The Washington Post has new information today on Ron Paul’s racist, antisemitic newsletters; a former secretary in the company that produced the newsletters says Ron Paul was fully aware of their content: Ron Paul signed off on racist 1990s newsletters, associates say.

Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian , has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, according to three people with direct knowledge of Paul’s businesses.

The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.

And there’s more; Paul apparently made a deliberate effort to peddle his newsletters to racists and extremists, using the mailing list of a notorious antisemitic newspaper published by Holocaust denier Willis Carto:

Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period, and the two men discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters. They agreed that “people who have extreme views” are more likely than others to respond.

Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist.

This comes as absolutely no surprise, but I predict it will have no impact on Ron Paul’s popularity. Anyone who still supports this creepy old racist has either found a way to rationalize this stuff, or has no problems with it.

Another Republican debate has come to a close, so here’s the wrap-up thread to try to make sense of a party of millionaires that attacks its own for being millionaires…

Here’s a second thread to discuss the second hour of the sixth GOP debate this month, as the millionaires rip each others’ flesh…

CNN has a live video feed here, for tonight’s encore performance of the GOP’s Florida Clown Car.

The big difference tonight: hooting and jeering and applauding for reprehensible things will be encouraged by CNN and Wolf Blitzer, so Newt should be able to do some great rabble-rousing.

Here’s a vastly important subject guaranteed not to come up in tonight’s debate (the sixth debate this month): the precipitous decline in American science. Neil deGrasse Tyson really brings the point home with maps showing the amounts of peer reviewed scientific research in different areas of the globe.

Exceptionally poor at science and getting worse; is this what Republicans mean when they chant “American exceptionalism?”

NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite, launched about 90 days ago, has produced an absolutely amazing super high resolution full-disc image of the Earth, produced in several passes over Central America.

Click to enlarge

You can also download a giant, incredibly detailed image (8,000 x 8,000 pixels) from NASA.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s book Scorpions for Breakfast is an exemplar of the right wing genre; i.e., incredibly disrespectful of the office of the Presidency. And yesterday, when he arrived in Arizona, President Obama let Brewer know that he wasn’t pleased with it: Jan Brewer: Obama ‘didn’t feel I treated him cordially’.

This AP picture says it all: the classic rude, angry wingnut stance, with bonus pointing finger. (Wingnut bloggers, of course, are cheering Brewer’s disgraceful behavior.)

President Obama, alighting from the stairs of Air Force One in Phoenix this afternoon, was greeted by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who handed him an envelope and the two exchanged what appeared to be some heated sentiments. At one point, she pointed her finger at him. …

“I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt,” she said, according to a pool report. “He didn’t feel that I had treated him cordially. I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn’t get my sentence finished. Anyway, we’re glad he’s here. I’ll regroup.” …

A White House official confirmed the invitation and described the encounter in more bureaucratic terms: “The President said he’d be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book. The President looks forward to continuing taking steps to help Arizona’s economy grow.” …

The passage in Brewer’s book that the president was apparently referring to recounts a meeting at the White House when they discussed border security and immigration.

“It was [as] though President Obama thought he could lecture me, and I would learn at his knee,” she wrote, according to Capitol Media Services. “He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me.”

After this incident, Gov. Brewer went on right wing talk radio and called the President “thin-skinned,” then repeated the smear to the national wingnut audience on Fox News.

“He brought up my book. And he was a little tense. I asked him if he read my book, ‘Scorpions for Breakfast’ and he said he read the excerpt and he didn’t think that I was very cordial,” Brewer told radio host Mike Broomhead on KFYI radio. “He was somewhat thin-skinned and a little tense to say the least. I was trying to be very calm.”

“The book is factual, the book is true,” Brewer repeated on Fox’s Greta Van Susteren show. “I don’t know why he was surprised by my book but he evidently is and he’s very thin-skinned in regards to it.”

One of the people in the photo above does look calm, but it’s not Brewer.

Gov. Brewer actually went even farther than this; talking to reporters, she said she “felt a little bit threatened.” Good grief.

Here’s video of the Arizona governor exploiting the right wing red meat potential of her close encounter with a black President to the fullest:

Creationism, that zombie of the American political scene, rises again — this time in Indiana:

An Indiana Senate committee on Wednesday endorsed teaching creationism in public schools, despite pleas from scientists and religious leaders to keep religion out of science classrooms.

Senate Bill 89 allows school corporations to authorize “the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life” and specifically mentions “creation science” as one such theory.

