavery and repeatedly suggested Jesus condoned it:

If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?
The South has always stood by the Constitution and limited government. When one attacks the Confederate Battle Flag, he is certainly denouncing these principles of government as well as Christianity.

His other letters call Abraham Lincoln a Marxist and celebrate the Confederate flag as “a symbol of Christian liberty vs. the new world order.” He also organized a conference in 2004 praising John Wilkes Booth and calling for the removal of an Abraham Lincoln statue. Mauch has been supported mainly by contributions from the Republican Party and other Arkansas candidates. Now, the state GOP is pulling all funds from Mauch, Hubbard and another state legislative candidate, Charlie Fuqua, who wants to expel all Muslims from the country and thinks rebellious children should receive the death penalty.

These idiots have just thrown out the dog whistles. Forget subtlety, break out the blow horns.

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Fundamentalist Christian radio host Bryan Fischer says that the white supremacist who massacred six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin must have been a liberal because he hated former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and had a "a left-wing political philosophy."

On his Tuesday American Family Association radio show, Fisher said that Wade Michael Page could not be connected to the tea party because he had threatened to leave the country if Cain was elected president. But the conservative radio host failed to mention that Page's hate for African Americans may have trumped any desire to support the Republican candidate.

"The tea party [is] primarily made up of white people, of evangelicals, people of faith," Fischer explained. "We loved Herman Cain. He was a black guy. We loved him. We would have been happy to have him be our presidential candidate. This guy despised Herman Cain."

Fischer then made the claim that Page's identification as a neo-Nazi meant he also must have been a liberal.

"You know what the Nazi Party stands for? It's the National Socialist Party. What about the word 'socialist' do you not understand? They were the National Socialist Party - that is a left-wing political philosophy," he insisted.

Fischer continued: "And you think even here in the United States, who was the part of racism? It was the left, it was liberals who were the part of racism. It was Democrats that supported and defended the institution of slavery. It was Democrats that resisted the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It was Democrats that instituted Jim Crow laws. It was Democrats that created the Ku Klux Klan. It was Democrats that filibustered the Civil Rights Acts of the mid-1960s."

While Fischer often recounts the Democratic Party's opposition to rights for minorities, he always fails to mention that Democrats surpassed Republicans on civil rights when Democratic President Harry Truman became the first president since Abraham Lincoln to address civil rights issues in the 1940s. After attempting to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Southern Democrats have largely joined the national party in support of civil rights issues. Many of those that didn't agree with the party's civil rights agenda, defected to the Republican Party.

Earlier this week, televangelist Pat Robertson also attempted to disassociate Page with conservative Christians by suggesting that atheists were to blame for the shooting.

“What is it?” the TV preacher wondered. “Is it satanic? Is it some spiritual thing, people who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God? And they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God.”

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

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Isn't this just lovely? I guess Mark Williams decided he had to one up himself after his remarks about the NAACP on NPR. As Keith notes at the end of his Tea Time segment if the Tea Party doesn't want to be considered racist and they don't repudiate Mark Williams "only four words will have to be spoken to prove you wrong, the Mark Williams letter."

h/t Balloon Juice

Tea Party Leader Mocks NAACP "Coloreds" In Online Screed:

Williams, however, is doing little to refute the notion that there is racism in the Tea Party movement. Last night, the proud Tea Partier wrote a blog post mocking NAACP president Benjamin Jealous. The post takes the form of a fake letter to Abraham Lincoln, in which Jealous asks the former president to repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments (and to reinstate slavery) because the "coloreds" don't agree with the Tea Party's version of "freedom."

Continue reading »

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How pitiful is this? George Will reaches back to Abraham Lincoln to defend the Republicans being the "party of no". Note to George Will. Lincoln would be called a flaming liberal evil socialist Marxist by the standards of today's Republican Party. And Matt Dowd, if memory serves those Democrats who didn't like the Civil Rights movement, I believe there's a name for them... Dixiecrats. I believe their ilk would now be called Southern Republicans. Comparing President Obama bucking his base now to LBJ going up against those Dixiecrats is an utterly ridiculous analogy.

DOWD: Civil rights is a perfect example. Democrats, throughout the history of civil rights, sought to kill civil rights, throughout the whole -- throughout the whole thing.

MORAN: Until the 1960s.

DOWD: Until the 1960s, until Republicans, who cast more votes on behalf of civil rights legislation to get it done. But in the end, some Democrats -- LBJ had to take on elements of his own party and risk political problems, which he did.

MORAN: And President Obama really isn't doing that.

BRAZILE: I think President Obama is leading. But, unfortunately, you have a Republican Party that has decided that, by saying no, they could, you know, perhaps gain more at the polls this coming fall.

Look, one-tenth of the Republican caucus in the House has announced their retirements, OK, only 13 Democrats in the House. We have more Republicans retiring in the United States Senate than -- than Democrats.

We know from 1994 as well as 2008, when you look at two volatile periods that if you have to defend open seats, it's very difficult. So for Democrats right now, the game is to hold as many seats as possible and to not retire. For Republicans, they still have to come up with some ideas to go out there and galvanize the electorate. One-third of the American people is still with the president, one third is against the president. There's 30 percent of the American people that is still up for grabs. And if this president leads, he will be able to capture those people.

WILL: I want to say something in defense, particularly to Donna, of being the party of no. The Republican Party elected its first president because he said no to a bright idea a Democratic senator had, which was I'll solve the problems, said Stephen A. Douglas, of expansion of slavery into the territories. Let's have popular sovereignty. People can vote it up or vote it down. A lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, named Lincoln said no, that's a bad idea. We're going to stop that idea. Now is the Republican Party the party of no, you bet they weren't.

BRAZILE: You know, George, is the Republican Party going to defend the 39 percent rate hikes on insurance premiums this coming week when they hold the health care summit? Will the Republican Party continue to defend all of these job cuts across the country when you see governors having to eliminate very popular programs? Let the Republicans continue to say no. I think Democrats have to lead and it's up to the president to demonstrate that.

MORAN: It is a challenge, and let's turn to the health care summit. It looks like Republicans are ready to come and say, no, take that bill off the table.