CBS polls the tea parties and finds they’re old, white, pissed off, likely to vote and don’t think they pay too many taxes. They like Fox News, and they don’t like Ron Paul: Weirdly, Ron Paul does better at more traditional GOP outings.  He won the CPAC straw poll handily this year, and lost to [...]

In 2007, Glenn Greenwald wrote a column about how our political debate was being constrained by the demonization of figures like Howard Dean, Al Gore or Ron Paul who were singled out and labeled “weirdos” for expressing opinions outside of party orthodoxy, even though those opinions may have broad popular support.  Noting that Ron Paul [...]

RYAN GRIM: Just this morning the blog Firedoglake organized a letter that’s signed by the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and other economists saying we need to back the Paul/Grayson amednement and a vote for the Watt amendment is a vote for more secresy at the Fed, more secreat bailouts. But you also have unanimous Republican support for this in the committee, so you have this left/right convergence, kind of a grass roots movement, that is trying to challenge the establishment.

Ron Paul, who is still garnering support from disaffected Republicans throughout the country, will officially end his campaign for the presidency this Thursday. Yet, his impact will continue to be felt in a number of ways. First, there is the slate of local Paulites running for office:

The new phase of the revolution officially begins with a speech tonight in Houston and a Web video to be posted on his site, officially

From The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Maverick GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has booked an arena in Minneapolis for a “mini-convention” that could steal some of John McCain’s thunder just days before he accepts the Republican nomination.

A Paul campaign aide said the Texas congressman hopes to pack about 11,000 supporters into the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept.

Perhaps they are growing angrier at the tactics used by the McCain people to prevent them from speaking at state nominating conventions. I think much of this video is useful, but cannot in good conscience endorse the end of the video, where McCain is questioned for “collaborating” with the enemy while in Vietnam.

That is a smear job plain and simple.

This can’t make Republicans happy. And this can’t make John McCain happy:Barr took issue with McCain’s Iran policy. “I’m not going to go around making up songs about such a serious matter as going to war with a sovereign nation, as Senator McCain did,” the former congressman said, tut-tutting McCain’s “Barbara Ann/Bomb Iran” episode.

It will be interesting to see how the McCain folks handle this one. With kid gloves in the hope that his candidacy will be a tree falling in the Amazon, or by trying to tarnish him in a more preemptive manner.So far I have been unable to reach the McCain Campaign for a reaction, or more interestingly Ron Paul’s campaign to find out if there would be the possibility of a