While Republicans around the country are trying relentlessly to kill democracy and instill new ways that could have actually lead to a Romney/Ryan victory last fall, despite Obama getting 5 million more votes, one man who would have been winner isn't so keen on the idea:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has come out against altering the way his state allocates its Electoral College votes, even though the proposed change could have meant that he and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney would have won the 2012 election.

Currently, nearly every state awards its Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who captures a majority of the popular vote across the entire state. Only Maine and Nebraska allocate an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, with the final two votes going to the person who wins the popular vote statewide.

But Republicans in some swing states now want to be more like Maine and Nebraska.

The electoral college system is old and out-dated. In a democracy the people vote. Each vote should count the same, and not be weighted by living in a red or blue area. Moving to a strict popular vote is the best way to do this. It would also level the playing field, giving other states a bigger advantage in presidential elections.

It would be nice to just get rid of the electoral college, but instead Republicans want to make the unfair system more powerful. Kudos to Paul Ryan for standing up against such failed thinking.

It has been 48 days since Adam Lanza went to Sandy Hook Elementary and engaged in a shooting spree that left 20 children shot dead. Since then a lot has been discussed about gun control and legislation is slowly starting to form.

But there has been one question that has been plaguing me since that gruesome December morning - how many guns deaths have happened in the United States since then? Well Slate has started a crowd sourcing project to answer that question and right now the tally stands at 1,444.

1,444??? That's over 30 gun deaths per day in our nation. That is also about 1/2 of a 9/11 in under two months.

How can anyone in their right mind hear that and not think "my God, we have a serious problem"? Sadly they do though. If you listened to the Senate testimony of NRA talking head, Wayne LaPierre yesterday, you know that the nation's biggest gun organization thinks this is all perfectly normal.

Hopefully during this debate common sense can prevail and the powerful money of the gun lobby will be defeated. Our nation has a serious epidemic when it comes to guns and we desperately need a cure.

Another day, another episode in the hatred of the GOP. Here's Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) talking about immigration reform (via Think Progress):

“It’s amnesty that America can’t afford,” Barletta said Monday. “We have to stop people from coming in illegally. This will be a green light for anyone who wants to come to America illegally and then be granted citizenship one day.” [...]

“I hope politics is not at the root of why we’re rushing to pass a bill. Anyone who believes that they’re going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken,” Barletta said. “The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”

To sum it up, Barletta is saying the immigrants are dumb and will become Democrats. I'm sure the higher ups in the GOP will be lining up to condemn these words by one of their colleagues.

OK, anytime now???

Well I guess we won't be hearing that condemnation. Of course I was silly to think as much. This is very much how the GOP thinks. They have proven time and time again that Howard Dean was right when he called them the party of "old, white guys". Every action by the GOP, since those words were spoken, have done nothing but prove how truthful Dean was in his assessment.

So we won't hear Republicans get upset over what Barletta said. They might shake their heads or make some "if you were offended" faux apology, but deep down this is exactly how they feel!

Talk about being taken to the cleaners!

Sarah Palin uttered more than 189,000 words over 150 appearances on various FOX broadcasts during her three years as an analyst at the network, or $15.85 per word

With the three-year contract now expired between FOX News and Sarah Palin, there is a wealth of commentary made by the former Alaska Governor and GOP Vice-Presidential nominee to dissect.

Yeah I say Fox got screwed in this deal!

Because we have idiots like this in our nation:

Two men were arrested in Ohio on Wednesday after their target practice with an AK-47 assault rifle accidentally shot up a woman’s home and nearly hit a officer who was responding to reports of gunfire.

Mary Kuruc told WEWS that her daughter discovered a bullet hole in the siding of their Montville Township home and other holes inside the house. After calling 911, Montville Police Sgt. Matt Neil began investigating and the home was hit again.

“We noticed a second bullet hole, followed the trajectory of it and noticed the bullet landed in the microwave,” Kuruc recalled.

Neil found himself in the line of fire as he tried to track down where the bullets were coming from.

Luckily this story did end so bad, but imagine if the officer actually did get shot or there were children playing in the house, where the bullets hit. It's the irresponsible, drunken, "it will never happen to me" attitude that so many of these idiots have that makes them a danger. Even more dangerous is the fact that people like the NRA will go to great lengths to defend them.

Here is a link Matt Drudge is pushing right now:

So now the President makes the laws? Well apparently so if you read the article it links to:

Despite launching a gun control agenda that threatens to disarm the American people, President Obama has signed a bill that would afford him armed Secret Service protection for life.

“The legislation, crafted by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, rolls back a mid-1990s law that imposed a 10-year limit on Secret Service protection for former presidents. Bush would have been the first former commander in chief affected,” reports Yahoo News.

The new bill, which will cost American taxpayers millions of dollars, is a re-instatement of a 1965 law which will see presidents protected for life as well as their children up to age 16.

The irony of Obama seeking to surround himself with armed men for the rest of his life while simultaneously working to disarm the American people via a gun control agenda that is likely to be enforced via executive decree represents the height of hypocrisy.

This article is from the asinine conspiracy crazy Alex Jones site, so needless to say there is serious flaws in it, like the last paragraph I quoted.

Obama did not "seek" for this legislation. It was H.R. 6620, the Former Presidents Protection Act of 2012. The bill was introduced in the Republican lead House by a Republican representative. It passed both the House and Senate on voice votes, meaning it most likely carried a veto-proof majority.

I have said it a hundred times before. It isn't the pro-gun control people out there that will result in tighter regulations, it's the pro-gun fanatics, who speak before the think. Here is the latest one of these fanatics:

The CEO of a Tennessee company that specializes weapons and tactical training is threatening to “start killing people” if President Barack Obama moves forward with gun control measures.

In a video posted to YouTube and Facebook on Wednesday, Tactical Response CEO James Yeager went ballistic over reports that the president could take executive action with minor gun control measures after the mass shooting of 20 school children in Connecticut last month.

James Yeager later removed the video and replaced it with an edited version that removed the threat of "killing people", but Dave Edwards from Raw Story grabbed the original video:

I have been saying for years that one of the biggest problems the GOP faces is their own purging of the moderate Republicans. That action is greatly shrinking the size of their tent, which translates to fewer voters.

This is a problem that not only I have noticed, but many others in politics. There have even been groups formed to try and bring moderates back into the Republican fold. One of the largest groups is the Republican Main Street Partnership. But the GOP is having none of that and the group has decided to actually drop Republican from it's name and start accepting moderate Democrats into their fold. This part of the article really highlights the process of making this decision:

The organization's board of directors voted Tuesday morning to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as "The Main Street Partnership." The group's new president, former Ohio Republican Rep. Steven LaTourette, told Yahoo News that he plans to begin conversations with Blue Dog Democrats and centrist groups in the coming months.

"The goal is to try and fill the void that is the middle," LaTourette, who resigned from Congress this year, said. "The American political system is like a doughnut: You've got sides, but you don't have anything in the middle, and it would be my goal to work with Republicans and Democrats who want to find the path forward to getting things done and compromise."

LaTourette decided to retire from Congress last year, in no small part due to the shift to the right the GOP has experienced over the past several years, so he does know what he's talking about.