On Monday, former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson endorsed Donald Trump. Tyson joins Trump’s biggest group of supporters: "People Who Have Been Hit in the Head a Lot." ~ Conan O'Brien


The two front-runners: Ben Carson, who doesn't believe in evolution; and Donald Trump, who kind of proves his point. ~ Jimmy Kimmel


This surgeon is surging in the polls, 26 percent, ahead of Donald Trump's 22 percent. The other 52 percent, of course, is going to the other 52 candidates. ~ Stephen Colbert


Tonight was the World Series and the Republican debate. In other words, two events with completely different attitudes toward Latino immigrants. ~ Conan O'Brien

Chris Christie: "Police officers should never be criticized, no matter how many people they murder for no reason."

Donald Trump: "I have a permit to carry a gun. I keep it under my combover."

Rand Paul: "I'd like to talk about my tax plan, even though it is pretty much just a gift to rich people like everyone else's."

Income inequality is a big problem, and we'll solve it by cutting taxes and regulations on hedge funds.

Current Biology found the louder the howler monkey, the smaller his testicles.

A University of Utah researcher co-authored a study released Thursday that reveals size does indeed matter — at least when it comes to howler monkey testicles.

Primatologist Leslie Knapp, professor and chair of the university's Department of Anthropology, found that the smaller a howler monkey's testicles are, the deeper and louder his mating calls.

Overcompensating? Perhaps. The monkeys with the deeper howls also had larger hyoid bones, which enable them to have some of the loudest voices in the animal kingdom, an eardrum-busting call that's been compared to a tiger's roar.

They don't "howl" in the way your dog might, though. Instead, their call sounds more like a non-stop belch.

The bill would allow legislative campaign committees and political parties to receive unlimited contributions, with the exception of a $12,000 per year limit on PAC contributions to those committees and parties. The legislation would allow unlimited contributions to be made to and transferred between political action committees. Recall committees and referendum committees could also receive unlimited funds, and unlimited funds could be donated to pay expenses related to a recall or recount. Candidates could also make unlimited personal contributions to their own committee.

The proposal would ban candidates from coordinating with outside groups on express advocacy — calls to vote "for or against" a candidate — but would place no restrictions on coordination on issue advocacy.

In an interesting twist and a brilliant maneuver, each and every Democrat recused themselves from the vote, pointing out that they have a conflict of interest because it would directly affect their own campaign committees. The Republicans were at a loss at having their blatant corruption and greed exposed like that, but not enough so to keep them from passing the bill anyway.

...

To deal with that, the Republicans are also set to dismantle the Government Accountability Board (GAB), a nonpartisan panel of former judges that investigate campaign finance and ethics violations. The Republicans want to replace the GAB with two partisan panels - one for campaign finance violations and one for ethics violations - each consisting of three Republicans and three Democrats. This will leave the committees at stalemates on almost every issue.

Scuba--

You need to know what's happening in Wisconsin right now:

As we speak, Republicans in the state legislature are fast-tracking Assembly Bill 387, a bill that would roll back the clean government and campaign finance protections in Wisconsin as we know them.

This dangerous legislation was secretly drafted, rushed through the legislature, and is on the verge of passing this afternoon with little opportunity for Wisconsinites to weigh in. It's a partisan attempt to dismantle our state's proud history of non-partisan Democratic traditions -- and Wisconsinites deserve better than this type of cynical gamesmanship.

We must make our voices heard, before it's too late: Share the post on Facebook with your friends and family.

Wisconsin citizens and the proud history of our state's non-partisan democratic traditions deserve better than this cynical gamesmanship. Share on Facebook »



Here's what you need to know about Assembly Bill 387:

The bill allows unlimited corporate donations to political parties and legislative committees.

The bill allows an individual or corporation to anonymously spend an unlimited amount of money for or against a state or local candidate. As long as the expenditure is outside of the 60-day window before an election, the individual would not be required to report any of their activities or even disclose who paid for the activity. Within the window an individual or corporation could spend up to $4,999.99 anonymously.

The bill allows a political action committee (PAC) or independent expenditure committee (IEC) to anonymously spend money for or against a state or local candidate. As long as the expenditure is less than 50% of the total budget for the organization, the PAC or IEC would not be required to report any of their activities or even disclose who paid for the activity.1

This kind of legislation is irresponsible and reckless. It benefits corporations and special interests at the expense of hard-working Wisconsin families -- and gives multi-millionaires and billionaires even more access to our political process.

Time and again, the Wisconsin GOP has passed dangerous legislation like this. It's the current reality in a Wisconsin governed by Scott Walker. And you can bet that my likely opponent Senator Ron Johnson supports unlimited corporate money in politics.

Enough is enough.

Share my post on Facebook with your friends and family -- we need to spread the word about Scott Walker and the Republican legislature's mission to put an end to Wisconsin's proud history of clean and fair elections.

With your help, we can take Wisconsin back from the special interests, millionaires, billionaires, and corporations. Thank you for standing with me.

Sincerely,

Russ Feingold

As encouraging as these thoughtful challenges were, I was troubled by Clinton's hollow responses and the fact that they went unchallenged by the mainstream media. For example, she dismissed the charge that she had failed to demonstrate good judgment in Iraq, glibly suggesting that when Obama appointed her as Secretary of State, he had, in effect, absolved her of bad judgment. She defended her role in Libya calling it "smart power at its best" and claiming that it resulted in "free elections" in which "moderates" won with the hope of creating a democracy - ignoring the chaos and bloody conflict that soon followed. She also made the evidence-free claim that using military force to create no-fly "safe zones" in Syria would "get the Russians to the table" and would not, as critics charge, simply be pouring more gasoline on the Syrian fire.

The Democratic debate was a good start and I can hope for more, but fear that more may not come for three reasons. It will not come from Republicans, since party has become captive of neo-conservatives and the Evangelical right. These movements have substituted facts with ideology. They see the world through a primitive lens of good and evil and have replaced diplomacy with the simplistic use of force. Added to this, too many Republicans have become xenophobic, demonizing Arabs and Muslims, in addition to Hispanics. Today's GOP is not the party of George HW Bush and James Baker.

But Democrats also have a problem. For too long its political leaders have ignored dealing with the uncomfortable complexities of the Middle East because it simply didn't serve any political advantage to know about Arabs and Muslims. All they had to know was that we had an "unbreakable bond with Israel". Seeing the Arab World through this lens led too many politicians to either remain ignorant of Middle East realities or, if they did know, to shy away from elevating these issues into the national debate. As a result, Democrats can debate the use of military force, but are either uncomfortable with or averse to questioning Israeli policies or the treatment of Palestinians, or discussing the political dynamics that shape Arab political realities, or identifying the root causes of conflict in Syria or Iraq.

Finally there is the role played by the media and their paid commentators who are all too often mere purveyors of conventional wisdom. Because they frequently know less than the candidates they are covering, they are ill equipped to challenge them or to report on their dangerous and/or trite responses to critical foreign policy questions. As a result, while I'm pleased that we are seeing at least Democrats having a substantive discussion on the use of force in Middle East conflicts, it’s still not the serious and comprehensive discussion about US policy in the Middle East we so desperately need.