Face it - the GOP has a really bad memory. It became evident in January of 2009, when Republicans suddenly realized our economy was in serious trouble the day President Obama was sworn into office. They constantly ignored that the great recession had already been going on for over a year and anytime someone on the left tried to remind them, the Republicans stuck their fingers in their ears and shouted "na na na - I can't hear you. Stop blaming Bush!".

As matter of fact it has been so bad that the Republicans have either ignored or tried to rewrite a big part of this history of this recession - TARP. They constantly act like TARP was an Obama planned, enacted by him while in office. But here are the key facts around TARP:

• During the 2008 campaign, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain took an unprecedented step to suspend his campaign to work on TARP.
• TARP passed the Senate in October of 2008, with both Senator Obama and Senator McCain voting for it.
• On October 8, 2008, President George W. Bush signed Tarp into law.

There were a number of Republicans in the House that voted against TARP (108 to be exact), so President Bush could have pulled out the veto pen, especially given the fact that the House was 20 some votes short of a veto-proof majority. But he didn't. Instead he signed it into law and became the President that actually enacted TARP.

Another interesting supporter of TARP was Paul Ryan. This is the GOP's man when it comes to budget and monetary policy. They always turn to him for guidance and plan, yet they ignore the fact that he supported a key piece of legislation that the GOP now opposes.

Since President Obama announced his support of gay marriage last week the pundits have gone into overdrive. Some are saying this could spell the end to his presidency, while others are saying it shows he embraces a future. A new poll out by CBS sheds a little bit of light into this:

A new CBS News/New York Times Poll shows a solid majority of Americans support legal recognition for same-sex couples - though not necessarily through the official act of marriage - and the number of people who do support full marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples is significantly higher among younger generations.

Overall, 38 percent of those who responded to the survey said same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, just like any other couple. Another 24 percent said civil unions should be used to grant same-sex couples legal rights similar to male-female partnerships. Combined, that means 62 percent - close to two thirds - of Americans believe that same-sex unions should be recognized by law.

Of all those who participated, 33 percent said there should be no legal recognition for same-sex couples.

What's really interesting is when you look at how public opinion has changed over the years:

(Click for larger view)

Today's Washington Post is out with a story of a young Mitt Romney:

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Are conservatives really this stupid?

On the dust jacket of his new book, "The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas," best-selling conservative author and commentator Jonah Goldberg is described as having "twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize."

In fact, as Goldberg acknowledged on Tuesday, he has never been a Pulitzer nominee, but merely one of thousands of entrants.

When this bit of résumé inflation was pointed out by a reporter for msnbc.com, Goldberg said he hadn't meant to mislead anyone and removed the Pulitzer claim from his bio at National Review Online. (Here's the page before and now.) And he added, "I never put it in the bio in the first place."

Goldberg is apparently shifting blame to the publisher, Penguin. They are calling it a "innocent mistake".

But the problem with that? This ain't the first time:

When Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" came out in January 2008, his employer National Review Online announced that Tribune Media Services, which carries Goldberg's opinion columns, had "nominated" Goldberg for a Pulitzer in commentary.

The liberal blog Daily Kos then pointed out that the Tribune doesn't choose Pulitzer nominees, writing about "Goldberg's faux Pulitzer."

MSNBC has obtained a statement from the president of Sentinel Publishing, which is an imprint of Penguin. In it you hear a lot of minced meat white-washing going on. The interesting part is at the end:

Attached to the publisher's statement was an internal note from the Penguin publicist, cautioning author Goldberg not to say another word.

It really sounds like they are worried about some legal issues. Perhaps false advertising?

Mitt Romney is by far the biggest liar that I can remember in Presidential politics. This latest though is just a step too far:

Despite his 2008 call to "let Detroit go bankrupt," presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Monday that he would "take a lot of credit" for his impact on the U.S. automobile industry's comeback.

During an interview with WEWS-TV in Cleveland following a campaign stop, Romney said his views helped save the industry.

