The Jan. 6 Capitol attacks offer a reminder – distrust in government has long been part of Republicans’ playbook

  The Republican National Committee has legitimized the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attacks. The RNC declared on Feb. 4, 2022 that the insurrection and preceding events were “legitimate political discourse” — an assertion that Sen. Mitch McConnell soon after countered, saying that it was a “violent insurrection.”

  The Justice Department is investigating former President Donald Trump’s involvement on Jan. 6, when several thousand rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The attacks resulted in the deaths of at least seven people and the injury of 150 police officers.

Conservatives backed the ideas behind Obamacare, so how did they come to hate it?

  The Affordable Care Act is back before the U.S. Supreme Court in the latest of dozens of attacks against the law by conservatives fighting what they now perceive to be a government takeover of health care.

  Yet, in an odd twist of history, it was Newt Gingrich, one of the most conservative speakers of the House, who laid out the blueprint for the Affordable Care Act as early as 1993. In an interview on “Meet the Press,” Gingrich argued for individuals’ being “required to have health insurance” as a matter of social responsibility.

Rick Perry’s belief that Trump was chosen by God is shared by many in a fast-growing Christian movement

  In a recent interview with Fox News, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry stated that Donald Trump was chosen by God to be president. He said that throughout history God had picked “imperfect people” such as King David or Solomon to lead their people.

  Perry is not alone. A large number of evangelical Christians in the United States believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to advance the kingdom of God on Earth. Several high-profile religious leaders have made similar claims, often comparing Trump to King Cyrus who was asked by God to rescue the nation of Israel from exile in Babylon.

  Many of these Christians are part of a movement that we call “Independent Network Charismatic,” or “INC Christianity” in our 2017 book.

Richard Cohen: Secret Service failures are cause for concern after numerous extremist plots

  With its recent bumbling, the long-respected U.S. Secret Service is beginning to look like the Keystone Kops. But there’s nothing funny about the agency’s security lapses, particularly for the nation’s first black president, a man who is the target of enormous rage on America’s radical right.

  For those of us who monitor racist and anti-government extremists, it’s not surprising that, as The Washington Post reported, President Obama has faced three times as many threats as his predecessors.

Eric Alterman: Heads, the Tea Party wins; tails, the Tea Party wins

  Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum recently suggested that Americans would be less apt to hold Republicans responsible for the government shutdown than they did in 1995 because of the help Republicans could expect to receive from Fox News. She was wrong about this; indeed, she and Fox News host Brit Hume were typically wrong about almost everything. For instance, MacCallum said that:

        Fox News Channel was just beginning. People are very—it’s a different world in terms of what people understand about what’s going on. In those days, it was much easier to pin the problems in this on the Republicans … I’m not sure that they’re going to punish the Republicans to the extent that they did last time around.

Eric Alterman: Murdoch ‘unfit?’ Ya think?

  The headline says it all: “Murdoch Unfit to Lead Media Empire, Says British Report.” It was dated May 1, 2012 on The New York Times homepage (and appeared the following morning on page one). Thing is, if you leave out the part about the British report, the same headline could have appeared any time in the past 20 or more years. But by common agreement, owing to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch’s power, influence, profit-making properties, and his ability to hire and fire people in any one of more than 50,000 jobs—to say nothing of his willingness to use all that power and influence to attack the character of anyone who had the temerity to question his actions—most folks decided to look the other way.