State Sen. Scott Schneider, R-Indianapolis, who voted for the measure, said if there are many theories about life’s origins, students should be taught all of them.

[…]

The Republican-controlled Senate Education Committee nevertheless voted 8-2 to send the legislation to the full Senate.

Here’s the substance of the text of the bill:

[EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]: Sec. 18. The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.

Anyone who has followed this issue in the US can tell right away that even if this bill passed the Indiana Senate, and was eventually signed by the Governor of Indiana, that a federal judge would strike it down right away as unconstitutional (with much precedent in the US court system.)

Yet the creationists still try, over and over.

And, to simply use the phrase “creation science” uncritically informs us of how anti-scientific the authors of that bill are.

The Chairman of the committee was one of the original authors, and given that 4 more signed on as co-authors pretty much guaranteed it would get through the committee.

The State senator mentioned in the news article is one of the co-authors, Scott Schneider, has introduced or co-authored several bills, many of which are close to the heart of the tea-partying and creationists/home-schooling groups. For instance, he’s introduced bills on Right To Work, on controlling sexually explicit material, and so forth. He also works the Tea Party circuit for political support.

Sen. Schneider is also a well known anti-abortionist and a favorite of the Indiana Right to Life organization, and last year helped spearhead an effort to defund any organization in IN that performed abortions.

So we see that the stereotype is reinforced - tea party, creationism, anti-abortion - they are all part of the same stew that is today’s Republican party.

With all the focus on Newt Gingrich’s race-baiting and “big ideas,” one thing that hasn’t gotten much notice yet: his outrageous anti-Muslim statements.

There’s a reason why Newt was scheduled to speak at hate group leader Pamela Geller’s “Ground Zero Mosque” demonstration in New York, and there’s a reason why she endorses him for President. On this subject, Gingrich sounds exactly like Geller.

Here’s Gingrich today on The Janet Mefferd Show, explaining that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, secular judges, “religious bigots who want to drive Christianity out of public life,” and “elites” are conspiring with the “Organization of Islamic Countries” to advance the cause of radical Islam.

Newt Gingrich with hate group leader Pamela GellerGingrich: Well, I think that we have to really, from my perspective you don’t have an issue of religious tolerance you have an elite which favors radical Islam over Christianity and Judaism. You have constant pressure by secular judges and by religious bigots to drive Christianity out of public life and to establish a secular state except when it comes to radical Islam, where all of the sudden they start making excuses for Sharia, they start making excuses that we really shouldn’t use certain language. Remember, the Organization of Islamic Countries is dedicated to preventing anyone, anywhere in the world from commenting negatively about Islam, so they would literally eliminate our free speech and there were clearly conversations held that implied that the US Justice Department would begin to enforce censorship against American citizens to protect radical Islam, I think that’s just an amazing concept frankly.

Here are a couple of facts to counteract this bizarre fear-mongering conspiracy theory that Newt’s parroting directly from Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer:

First, Gingrich has the name of the organization wrong; it’s the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which shows the depth of Gingrich’s knowledge). (Update: recently changed to “Organization of Islamic Cooperation.”)

Second, the Obama administration has come out strongly against OIC-sponsored UN resolutions barring the defamation of religion. The idea that the Justice Department is going to start “enforcing censorship” against people who criticize Islam is just … stupid.

Newt is spouting a cartoon-like version of the reality, with Muslims as the boogeymen, and the right wing eats this stuff up.

This is why I continue to believe that Newt Gingrich has no real chance of becoming the Republican nominee for President; he’s even disliked by most of his own party: Rubio scolds Gingrich camp, says ad bashing ‘anti-immigrant’ Romney is ‘inaccurate, inflammatory’.

Sen. Marco Rubio scolded Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign over a Spanish-language radio ad that accuses rival Mitt Romney of being “anti-immigrant”

 “This kind of language is more than just unfortunate. It’s inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign,” Rubio told The Miami Herald when asked about the ad.

“The truth is that neither of these two men is anti-immigrant,” Rubio said. “Both are pro-legal immigration and both have positive messages that play well in the Hispanic community.”

As for the last sentence in the above quote, it’s obviously false. Both Gingrich and Romney are determinedly anti-immigrant — like most Republicans — and only a dyed in the wool partisan like Rubio would deny it. To understand this, all you need to do is look at Republican “self-deportation” legislation, and Republicans’ universal opposition to the DREAM Act. And it’s even more obvious in this election season, as the candidates have been relentlessly fear-mongering about immigration issues.