Joe Conason

House Speaker Mike Johnson, lately elevated to one of the most important posts in the federal government, is nothing if not a fervent culture warrior.

Mike Johnson, the four-term Louisiana representative just elected as House speaker, makes a pleasant first impression. That may be why his fellow Republicans chose such an untested politician, with no obvious qualifications, to fill that demanding post. Or they may have simply succumbed to exhaustion and embarrassment after the procedural fiasco that left Congress in limbo for weeks.

When Republicans claim to be shocked by threats of violence that have repeatedly marred their party’s contest for speaker of the House, it is hard to suppress a bitter laugh. The malignant direction of their party over the past several years is no secret — and although many of them are too cowardly to identify the poison’s source, everyone knows his name.

Having bounced poor Kevin McCarthy out of office – a moment that might have been painful if the former speaker possessed a spine – House Republicans now face the difficult prospect of choosing a replacement.

So far, the Republican drive to impeach President Joe Biden has illustrated a crucial aspect of political life in America. It has nothing to do with the president, or at least not the current president.

Now that former President Donald Trump has been indicted not once but twice for attempting to steal the 2020 presidential election, his apologists say he was merely pursuing his constitutional right to contest the results.

What is to be done about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his deranged spouse?

Of all the Senate Republicans who regularly engage in gutter politics, none is more likely to scrape bottom than Josh Hawley.

When Tucker Carlson insists there is no reason for Americans to distrust Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that his reputation for criminal brutality is simply fabricated by the “globalist deep state” controlled by George Soros — his rhetoric conceals the true source of friction between the United States and Russia.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the reason for his bloody invasion of Ukraine was to purge it of “drug addicts and neo-Nazis,” the Russian dictator provoked sneers and laughter. It was a ludicrous claim against a nation that had elected a Jewish president, who lost family members to the Holocaust, with 75 percent of the vote in 2019. The far-right party, by the way, won 1.6 percent in that election.

When Donald Trump first adopted “America First” as a slogan for his movement, it was unclear whether he had done so from sheer ignorance of its disgraced history or as a slyly malevolent tribute.