This is Truthiness Reasoning:

1) State a number of things that sound like they might be true to anyone who doesn't know any better.

2) State that those "facts" lead to the obvious conclusion that you want to be true.

3) Claim that anyone who points out the oil-tanker-sized holes in your "logic" is only saying that because they're a member of one or more of the groups you want to blame for anything wrong.

4) QED.

This guy represents the American right in the same way animal rights protesters who kill scientists at research labs represent the American left. This is not a political issue; it's a mental health issue.

Excellent point ... except for the oh-so-minor detail that no animal rights protester has ever killed any scientist. (Hence the term "false equivalence".)

Gods know some of them have gone way over the line. But as far as I know, none of them have gone over that rather important line.

If anyone wants to point me to a specific example, please do.

(For the record, I used to work in a lab that used lab animals. Most of the folks who worked there resented the wacko subset of the animal rights protesters ... but seemed to grudgingly respect the rest, for the reforms they helped drive in how lab animals are treated.)

One thing I've noticed is, since Obama was elected and the right-wing imploded, any conservative/Republican response to criticism is to deflect by saying "but liberals do it, too" (even if they're making stuff up or wildly exaggerating) instead of actually addressing valid criticism.

It seems like they do that especially if they're making stuff up, as if a lie is easier to get away with if it's said more loudly.

"I do believe they are setting up an environment for us to make a very convincing case that this country needs a check and balance on this unbridled power."

This is one of things that has consistantly impressed me about the Repub leadership -- that they can say things like this with a straight face, given their recent history.

(That, and endlessly running on the sound bite that government is the problem, not the solution. "Vote Republican, because we want to be part of the problem.")

... obscure and isolated left-wing wackos from decades ago are the moral equivalent of right-wing wackos today getting paid millions of dollars to broadcast their manipulative and dishonest vitriol to millions of listeners.

Hitler was a white supremacist but he was a left-wing socialist.

You need to either be less absurd to be idiotic or more absurd to be funny.

I don't mean to be snide. OK, I do, a little: It just seems that every generation has to discover for itself that sexuality hardly ever fits all the way inside our preordained envelopes.

It's not so much that "every generation has to discover [bisexuality] for itself", it's that it seems like the media and/or oh-so-hip artists have to regularly rediscover it. It's been a while since the last round of shallow newsweakly articles and B-lister flirtations with the identity, perhaps we're due for the next one.

As someone who's self-identified as bi for 30+ years, I can't say that I'm looking forward to it.

... it was socially beneficial to pretend to be bisexual, especially when you weren't.

Emphasis added to emphasize the sad truth.

In other words, she offers thoughtful balance on this issue, right in the speech she's being criticized for!

Well, they're not actually criticizing her for the speech, of course. They're posturing about a line taken from the speech.

It's a lot more subtle than you seem capable of understanding. And, as others have pointed out, polls regarding the FEELINGS of people about legal decisions -- while certainly suggesting that empathy is important to many ("I feel like those white firefighters were treated unfairly. I don't know anything about the law, but that's how I feel.") -- are irrelevant.

Interesting, isn't it, how empathy in a legal context is a perfectly reasonable thing ... as long as it's empathy for the correct people.

If at some point in the future Obama has a chance to replace, one of the 5 reliably conservative judges, it'll make whats going on now look like a garden tea party with nice people in comparison. It'll be pure raging white hot insanity.

Given their reaction on Judge Sotomayor, they've pretty much shot themselves in the foot as far as their reactions to future noms. For better or worse (probably better), many people will be now be pre-disposed to be dubious of the Repub's reactions.

unacceptable?

I don't recall anyone to the left of Gingrich calling Sotomaypr's remark "unacceptable." I think Obama agreed that she could chosen her words more carefully. Yes?

I don't remember the exact wordings they each used -- and I'm too lazy at the moment to google 'em -- but no, neither of them referred to her words as "unacceptable".

I don't think either Obama or Gibbs should have been even as conciliatory as they were, but they certainly didn't got that far.

Of course, Gingrich is part of the Republican leadership, so one can hardly expect honesty.

Identically, if Israel wants to be free of what it and some of its U.S. supporters call "interference" from the Obama administration, that’s very easy to achieve: Israel can stop asking for tens of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money, huge amounts of military and weapons supplies for its various wars, and unyielding American diplomatic protection at the U.N.

I think it's worth emphasizing that those things themselves are "interference", even if they came with no strings at all. It just happens to be interference that Israel and many of its supporters welcome.