"I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy," Romney said. "And finally, when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry's come back."

Here's what Romney said in 2009 about Obama's plan:

GM’s new proposal, clearly produced under government duress, is worse than virtually any of the alternatives. It would give GM to the UAW and the U.S. government and make taxpayers pick up the bills. Of course, billions more from government would be drawn down right away. But the UAW could also depend on the Obama administration to keep up the subsidy for years and years to come. Government and Union co-ownership: It would be as ineffective as it is un-American.

The right course for GM is an out-of-court restructuring or bankruptcy. Either would keep the company in business and rid it of burdensome costs, work rules and obligations. The government could backstop the post-restructuring debt, helping the company get on its feet. GM must not fail: If its costs are brought in line with its competition, it can ultimately thrive and grow jobs. What is proposed is even worse than bankruptcy–it would make GM the living dead.

I have always been pro-Second Amendment. By that I mean that responsible and stable adults should be allowed to own firearms. Two stories out of Arizona this week goes against the "responsible and stable" part.

First was this shooting rampage:

JT Ready

An Arizona man who on Wednesday reportedly killed four people, including a 47-year-old grandmother and a 15-month-old infant, and then took his own life was also a former Republican Party official, a former white supremacist neo-Nazi and the founder of a border patrol vigilante group that advocated using violence on immigrants.

On Thursday morning, police in Gilbert, Arizona confirmed that J.T. (Jason Todd) Ready had committed suicide after killing his girlfriend, 47-year-old Lisa Mederos, along with her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend and her granddaughter, according to The Arizona Republic.

Then the next day a murder by a high profile gun rights advocate:

The U.K. Parliament has released a scathing report into the News of the World hacking scandal:

In a report on the malpractice at Murdoch's now shuttered News of The World tabloid, legislators accused Murdoch and his son James of overseeing a corporate culture that sought "to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing."

Parliament's cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee unanimously agreed that three key News International executives had misled Parliament by offering false accounts of their knowledge of the extent of phone hacking - a rare and serious censure that can see offenders hauled before Parliament to make a personal apology.

The panel said the House of Commons would decide on the punishment meted out to the three executives: New York Daily News editor Colin Myler, a former News of The World editor; the British tabloid's longtime lawyer Tom Crone and Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and former board member of The Associated Press.

Members of the panel said Rupert Murdoch, 81, had insisted he was unaware that hacking was widespread at the News of The World, blaming his staff for keeping him in the dark. That explanation was not accepted.

When this story first started breaking last year I was amazed at how much Murdoch and his son kept trying to say "well we didn't know it was happening". These are idols of conservatism, the very people who always preach about personal responsibility, yet they sat there and blew off any responsibility. Well we all know where the buck stops, except maybe Murdoch. It's his damn company so he is responsible. That's why the report has declared Murdoch "unfit to lead" his own company.

Yesterday the draconian Republican leadership in the House decided to rush through the CISPA legislation:

Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today—and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part.

CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is a total invasion of our rights in this country. Basically it allows the government to conduct cyber surveillance and use that information for about anything - all without the oversight of a court issued warrant.

So who voted for this? Well the vote was pretty much party line, with the "small government, protect our freedoms" Republicans voting for it. The vote was also scheduled for today, but after some shenanigans the Republican leadership moved the vote up to yesterday, ignoring their pledges to let legislation be posted 72 hours before a vote. That move was done after some serious changes were made to the bill yesterday:

The vote followed the debate on amendments, several of which were passed. Among them was an absolutely terrible change (pdf and embedded below—scroll to amendment #6) to the definition of what the government can do with shared information, put forth by Rep. Quayle. Astonishingly, it was described as limiting the government's power, even though it in fact expands it by adding more items to the list of acceptable purposes for which shared information can be used. Even more astonishingly, it passed with a near-unanimous vote. The CISPA that was just approved by the House is much worse than the CISPA being discussed as recently as this morning.