The pharmacist in Wisconsin who destroyed 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine did so because he believed they would "alter human DNA," reflecting a popular conspiracy theory on Facebook that has absolutely no basis in fact.

Science, religion, and conspiracy theories are all, essentially the same thing: systems or attempts to explain the unknown, to make sense out of things beyond our senses or immediate, touchable reality. Thus, our vulnerability to conspiracy theories and con artists like Trump.

It's impossible for any individual to know or understand everything. We believe electrons make our computers work, but for all but a few scientists who've actually seen and measured electrons, it's only a belief. We must trust their word.

Pundits across the American political spectrum are wringing their hands about the fate and future of the "dirty dozen" Republican senators challenging Biden's election.

One of the most widespread stories about their motivation is that they're "afraid of Trump" or are "worried about being primaried." Both ideas are wrong.

Donald Trump's phone call to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is the latest illustration of his lifelong criminality. Over the last 40 years, career criminals like Trump have increasingly moved out of the business world and the streets and into politics, something for which we can thank the Supreme Court.

There are, among us, a small number of individuals who are career criminals. They have literally spent their entire lives skirting or outright breaking the law, and not only believe the law doesn't apply to them, but actually delight in getting away with their crimes.

Covid has now killed 1 in 1000 Americans in less than a year.

How is it that in Australia it's 3 out of every 100,000 people, and in New Zealand it's 1 out of every 200,000 people, but here in America we're dropping like flies?

Chalk it up to Republican racism and a libertarian indifference to the notion of society.

TS Eliot famously said that the world will end "not with a bang, but a whimper." It's also how strongman dictator reigns typically end, and Trump is no exception. He's having his "Downfall bunker moment," and it could be very dangerous.

The Republican coronavirus relief negotiating position, over the past six months, tells you everything you need to know about why the modern GOP is so corrupt it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up or die.

First, Democrats in the House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act, with $3 trillion for unemployed Americans, small businesses, and state and local governments. Republicans said that was too much money for average Americans, and refused to even hold a vote in the Senate.

Once again, negotiations over Covid relief show the stark differences between the Democratic and Republican Parties. That America isn't shocked and horrified by GOP behavior is a testimonial to how well corporate media obscures these differences.

Several Republican senators and their aides have gone so far as to suggest that giving working people even a single $600 check will cause them to "live high on the hog" or will bring "communism" to America.

"Why Did So Many Americans Vote for Donald Trump?" asks the headline in The New York Times shortly after the election. Weirdly, that article - and hundreds like it purporting to explain the previous 2016 election - lacked even a single mention of the roughly 1,500 right-wing talk-radio stations that saturate every corner, no matter how remote or rural, of America.

As a 2008 Pew Research poll found, 16 percent of Americans got their general election-year information about presidential candidates from talk radio, a percentage that had held constant for eight years at that point, despite the explosive growth of the Internet over the same period.

Probably the most under-reported story of the year has been how Mitch McConnell is holding Americans hostage in exchange for letting big corporations kill Americans without any consequence.

Mitch took you and me hostage back in May, when the House of Representatives passed the HEROES act that would have funded state and local governments and provided unemployed workers with an ongoing weekly payment.

Rebuilding trust in democracy and our American government requires both holding seditious Republicans accountable and restoring the protective functions of government. Here's what Democrats must do and why.

The reason tens of millions of Americans don't believe Joe Biden won the election is a 40-year betrayal of the American public's trust by Republican politicians, grifters, and con artists exploiting the once-good name of Lincoln's Party.

In yesterday's rant, I laid out all the reasons why Democrats should put at the top of their priority list "defunding the Republican Party." Here's a little background, and how to do it.

Politicians in New York State are discussing making Covid vaccination mandatory, and, predictably, Republican cultists are freaking out. "Freedom!" they scream as they run around maskless, assaulting their fellow citizens with virus-laden breath.

What most vividly shows the difference between Ron DeSantis and Xavier Becerra? The crusade, and then the failure of that crusade, to make America into a fully authoritarian nation, and the return to democracy.

Donald Trump is a full-blown authoritarian; anyone who's ever read a decent history of Germany, Italy, or Spain in the 1930s, or knows the history of Pinochet in Chile, knows this is an irrefutable truth.