Gun control certainly isn't something to joke about, neither is the assassination of a presidential nominee.  And yet Mike Huckabee did both today while addressing the NRA.

From CNN:

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Obama supports extending the assault weapons ban, limits on gun sales, and a national law against carrying concealed weapons, with exceptions for retired police and military personnel. John McCain – whose legislative record was awarded a C+ rating by the NRA in 2004, but has received a perfect score – will address the group later Friday afternoon.

Kristofer Goldsmith testified before the Congressional Progressive Caucus: 

I was stop-lossed. My one hope and dream in the military was to go to college after I went through Iraq. I attempted suicide. I never deployed a second time. Because of that I received a general discharge. I lost my college benefits, the $40,000 promised to me in the Montgomery GI Bill, I will not be eligible to receive. And currently there is a Senator in Congress currently running for president, who is fighting to kill our Webb GI bill. And I’m one of the soldiers who will never get that money.

Why won't John McCain support our vets like Goldsmith and sign Jim Webb's bi-partisan GI Bill? 

Barack Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination has been marred by the controversy over remarks made by his fomer pastor, Jeremiah Wright. And now that relationship is being used by the Republicans in a strategy Democrats say is racially tinged.

We sent Max Blumenthal, a writer for the progressive magazine, The Nation, to the southern state of Mississippi. He asks if attack ads used in a congressional election there could be a sign of things to come.

Most people have seen Bill O's rant online... here's a brilliant behind the scenes look. New footage shows O'Reilly's now legendary tantrum in an unbiased, spin-free light. Did he go overboard? Or was his producer at fault? You be the judge. look.

Wonder if CBS will try to pull this one too over copyright infringement.

From Glenn Greenwald:

Yesterday was a very exciting day in America. Our nation's most serious foreign policy expert, the "brilliant" Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, declared our latest new war:

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president -- but this cold war is with Iran.

After years of desperately searching, we've finally found our new Soviet Union.

Nay-saying opponents of the New War (those who Tom Friedman, in March of 2003, dismissed as "knee-jerk liberals and pacifists") may try to point out that Iran is a country whose defense spending is less than 1% of our own; spends less on its military than countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden; has never invaded another country in modern history, and could not possibly threaten us, but those are just small details. Iran is our new implacable foe in Tom Friedman's glorious, transcendent struggle -- which, in 2003, on NPR, he called "the beginning of World War III . . . the third great totalitarian challenge in the last, you know, 60 years," and which he today defines this way (featuring an amazingly disingenuous use of parenthesis):

That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today -- the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S."

Monty Python Meets Democratic Politics.

www.britethorn.com

Written and Directed by John T. Kramer. Voices by Peggy Kramer, John T. Kramer, and Chip Bradley.

Oh the hilarity!

Click here for more on the O'Reilly brouhaha. 

These are excerpts from Silhouette City, a new documentary by Michael Wilson that investigates apocalyptic Christian nationalism.  The film tracks the rise of this religious fervor over the last three decades, from fringe Christian survivalist groups of the 1970's to today's mainstream movement.  As you can see from this clip, the current leaders of apocalyptic Christian nationalism include Rev. Rod Parsley and Rev. John Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain has actively sought.   

Larry Craig is baaack... According to Sam Stein at HuffPo, the so-called "Family Values" Senator from Idaho is out of the men's room stall and back in the national spotlight.  Craig, who gained notoriety last year for allegedly soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, announced plans to amend the Iraq war supplemental bill currently before Congress in order to remove Jim Webb's GI Bill for the 21st Century.

Though Webb's bill has gained immense bi-partisan support in the Senate (it now has 57 co-sponsors from across the aisle, with 60 being the target number to ensure safe passage), it still faces stiff opposition in both House and Senate. Last week, the Blue Dogs delayed the GI Bill's passage, claiming that Democratic leaders needed to offset its costs, even though these fiscally conservative Democrats have favored Bush's supplementals for years. 

Of course, John McCain has been the biggest hypocrite of all on Webb's bill.  McCain and his crony Lindsey Graham have refused to co-sponsor Webb's bill, claiming it would cause the retention rate in the military to drop.  Of course, a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded just the opposite.  But that hasn't stopped McCain, whose adviser actually misquoted the CBO report yesterday on FOX News.    

What Craig, McCain, and Graham want is a pathetic overhaul of the antiquated GI Bill currently in existence.  Their version would force vets to serve 12 years before earning the maximum $2,000 a month in benefits.  The funniest part of all of this is that because Craig has thrown himself into the GI Bill debate, McCain has inadvertently aligned himself with the much maligned Republican Senator.   Wonder if it will sink McCain's alternate GI Bill.

Larry Craig on Mitt Romney: "He not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again"