Newt Gingrich’s recent labeling of tea parties as the “militant wing of the Republican Party” drew objections from tea baggers about his use of the word “militant” but scant complaints about his calling them Republicans. Could this be a sign that the tea parties’ claims of political independence are no longer true, if they ever were?

Arizona’s dreadful new anti-immigrant law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer within hours of Pres. Obama denouncing it, isn’t the slam-dunk wedge issue Republicans might have hoped for. In an impassioned press release, a group called Somos Republicans called out Brewer and the red-faced anti-immigrant extremists who passed the legislation. The real question is where Republican candidates of Latino descent will stand on this issue. Specifically, where will Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio, who refers to himself as a child of “exiles,” not “immigrants,” in his campaign ads stand?

It used to be you couldn’t go downtown in the evening without running into half a dozen evangelists ranting and raving and carrying on; some of them put on their shows in tents or at camp meetings, and some of them just stood around on street corners and worked up a crowd. They’d stir people up for a while, but they always got over it. But now we’ve got just this one evangelist, this Billy Graham, and he’s gone off the beam. He’s… well, I hadn’t ought to say this, but he’s one of those counterfeits I was telling you about. He claims he’s a friend of all the Presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was President. I just don’t go for people like that. All he’s interested in is getting his name in the paper.

- Former Pres. Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), speaking in 1962

Catchy little ditty (with a long intro and credits) to which we can all relate.

Despite a bombardment of right-wing historical revisionism that bizarrely attempts to blame the Bush Recession on House Finance Chair Barney Frank and the Congress — irrespective of the fact that the GOP controlled the House and Frank was not chairman during the 12 years leading up to the collapse — a new Gallup finds that three-quarters of Americans still recall that the Bush Recession started on Bush’s watch. The right-wing spin may be starting to work, however. The percent who blame Pres. Obama for the Bush Recession has risen from 32 percent last July to 50 percent now.